Miami Condo Fiasco

Seriously I don’t know what’s newsworthy these days anymore. Why is there an article simply titled The Related Group on CNN Money today? The article says this:

The Related Group is great
The Related Group made Miami great
The Related Group is building in Latin America
The Related Group is making low income homes because they are so generous

Happy [...]

I happened to be talking to someone in my office about my condo fiasco and this person is in the exact same predicament. She bought a place on the “Avenue on Brickell Condominium” 1060 Brickell Avenue, Miami FL 33131. Her deposit was $40k and the place was worth $380k. I hate to see someone else [...]

I just read an article about sluggish sales in South Florida but prices have remained the same. Probably people like me who refuse to loose money.

What amazes me the most is that The Related Group (the developers of my condo) are still really active. In a project with Donald Trump, they were able to sell 60% of condos worth $900k to $2.5 million. In such a bad market, that to me is incredible. It is reassuring to see that [...]

Thanks everyone for voting (all four of you). As it turns out… things will NOT get any better. I love the optimism that exudes from my readers…makes me feel warm and wanted.

I just read about Collier County Commissioner Jim Coletta (see picture) of Naples, FL suing a builder to get their $28k deposit on a preconstruction back. I hope the legal fees aren’t more than say…$500. On a similar note, a group has filed a class action lawsuit to stop the construction of a luxury high [...]

Ok, this is just my optimism speaking louder than my better sense but there has been a lot of buzz here in South Florida about some historic landmarks and their preservation. If you live around here you think of Hialeah as being a dirty ugly place where poor people live. The thing is that there [...]

I was glad to read this article this morning about how Florida regained the status of top tourist spot. Hopefully hurricanes won’t scare anyone away. For all you people out there who have not been to south Florida… come on over.

This post is intended to respond to a comment on one of my previous posts. Once again, it’s nice to see people are reading my blog.
“Coudl you make a post explaining exactly what a pre-construction condo is and how you ended up buyign one?”
A preconstruction (pre-construction) is a property (apartment in my case) that [...]

I hadn’t heard of the term condo vultures until I posted a comment about  condo vultures in Miami.  Now the term condo vultures are the top keywords by which my blog is found. The only thing I can think of is that scene from Conan the Barbarian where he is crucified and left to be [...]

I just read an interesting comment someone posted (cool!…someone is reading my blog). The suggestion of moving into the apartment myself arose. This is actually been a running joke with my wife..she says she’s waiting for us to have to move into the condo if we can’t sell it. Unfortunately, we live and work in [...]

So I called The Plaza on Brickell this morning. I had a few important questions and I had to tell them about the price reduction. So as it turns out, my asking price is the lowest in the upper part of the building. I have mine listed at $379,000 and it’s on the 45th floor. [...]

I’ve been thinking of all the ways out of this. If I can’t sell the condo before it’s ready I’ll have to somehow rent it out. It would be nice if there was a company that could handle this…without charging me an arm and a leg! From everything I was told, The Plaza is supposed [...]

So I made four graphs representing what could happen to the Florida (blue) and Miami(red) housing markets. I wanted to get an idea of how people feel this is going to go.

Graph 1 represents a pretty pessimistic forecast showing a continued decline in median house prices.
Graph 2 represents a VERY optimistic forecast showing that worst [...]

So, just as I thought, I’m getting calls from a bunch of real estate agents. I’ve been telling them that contractually I’m not allowed to list the property on MLS and hence with a realtor… after all, that’s what they’ll probably do…and then wait… and if they don’t sell it well then I’m screwed. There [...]