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Water releases, algae threatening home values

Water releases, algae threatening home values

As green algae blooms in the waters of southwest Florida, local real estate professionals are preparing to take a hit. Even if the algae is not presently growing in local waters, real estate deals are falling through and, in some cases, home values are taking a hit. More from Think Realty, FOX 4, and the Fort Myers News-Press.

Amazon effect makes warehouses hot

The Amazon effect first reached big-box warehouses, those located outside of town that can span the size of 15 soccer fields. When the company couldn’t find two like that in Central Florida, it built one in Brandon and one in Lakeland. Now urban warehouse space is succumbing, upending the commercial property market’s long-standing hierarchy. [Source: Sarasota Herald-Tribune]

How dirty is Miami real estate? Secret home deals dried up when feds started watching

In Miami-Dade, the first-of-its-kind study found a 95 percent drop in how much cash shell companies and other corporate entities spent on homes. The decline began immediately after a new rule took effect in March 2016. [Source: Miami Herald]

Some not-so-tiny obstacles in the growing market for tiny houses

Few housing options have captured the public imagination like tiny houses, seen as an affordable and, yes, adorable antidote to the excesses of modern life. For all the enthusiasm, the tiny-house movement isn’t moving very fast. Financing, zoning laws and entrenched attitudes have conspired to limit tiny houses to a tiny percentage of the nation’s housing stock. [Source: Tampa Bay Times]

Foreign buyers, tax refugees, retirees drive surge in South Florida luxury home sales

A “starter home” for $4 million. Soon-to-be-built Fort Lauderdale condos on the Intracoastal Waterway for $2 million. Or how about those “affordable” luxury condos near Hollywood Beach? They’re all playing a role in what luxury real estate agents are happily calling one of South Florida’s best price and sales surges in recent memory. [Source: South Florida Sun-Sentinel]

STAT OF THE WEEK
$6,500
Cost per acre of a 4,047-acre ranch listed in DeSoto County, near Punta Gorda. [Source: The Real Deal]

ALSO TRENDING:

› Developer undaunted by legal challenge, confident east Orange 'agrihood' will succeed
Even as a pending appeal threatens to stop “The Grow” from taking root, developer Dwight Saathoff insists potential buyers are lining up to be part of the 1,200-acre, $1 billion project in east Orange centered around a working farm and touted as the first-ever “agrihood” in Central Florida.

› New York real estate firm expanding to Naples area
Compass real estate is navigating its way to Naples. The New York real estate brokerage firm is expanding to the Southwest Florida market with a new office coming to Naples this fall.

› Flying Cow Ranch with estate homes, airstrip proposed on empty Wellington land
A residential development with its own airpark is being proposed on 150 vacant acres in Wellington. Situated on the western corner of Flying Cow Ranch Road, and appropriately named Flying Cow Ranch, the development would feature 30 estate homes and an airstrip.

› Miami board approves three mixed-use projects in Coconut Grove, Little Havana and Wynwood
Three significant, yet separate, mixed-use projects proposed by Redsky Capital, Terra and the Altman Companies breezed through Miami’s Urban Development Review Board, receiving unanimous approvals last week.