Florida ranked fourth in home vacancy rate in 2018
Florida ranked fourth in home vacancy rate in 2018
Florida's home vacancy rate was fourth in the U.S., with a home vacancy rate of 2.2 percent in 2018 according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The home vacancy rate is the proportion of the homeowner inventory that is vacant and for sale at the time of the survey. The overall home vacancy rate in the U.S. was 1.5 percent in 2018, a 6.3 percent decrease from 2017. [Source: Florida Business Daily]
Real estate veteran Louise Sunshine reflects on storied career and challenges ahead
There are an endless number of paths that lead into the real estate industry. But even by those standards, the formidable career of Louise Sunshine stands out. Her grandfather, Barney Pressman, founded Barneys New York and was a pioneer in using radio advertising to promote the chain’s initial location. Her father, Nelson Mintz, owned a real estate investment company in New Jersey. She studied business and real estate at Brandeis University, then married and started a family. [Source: Miami Herald]
Student housing is one "sexy" CRE food group
Dorothy Jackman is convinced she works in the sexiest of commercial real estate sectors: Student housing. “Hands down, it’s the sexiest of all the commercial real estate food groups,” says Jackman, an executive managing director with commercial real estate brokerage firm Colliers International, who runs the firm’s national student housing practice from Tampa. [Source: Business Observer]
Opinion: Don’t scam Florida home buyers. Require sellers to reveal a home’s flooding risk
Want to buy some Florida swampland? You could, without knowing it. And nobody has to tell you. Because our state provides no safeguards for people who may unwittingly buy homes that repeatedly flood, the cliché about Florida’s classic real estate scam is truer than ever. Now consider that of all states, low-lying Florida is at greatest risk for inland flooding and tied with Louisiana for the highest risk of coastal flooding. [Source: Miami Herald]
Stop taking our money, local housing advocates tell Florida lawmakers
A “stunning number” of state dollars dedicated to housing issues have been scraped away by Florida lawmakers for the past decade — and it’s time for that to stop, advocates said last week. More than $2 billion over the past 10 years have been taken out of the Sadowski Trust Fund, a fund originally intended to pay for housing programs and improvements, said Suzanne Cabrera, president and CEO of the Housing Leadership Council of Palm Beach County. More from the Palm Beach Post and the Tampa Bay Times.
$3,141
The town of Palm Beach doesn’t see a lot of spec homes. But when they do come to market, they sell quickly and for top dollar. The Frisbie Group sold a mansion for $25.5 million that it built last year at 1610 North Ocean Boulevard. A land trust bought the 8,118-square-foot house for $3,141 per square foot, records show. [Source: The Real Deal]
› Home sweet (vacation) home [Business Observer]
Collier County, home to two cities — Naples and Marco Island — with some of the priciest real estate in the region, state and even country in some cases, is unsurprisingly nestled snugly in a National Association of Realtors report on the places with the most expensive vacation homes in the country.
› Southwest Florida residents fear development will displace them [AP]
In River Park, current home listings range from $349,000 to $650,000. In Port Royal, a home was bought for $48.8 million in 2018 only to be torn down to make room for an even pricier home. Fears are mounting among residents that they will be priced out of their own community and lose a sense of identity with the thrust of rapid Florida development and gentrification.
› FEMA delays major changes to flood risk rating program until 2021 [Tampa Bay Times]
Major changes to the way the federal government rates flood risk are being pushed back a year. The Federal Emergency Management Agency delayed the release of its “Risk Rating 2.0” plan, which would rate homes’ flood risk more precisely than current models. It will now go into effect in October 2021.
› Why real estate investors are warming up to the risky business of cold storage [Miami Herald]
Those perishable pharmaceuticals, fresh holiday flowers and frozen Thanksgiving turkeys are getting some new places to roost. In the next few years, more than 400,000 square feet of cold storage is coming to South Florida. That’s still far less than the 1.5 million total square-footage of industrial warehouse space in the pipeline, according to the CBRE Group.