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Greg,

Can you send me a PM with your number? Thinking about buying a condo in Miami-Dade area.

Thanks

Watch the maintenance costs! What seem to be low price condos can have $700-900 a month maintenance costs due to high foreclosures in the complex causing all the "paying" customers to have higher monthly costs.

My buddy is currently looking and has found several 150-200K units that seem to be a lot of bang for the buck until you add in the maintainance fees! He is paying cash and could still spend 1,000-1200 a month between maintenance,taxes,insurance or rent in the same building for $1500!

Also consider the days on market issue, as in 400+ days on market means it may take you year(s) to sell it!

One other thing to consider is the property taxes if Florida is not your primary residence. I've got a friend who has a place in Pompano that is a nice condo (Probably worth 300-350K). His property taxes are more than 10K a year! He told me that ...if he could sell it, ;) he would just rent a place for three months a year and be waaaay ahead of the game. They also seem to hit him up every 2-3 years for 10K or so for building maintenance money. Complete BS!

FL is usually 2% of value for tax rate (note values used to be a few thousand lower than true market, today they are just about at market value). 500K house, valued by the county at 450K will roughly have a $9,000 annual tax bill. Homesteading only lets the taxable rate rise by a maximum 3% a year so if your neighbor sells for 700K, your assessment can only rise 3% of the 450K (450K @ 3% is 13,500, new tax bill is 463,500 x 2% and your tax bill next year will be $9270) despite your neighbor obviously getting 700K for the same house/neighborhood.

When values/prices were climbing 10-25% a year, no one cared. Now in a flat market a 9K tax bill, plus other costs is making renting look really smart.

The older condos do fall victim to "special assessments" to pay for capital improvements. Newer condos suffer from reserve shortages (not enough money in the reserves to cover emergencies/insurance rate increases etc). Oceanfront or even close has issues with rebar failure due to salt corrosion. Rebuilding balconies gets real pricey. Oceanfront building in Jupiter (roughly a 20-25 year old building) just spent over 4mm on rebuilding rotted balconies. Owners had to move out of the condos, took over a year and special assessments ran into hundreds of thousands per unit. Add in a worker jobsite fatality and it really went down hill! Condos then dipped in value to the point the owners struggled to recover their special assessment fees nevermind make a profit.

thanks for the info. i'm seeing alot of stuff that is CHEAP, so figured there would be some sort of property tax/HOA fee issues.

so don't anyone laugh, but how is it that there are seemingly hundreds of condos for sale at less the 100k??

i see dozens in the North Miami area in 8-10 story buildings for 75k and less??? I'm online right now looking at 2 that are on the river with community boating rights for less than 60k. Am I missing something???

I sent it to you.. let me know if you cant get it

Here is the # for your South Florida real estate connection

Greg just sold a waterfront property to a family member from N.J. & I must say he made the process a pleasure.

954-732-9020

Those price are in the ghetto....There are parts of Miami,North Miami, Miami beach that are in the water but in the ghetto...just get ahold of Greg and you'll be good

thx guys. appreciate the input. will give greg a call.

Shhhh.....that is the typical FL real estate scam don't give away the secrets! :D Railroad tracks, ghetto, under a runway, swampland nah, just show the "good pictures" to the out of towners!

Things are pretty bad down there My Dad who passed last year had a condo in an older 55 plus development.He paid
55k for it in 91.His wife just sold it for 54k.

Probably right on 135th Street? It can't be that bad, that's where LipShip is. :D You have to check 'em all out; some are decent, some aren't. But they're all pretty much old which means costs will only go up. And like Jupiter says, the monthly maint. keeps a cap on the value. The thing about condo taxes for "homesteaded property", with a $50k exemption you pay squat for a $100k condo.

My dad bought a 1BR in hallandale that just happened to have tons of dock space and a park. So clueless they don't even know how to charge for the space. Paid $30k 15yrs ago, went up to $150k at the peak, and now probably back to $30k. Stupid low monthly pmt and taxes, and he gets free dock space (until they eventually figure it out.) And he stays at his GF's house most of the time... :evilb:

You did well, surprised you got that much in an over 55.

It was nice just older with a golf course in Jupiter.Went on zillow the other night thing was worth 195k at the high point.
I was totally out of it his wife dealt with it

Just fly down to FLL and check any moving garbage can.....

Ahhh the good old days!

garbage can man was steve

Ok but they were so close!

what's the deal with NW North River Drive and NW Sout River Drive in North Miami? The area I am looking at is near Sewel Park and is near the the NW 17th Ave bridge...is that the ghetto?

ohh yea anything west of biscayne all the to nw 42 ave (Le Jeune ) is the GHETTO...not where you want to be in Miami

Those are on the Miami River. That's not "North Miami" the city. Some of it may be within the city limits of "Miami". BIG difference. Think Little Havana/Hialeah/Opa Locka for stuff on the Miami River.

Have to check out zip 33181 and see what those are like on the canals.

Sean and I spoke. Thanks for all the referrals.

I will keep him out of the ghetto. And I won't let him buy just to sell him something. He is a member. That's more than a friend to me.

Greg

And thanks for info you all gave him Makes my job easier.

If you guys would like to do a pro/con list for each of my clients and email them about any questions I'll just run my biz like OSO. From the BEACH. :grinser010:

From today's paper:

Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties boast more than 5,400 townhouses and condominiums and 600 single-family homes for sale at $50,000 or less, according to a report Friday from CondoVultures.com.
Broward leads the pack with 2,400 properties. So far this year, buyers have scooped up roughly 7,000 homes at below $50,000 across South Florida, CondoVultures said. More than half of the sales were in Broward.
At the peak of the real estate bubble, parking spaces in new condominium towers were sold at prices that today can purchase homes," Peter Zalewski, principal with the Bal Harbour-based real estate consulting firm, said in a statement.

So how would you guys characterize the housing mkt in the Miami area. Still falling, stabalized, or rising slightly? Is there a difference in how the confo vs single family mkt is fairing?

Robert, I'll contact you after the experts answer your questions. Just send me the check. LOL.

Market bottom - "the point of maximum pessimism"

Are we there yet?

Tough to say from the sales I have seen in Palm Beach County. I have seen perfect 3MM houses sell 500K under property appraisers value and I have seen McMansions sell 300K over county values. Seems prices have been reset to early 2000-01 levels in most areas. I have a buddy that bought in Pompano (great house, very fair area) and he bought it for 170K two years ago, bank was into it for 350K. House was totally remodeled inside, outside was all original 1960s. It seemed to be a case of buying at the bottom 2 years ago. The county just valued it at 120K.......ouch!:eek:

As said earlier, condos can be really cheap but the monthly maintenance fees can be brutal like as in the same size as the mortgage payment!

Hey Greg, are you still seeing bottom buyers like you were a year ago for the single family homes or are the sales drying up?

No, there are still "deals" out there. There are, however, less and less of those in "A" locations.

We may see a small remaining decline. However, my recent buyers have decided they will not be selling in the short term so they are jumping now to get the best choice they can. A 2-3% drop after they buy means nothing if not selling in short term and may cost you the perfect property.

My commercial clients are doing the same.

Greg, what have you been up to, haven't talked to you in a while. REOmac conference is coming up in October, if you are still dealing with bank REO properties, lots of good networking with lenders there.

What's up Rick?

I may try to make it. Oct is busy though. Then Key West.

Give me a call sometime. Like a perspective from the weird coast.