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The average square foot price for the five Condos listed above that sold in February is $168.
Only $43 to go so I may very well be wrong on the avearge square foot price depreciating to $125 by 2011 for it could very well happen in 2010.
The Ace; fair, balanced and unafraid for over six years.
I would advise that Bill Wong and Ace get a room… so much love is in the air. The Ace may not spread the knowledge – since he has none – but if Bill Wong is persistent, may spread something else. But then again, there are plenty of signs that the Ace and Bill Wong and Renter Tom and Wild Bill are most likely the one and the same person, only in different incarnations – each with its own degree of idiocy.
something funny i heard today and which is relevant to the above sales…paramount bay is lowering their prices to the low 400s (sq/ft). when i asked the sales person how they could justify that…i got the usual, “there is no building like ours in this area” nonsense. when will these dumbf$%ks (and no, i’m not talking about the sales people – they’re just the developers/lenders’ lackey) realize that price, which drives financing, is the ultimate issue? if i can buy something down the street at 1800 for sub 200 sq ft these days, i’ll sleep well at night notwithstanding the fact i have an inferior pool or gym compared to PB.
regardless, i recently closed on my purchase. now the construction begins. let’s be clear -the real racket is trying to get these dickhead city officials to get off their asses and give me the necessary permits.
Ok, so the Ace is not only Renter Tom, Wild Bill and Bill Wong, but the Tire Kicker too. Keep it up)))
Wow, folks are losing big $ at 1800 Club with those latest comps.
jcrimes, congrats on your purchase. Exquisite timing.
Enzo, nobody is losing or making anything on comps. On September 3, 2009 , unit 3715 was sold in that building for $170/sq ft. Then, ONE DAY LATER , UNIT 1608 was let go for $241/sq ft.
A moron like you would say that on September 3, 2009, everybody in that building lost a lot of money, and a day later they all got rich again.
See how stupid you are ? Never mind, probably not…
OhMy (AJ?), Nobody cares what happened back in ancient Sept 03, 2009. What’s relevant is the latest comps, which are dropping more than rapper’s pants. When any buyer tries to get a mortgage, the appraiser has to go for the latest comps…not ancient 2009. You must be losing a lot of money. Sucker…we told you so.
Enzo, why keep on being a total moron? Do they pay you for beingan idiot? Tell me, what happens if tomorrow a unit in that building gets sold for $250/sq ft? If today folks had lost money, will they make money when that happens?
Bill Wong (Ace), ummm…. take a hike, troll.
Is this the start of more distress sales to come??? Glad I’m still helping my Landlord with his mortgage and Hoa’s.
OhMy, “Tell me, what happens if tomorrow a unit in that building gets sold for $250/sq ft? If today folks had lost money, will they make money when that happens?”
Yes AJ, let’s hope for tomorrow or stick to ancient Sept 03, 2009. Never mind all the prices dropping today and last week. Better buy now for unrealistic fluff or you will be priced out tomorrow….hmmm, where have I heard that before?
If the current pace of distressed sales is only around 40 units per month, it seems like Miami’s market is nowhere near the bottom.
Enzo, pretty slick way not to answer the question. Still your wiesel skills don’t change the fact that you have no clue of what you are talking about.
Are you sure nothing was sold in Club 1800 at higher price per sq ft since February 25?
Bill Wong, you still here?…is TiredLicker sitting by your side?… and Renter Sam(Tom) si making you lunch? LOL. Your idiocy is so amusing…
Wow 174 / sf…and the floor isn’t that low either. Scary. Regression to the mean is a beatch when you get caught on the wrong side, isn’t it? 1800’s folks should go back to their Quicken to adjust that net worth (if any) wayyyyy down.
Nothing but headlines in the last few days about states and cities laying off workers. Jackson Health has just announced closing of two hospitals and up to 4,800 local layoffs eminent. When you see the supposedly “safe” jobs getting hit hard like that, you know prices have nowhere to go but down. Add higher rates which ALWAYS bring prices down, as the Fed’s done with 99% of MBS purchases.
Joe, do you know the exact number of short sales and foreclosures in Downtown Miami area still pending, or you are just expressing your otherwise completely worthless opinion?
If you know the number, don’t hesitate to provide a link to latest data. If not, join Bill Wong and TiredLicker in the sauna…
Enzo, the real beatch in life is when you miss real estate bottom, don’t know about it, realize what an idiot you are when it’s way too late, and then have to wait for another 15 years for the next collapse..which you’ll sit out as well…. Yeah, that sucks pretty bad.
OhMy, I don’t know what’s going to happen in 15 years. All I know is that folks who have waited to buy an unit at 1800 are picking at the bones now. $150 / sf doesn’t seem too far-fetched if you look at current events. Wow, $174 / sf and dropping fast. Scary stuff for people who rushed to buy there too early. You got screwed! Not only that, I know a guy who paid $270k for his unit at Cité. Now it’s being sold for $110k. Poof, $160 k gone in a few years. Imagine the loss at 1800. Talk about a haircut.
OhMy, are the Realtards (R) out in full force today! Wow!
Hurry, condos are going fast! Only three units left! Bargains, bargains, bargains! This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the luxury Miami lifestyle you deserve! Hurry up and sign the contracts, you fools! Time is running out!!!
..I am very interested in living downtown…researched the prices..offered $270k for a 2 bedroom in Met 1 last week on the 23rd floor. The developer countered with $389k. they haven’t sold a unit there in 3 months. I don’t understand?
This is my first time that I have written in to this blog ever (today) I find it can be very informative and at times very amusing. I am a renter and very happy today that I am a renter. I don’t know what OhMy’s problem is??? Maybe he LOST a lot of money in housing???? But he dosen’t have to be so rude with everyone that voices an opinion on here.Good luck to everybody reading this blog. Renter Sam (NOT TOM)!!!!!
Bill,
Did you like the units at Met 1? When I went I thought the finishes were horrible and the doors felt like cardboard. It was a shame because I really liked the location and views.
Bill – At Met One – what was the square footage and what was the view west? or East? wayerview or city view?
Btw – Don’t purchase a condo on Miami Beach with an ocean view – unless you don’t mind effin noisy airplanes buzzing up and down and back and forth the beach alll effin day long with banner advertisements to buy the coooolest new Vodka or an invite to the latest new hot club in town.
$389k for a 2/2 at met1 is a joke. that unit will stay on the market for a decade at that price.
The developer dumped a bunch of 2/2s in December for $250k or so in a bulk buy. Guess no one told the sales office…
“1800 Club #1811 – 1 bedroom/1.5 bath (1,095 square feet) – This unit sold for $190,000, or $174 per square foot, on February 25, 2010. Short Sale ”
.—> below is a list for 1800 club recent sales from http://www.condreports.com for the month of feb 2010.
—-> Selling at 1800 club for $174 per sf is not tpyical, since these sold in feb 2010 for alot more then $174 per sqaure foot.
02/10 – #3002 – 1 1 – 643sf $195,000 – $303 per sf
02/10 – 2606 1 1 – 629 $185,000 – $294 per sf
02/10 – 2306 1 1 -629 $153,000 – $243 per sf
02/10 – 2007 2 2- 934 $400,000 – $428 per sf
02/10 – 2615 2 2 -1384 $353,000 – $255 per sf
02/10 – 2212 2 2 -1051 $304,000 – $289 per sf
02/10 -1501 3 3 -2189 $608,000 – 278
Been following Met1 for a while. It’s one of the buildings I would consider buying. I really like the location, since it can give you both downtown (when more businesses arrive) and Brickell in one easy walk. And I do like the river view with cityscapes. but the prices are indeed way too high for this building. Like Bill, I value the 2B units at around $250k (just like many other new 2B in the Brickell/Downtown area) but the banks/developers still seem to value them at over $350k. If they can find the buyers, great. Just not looking to dump $350k on 1100 sq ft of space which is replicated thousands of times-and more will come online since empty lots still exist. For $350k I can buy a single family home in more desirable locations such as coral gables, coconut grove, etc.
Met One – If the bulk buyer paid on average $250. per sq ft. at Met One for a bunch of units – why would he turn around and sell them at break even? Cost to build is probably 250-300 per sq ft.
Gables – You can’t buy any decent SF in the Grove or Coral Gables for $350,000. Unless maybe its the West Grove or Little Coral Gables up near Eighth Street.
Kramer — No one said anything about the bulk buyer reselling at a break-even price.
Kramer, I dont mean the mansions. But there are quite a few SFH which have sold sub $400k in the past couple of years. they are not extremely large, typically 2 bedroom with one bath (permits seem to make it difficult to expand number of bathrooms). but quite comparable to the 2B condos available today. obviously you cannot compare a 3,000 sq ft estate in the gables to an 1100 sq ft condo in brickell. but many older, smaller cottages still exist. kicker is you get the land to boot!
Owner@infnity – Understand your point on normal sales $ psf but I now get Aces prediction. See the title of this article and his reference point… it’s $125 psf on “distressed – foreclosed and short sales” with a good % of them being the lessor or poorly located units in each building. As more of them hit the market then yes we will see a continued erosion with this class of sale, but it will have a continued drag on normal market.
Ace,
Any thoughts comments on Sunny Isles and aventura?
My goodness…the full moon certainly brought out the freaks at night. Clam down people, there’s nothing to get sooo excited about.
Lucas seems to keep posting some very weird sales as the best ones. Who sincerely wants to live in any of these dumps?
Carlos — I wouldn’t call these places “dumps,” but the fact that the so-called “top sales” are all a bunch of 1-bedroom condos does seem like an interesting topic — i.e., does it mean the Miami market is stronger than we’ve thought, or simply more stagnant than we’ve thought, or does Lucas just have an odd definition of what makes for a good deal?
DM,
You said,
Owner@infnity – Understand your point on normal sales $ psf but I now get Aces prediction. See the title of this article and his reference point… it’s $125 psf on “distressed – foreclosed and short sales” with a good % of them being the lessor or poorly located units in each building. As more of them hit the market then yes we will see a continued erosion with this class of sale, but it will have a continued drag on normal market.
—–> Just FYI until ACE provides us with more information (like the name of building) on where he got the $97 per foot bulk sale in, I am disregarding everything that ACE (and his many many aliases) says on this blog.
—–> In my eyes he is just unneeded noise at this blog and until he provides verifiable facts (like I did on my deal and on my building) ACE will remain just noise.
—–> We need more facts and less noise on this blog. Facts are what buyers need to help them in selecting a condo to buy. The more facts a buyer has the better decision the buyer can make.
Joe
dump might have been a strong word, but if you go visit these buildings you will see how run down and poorly managed they are. Not to mention the types of neighbors you get in a place like that.
We have already made several points about this using MB as an example. For me regardless of cool a building may look from the outside or the great views it may offer ( eg MB ) they are not worth any money if you have to live with people who seem to have moved out of the ghetto and treat other people’s property as such. I would not even be interested if they were 50 usd sqft.
I guess for them MB and all these buildings are fantastic. For me it is the same as living in a vertical overtown. Especially considering the area and neighbors.. Gunshots, hobos and Florida crew!!
Any opinions on Museum Park 10 as to building and price?
Jake
As far as I know the prices in TMP keep coming down. Hoa is very high. Suitable for people who like lofts. Unless it is a unit facing east it is not worth looking at. Don’t see a point in purchasing a condo with problems, especially the ones located in hoboland. Traffic in the area has become a major issue as well.
The Ace:
I am very much interested in buying a 2B apartment in Brickell Key, what is your opinion on current prices and any projections?
Many thanks in advance.
the reason the 1B keep appearing in the best deals columns is probably because 1) there are alot of 1B units (square footage is nearly 1:2 compared to 2B units) and 2) if you are to take a 30% shave on your unit, that hit is less on a 1B than a 2B.
The majority of 2B seem to be behind in price compared to 1B-we have noted this many times in this blog. 2B prices have not fallen as much-but i still think they will fall like the 1B. It will just take longer for banks/investors to figure out how to digest a $200k loss on a 2B rather than a $100k loss on a 1B. This appears to be a psychological issue in the investment world.
Carlos, you seem to be opposed to all condos in the greater Miami area. Is there a building or location which could please you? Even if the condo were given to you free of charge? Most of the bears on here have issues with the prices, but most folks have their eye on a range of units to buy at the right price. You appear to be anti-condo-so why bother commenting on such a blog as this?
Gables
I
u get me completely wrong. I am just not biased by bs. My judgement on downtown is not empyrical but based on observation and comments from friends who regret having moved into the area.
I live in a real luxurious building in sofi and not a faux one like the ones who keep trying to push an unexisting luxury with people who destroy condos they don’t own and sleep on mattresses on the floor. Just go visit these places and you will see what I mean.
jcrimes said: “regardless, i recently closed on my purchase. now the construction begins. let’s be clear -the real racket is trying to get these dickhead city officials to get off their asses and give me the necessary permits.”
– Hey what did you buy, a new decorator ready condo, an older condo that needs remodeling, a SFH, what??? Best wishes!
Have been touring the Marquis and starting pricing are all in $250-260’s p/ft official opening scheduled for march 18th with only 290 units and the quality a finishes buidling definitely stands out(over 30 already sold) .
Smallest unit loft 1bed/2 full bath +den 1657 sq ft living space and got financing in-house .
Here you go -they were %80 presold at $600-800 per foot a few years ago…
Now it is in hands of ISTAR and Africa Israel and will see how it goes…wont be surprised if they will slightly raise the prices if sales are gonna be really brisk after opening.
drerossin
Marquis is really nice but it appeals to a very specific type of buyer.
Location next to the highway and right next to TMP makes it not so attractive in the original pricepoint.
The building is really nice though.
Replies to Post #’s 38,42, 44 & 46 and anyone else thinking of buying a Condo:
I’m not a realtor nor do I use realtors but if you are interested in buying I suggest you contact Lucas. I will however provide to you some facts to help you make an informed decision. As to the details of acquisitions made by my associated and I, they are and will remain contractually confidential. Besides the US and Global ongoing recession resulting in massive unemployment, massive tax increases etc; here are some facts more pertinent to Miami. You be the Judge.
Robert Cooper says he has found a way to make money in South Florida’s real estate bust. Cooper, an attorney in Aventura, Florida, sues for refunds on deposits in the nation’s largest condominium market. In the last two years, he filed lawsuits for about 1,500 buyers against companies and individuals including the Related Group of Florida, Dezer Development LLC, Corus Bankshares Inc., Donald Trump. Fueling the litigation is a price crash that makes buyers unwilling to pour more money into bad investments — even if they can get financing. Condos on which they made deposits of up to $1,000 a square foot in 2006 are now selling for $125 to $250 a foot, said Jack McCabe, a real estate consultant in Deerfield Beach, Florida.
“If you’re thinking you can come here and buy and sell condos for a profit in less than ten years, you’re sadly mistaken,” said McCabe, whose clients have included Credit Suisse Group AG and Pulte Homes Inc., the largest U.S. homebuilder. “You need a – 10 to 15-year range.” Prices could fall to $100 a foot, less than half the cost of construction, and a value not seen in 20 years, he said. In Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties, there are more than 63,000 condos and townhouses on the market, almost 1-1/2 times the number of single-family homes, according to Condo Vultures LLC, a Bal Harbour real estate brokerage. In downtown Miami, more than 12,000 condos stand vacant and unsold, relics of a building binge that added 33,000 condos from 2003 to 2008, said Peter Zalewski, principal of Condo Vultures.
Over the past 12 months, condo prices fell 15 percent in the West Palm Beach-Boca Raton area to a median of $112,200, 36 percent in Fort Lauderdale to $85,100 and 31 percent in Miami to $144,700, according to Florida Association of Realtors data. Those prices are likely to fall more when the $1 billion portfolio of South Florida condos financed by Corus Bankshares, the Chicago lender seized by federal regulators, goes on the market, Zalewski said. Investors led by Starwood Capital Group LLC won a bid for Corus’s loans. Two-thirds of the 3,537 condo units Corus financed in downtown Miami are unsold and unoccupied, Zalewski said.
“Why on earth would they create more cutthroat competition when they’re in such a good position with the federal government?” said Werley, who co-wrote a study on the condo glut for the Miami Downtown Development Authority. For Cooper, fighting over the spoils is a full-time job. Cooper said he has reached out-of-court settlements in disputes over 500 deposits, recovering about half of his clients’ money. He won’t say how much the refunds total or how much he has earned in contingency fees, which are usually about one-third of the recovery amount.
“There’s no recession in the real estate litigation community,” said Cooper, 46. The global recession, the credit crisis and tighter bank lending put an end to Miami’s condo growth.
The Ace; fair, balanced and unafraid for over six years.
Awesome report Ace!
drerossin – Marquis @ $250. per sq ft??? What you been smoking?
RT
Not a condo…other than a few select buildings, I wouldn’t touch them in this market. The HOA issues would scare the hell out of me. Bought a home.
ACE….you certainly look like you are doing your homework.I don’t understand why there are some fellow bloggers on here that are repeatadly snubbing and condeming you.Thank you for your well researched opinions.Your opinions of what prices are and will be next year are totally your busisness.I think a lot of them have OVERPAID are don’t want to hear the TRUTH!!!! Thank you “ACE.”
Looks like the charade of the Ace congratulating himself – this time as Renter Sam – is still in full bloom…poor, persecuted, misunderstood genius the Ace has groopies, in himself…ROFLMAO.
Ace, you moron, after looking all over the Internet, all you could come up with was the Bloomberg article from October, 2009? LOL.
See, folks, that’s what I have told you. The Ace is the stupidest idiot you can possibly find within 50 miles radius of downtown Miami. It’s now official, take it to the bank. There is hardly anyone who knows less about real estate…
Prices in Miami are rising for the 4th month in a row, but baffoons like the Ace (aka Renter Tom, TiredLicker, SnowBird, Renter Sam, Wild Bill, Bill Wong, etc.) are utterly clueless, to the point of being self-delusional.
At some point it will stop being funny and become tragic, but I guess we are not quite there yet. And so I laugh…
OhMy…….You should be ashamed of yourself!!!!What right do do have calling this a Charade? YOU are a BIG JOKE!!!!! your probably a jealous uninformed BROKER…and I mean a BROKER as in don’t have a dime to your name…own NOTHING and NEVER will.You should listen to those in the know.I have NO IDEA who “THE ACE” is and probably never will.BUT I do respect his comments………….NOT YOURS!!!!! GET LOST LOW LIFE SCUMBAG!!!!!!
AJ….LOOK whose talking about a CHARADE. All you probably are is a local DJ in a SKANKY BAR. hahHah hahahah
Sammy the Ace, yeah, I’m so jealous of an idiots like you, I can hardly contain myself from laughing….You are the Ace – that’s a 100% certainty. Whatever you say doesn’t matter.
THANK YOU AJ or whoever you are BROKER!!!! hahahahahahahahahahahahah
Ace/Renter Sam, is it hard being an absoulute moron? How are you surviving in this cruel world without a brain? Questions like that always fascinated me… can you tell me about your life experiences? Are you always stupid or only few hours a day?
jcrimes…CONGRATS! I have been sorta going back and forth thinking perhaps a SFH may be the way to go instead of a condo. What area did you buy in?
Does anyone have any news reports of real estate agents committing suicide recently?
Jcrimes
Like the maitre d at Joe’s it’s best to “tip” the inspector whether looking for quicker service or the best seat in the house.
Could we pls keep this an interesting and respectful blog.
Stop with this bullshit (comments 57 – 64) and act like profesionals!
Thanks for including Renter Tom, “OG”. His comment was completely unprofessional.
Ace, thank you for a most intelligent and insightful post. I thought we were at the bottom but after having read your research clearly we have a ways to go so I am putting off buying until 2011 in the belief that your $125 forecast may well come true a. Which by the way is looking more and more likely as a lot of recent buyers believing that we had hit bottom have ended up catching falling knives instead a.
RT miami beach area. although there are certain benefits to a condo, it’s going to take years before any of these buildings are back to normal
Both funny and sick at the same time…only in South Florida? A bimbo and a “billionaire”. LOL
sun-sentinel.com/news/broward/rothstein/fl-kim-rothstein-spending-20100304,0,7951762.story
….oh and she was a Realtard®. Figures.
RE;Marquis, Kramer you can buy a 3BDRM on a lower floor today that has 2300 square feet for $599,000 ($260 psf) as an example……………Building and hotel are both gorgeous, and the residents so far are true owners as flippers were blown out of the original contracts…….. the neighborhood is going to take some time to get to where it needs to be, but we have a small dog and have walked him every day for the past couple weeks here with no problem……If any of you are interested in Marquis please see Harvey at the sales center and tell him Darryl from the 60th floor sent you to get a screaming deal.
although the article tries to make it sound like a king’s ransom, kim’s spending wasn’t that impressive or prolific. $250k over a two year period is a drop in the bucket considering the sums that rothstein was stealing.
Guys,
Gotta question over here. Attorney presented an assignable agreement for my condo. They put down a name of non existent RE in order to collectet fee from me. what do I do? How should I approach it with the attorney? They are doing something very very fishyyyy…pleeeeease help
lost deposit
“They put down a name of non existent RE in order to collectet fee from me.”
– I have no idea what this means. Please explain a little better.
jcrimes
I too have a problem with that article about Kim Rothstein. If she in fact thought that her husband’s wealth was legitimate (which she has claimed), then what is the problem with spending that kind of cash on shopping etc. Legitimate very wealthy people spend similar amounts with nobody questioning their purchases….so if Kim believed that her husband’s money was legit (or, more likely, if she was ignorant to the source of the money), then what’s the significance of her spending boatloads of cash on shoes?
She has received alot of bad press but I think its unjustified. She was your typical trophy wife who didn’t ask any questions. And if she did, I’m sure she was lied to by Scott Rothstein. So in the end, what’s her liability in the Ponzi? In my opinion, nothing.
Now that Ace and his many alter egos have spoken can we now get back to actual facts. Since Ace likes to post old articles quoting Peter Zalewski I thought I’d post a more recent one:
http://www.condovultures.com/en/home/4880-under-250000-condos-flood-south-florida-market-.html
“The challenge for many buyers is the under-$250,000 properties are increasingly located west of Interstate 95 in the suburban areas of South Florida. Prices east of Interstate 95 in the coastal areas have continuously crept up as buyers have associated the proximity of water with quality.”
Now let’s take a look at the average price per sq ft for condos in Miami-Dade. Now Ace seems to suggest that HIGH END condos will sell at $125 sq ft. So surely the average should be much lower, after all the average condo in Miami can’t be high end can it?
Oct 08 $227
Nov 08 $224
Dec 08 $218
Jan 09 $219
Feb 09 $188
Mar 09 $193
Apr 09 $176
May 09 $197
Jun 09 $199
Jul 09 $189
Aug 09 $190
Sep 09 $201
Oct 09 $192
Nov 09 $188
Dec 09 $206
If you break this down into quarters you get:
4ht quarter 08 $223
1st quarter 09 $200
2nd quarter 09 $190
3rd quarter 09 $193
4th quarter 09 $195
The average price per square foot bottomed in the second quarter of 09. You can post a million predictions that this average price per square foot is going to go down and I’m not saying it won’t go down some. But for the last year prices have not only held but slightly increased. I don’t see how you’re going to get the HIGH END condo average to drop to $125. You’d need at least a 60% drop from Dec 09 prices for the average condo price to drop to $125. So for high end you’re talking around an 80% drop on top of the current 47% drop!
Also keep in mind that while the average price per square foot is currently around $200 this is happening when 75% of the sales are coming from the $250 market. Even if prices drop significantly in upper market segments this still isn’t going to greatly lower the average.
To be clear I’m not arguing that prices are increasing substantially. I’m just pointing out that its easy to focus in on a couple sales and get a false sense of where things are. In the $250k and below market prices fell a while ago. The sales are just catching up to those prices. And as sales have picked up prices have inched up slightly.
Here is another quote from Zalewski:
“The irony is, many of the primary users who are looking to take advantage of the downturn in the under-$250,000 price range are struggling to obtain financing to close their deals,” Zalewski said. “As many people know, financing a residence in South Florida is a real challenge in today’s market, hence the high concentration of lower-priced resales available in South Florida.”
“The struggles of the primary users to secure their own homes is spurring a growing wave of all-cash investors who are buying up places cheap and immediately renting out their newly acquired residences for more than the monthly expense.”
The floor to this market has pretty much been set and it has been done so by rent prices. You may not think the unit at Brickell on the River North is worth $138k, but as gables pointed out its at about the price that rent would cover expenses. So your option is either to buy the place at around $138k or rent it at $1350. Either way the price isn’t going much lower. Now it probably won’t go higher in the short term either, so I agree there is no rush to run out and buy.
Can someone please ban Ace and whatever IP he is using to post 50 comments under 10 different aliases?
I mean WTF man, you can’t even scroll through these comments to pick out the one or two posts that might actually be relevant.
I feel like I’m reading a thread from some pre-teens facebook page right now.
I am afraid to post anything as I would be accused of being the Ace or a Realtard. Can’t we discuss the housing market a bit more civilized.
Lots of good stories even if they are a bit old. If we can’t trust news stories with real data from a few months ago, how can we trust comparable data from a few months ago.
Regarding the comments about Met1. I live in Met1 and it is a decent building. A lot of renters as of the last 6 months and a few more problems as a result. The developer has been renting out many units, but I do know that the developer (and the associated company MDM – not EWM) believe that the market has significantly improved in the last year and things are only going up. The onsite realtors seem to be a bit more realistic in what things are worth, but they can only advice the developer. I am not sure how the developer thinks the market is doing much better when they sell ~80 units off in a bulk sale last year. It sucks to be bleeding money and if the market was doing well these bulk sales would not be happening every other week around Miami.
lost deposit:
Need more facts.
What is the purpose of the assignment? What does “RE” mean (entity?, agent?)as you are using it in your post? Who does the attorney represent? (If it is your attorney, he or she should have explained all of this to you – – and if he or she did not explain it or you do not understand it, DON’T SIGN IT.) What are the terms of the assignment? Is this a form document or does it look like the attorney took the time to draft it himselft/herself? – – I hate the Florida form documents that float about in many of these transactions.
What is the purpose of the transaction?
scriv
Elvis,
The problem with Ace and his many alter egos is that they aren’t posting any real data. He’s cherry picking parts of what people say that support his crazy conclusion. For example he posts and old quote from Peter Zalewski, yet Zalewski clearly indicated in an article on March 4th that prices in the $250k and under market have inched up.
There is a difference between quoting an old article with someones OPINION and quoting actual sales numbers. Again from my previous post (#76) the actual average price per square foot has increased since about April 09. Regardless of where you think the market is heading these are the facts of where the market is now.
People seem to focus on the extreme opinions and somehow ignore the actual facts. During the boom the actual sales showed the market was heading lower before everyone realized it. But everyone was to busy reading the OPINIONS of so called experts and ignoring these facts.
For example, most of the metrics used to gauge the market bottomed around April ’09. However most articles seem to focus on year over year declines and an anticipated future drop. Well if you only look at year over year trends then you’re only going to find out when the market turns a year late. Of course Jan ’10 numbers are lower than Jan ’09. The market was still dropping Jan ’09. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that soon as we hit April ’10 the year over year declines are going to stop since we know April ’09 is when the numbers bottomed.
But forecasting that the market will probably stay flat for a while isn’t exciting and doesn’t sell newspapers or increase internet traffic. So instead people continue to quote year over year price declines so the people hoping the market will continue dropping will keep coming to the site to get their reassurance fix for the week.
An article from CNN money was posted that used forecasting from Mark Zandi, Fiserv and Moody’s.com that forecasted a 30% drop by September 30th. This article was posted online February 25th. Here is a quote:
“In a broader sense, home prices are ultimately decided by employment. “If [the job market] improvement is stronger than expected, prices will get better. If it’s weaker than expected, prices will be worse,” Zandi said.”
Here is another quote from a Moody’s employee commenting on the forecast specifically for Miami:
“Chris Lafakis of Moody’s Economy.com said a backlog of foreclosures, the specter of higher interest rates and the expiration of the tax credit for first-time home buyers COULD send South Florida housing prices into a swoon again this year. Lafakis said he expects prices to drop another 30 percent before stabilizing in the fourth quarter of 2010. However, if the sales data “comes in a little bit stronger in the last two months of 2009, we could revise that forecast upward,” he said. ”
So here they’re able to make the statement that prices will drop 30% to draw the big headlines but then back track and qualify the forecast so that it could basically be anywhere between 1% and 30% depending on sales data, unemployment, etc.
Now fast forward to now and we know for a fact that Nov and Dec sales data were indeed strong. And economist are slowly behind the scenes revising estimates about unemployment. Look at recent articles on CNN about unemployment and you can now see quotes like this:
“The jobs numbers themselves show a pretty steady improvement across most categories,” said Bob Brusca, economist at FAO Economics. “Through the blizzard of jobs data, it’s a lot easier to connect the dots to a positive story than to a negative story.”
So let’s get away from the predictions and look at actual sales. Here is the median sales price for condos for the last 5 quarters:
Oct 08 $197k
Nov 08 $173k
Dec 08 $176k
Jan 09 $149k
Feb 09 $146k
Mar 09 $151k
Apr 09 $133k
May 09 $140
Jun 09 $141k
Jul 09 $137k
Aug 09 $144k
Sep 09 $133k
Oct 09 $138k
Nov 09 $149k
Dec 09 $148k
Jan 10 $141
If we break this down into quarters we get:
4th quarter 08 $182k
1st quarter 09 $149k
2nd quarter 09 $138k
3rd quarter 09 $138k
4th quarter 09 $145k
So again we have prices bottoming around the second quarter of 09 and slight improvement in the 4th quarter.
Of course no one wants to hear this information. The people who are underwater are still underwater. They know what price they need to be at to sell they just cant afford it. So they don’t want to read about it every day. And the doom and gloom people don’t want to hear it either because they’re secretly hoping prices will keep dropping so they can afford more. So instead the headlines are filled with forecast about another 30% drop by September. And people are believing this stuff in March 2010 even though the prediction was made in fall 2009 and prices have increased since then along with the criteria used to make the forecast.
I’ve posted information like this before. Neither the Ace or anyone who shares his views disputes it. It’s simply ignored as they continue to spit out “$125, are we there yet” followed by another old prediction and zero sales facts to support it. Instead of using the actual sales price per square foot for all Miami-Dade condos he actually uses the average of the 5 sales that Lucas uses in this thread for the “top 5 distressed condo sales closed in February”. Of course the average of 5 properties below the average will also be below the average! And even this only gets him to $168 per square foot. Then he has the audacity to say were only $43 away from $125. So the people agreeing with him either have to be him as well or be complete morons. Outside of making yourself feel better because you can’t afford anything, I can’t think of any reason why people would blatantly ignore the fact the average price per square foot is in the $190’s while going around trying to convince themselves it’s in the $160’s and headed to $125.
Gixxer 1000 — I can see the logic behind your latest comment/analysis, but I still believe you’re underestimating the huge number of condos that are currently being rented by investors and developers who originally planned to simply flip the units. A very large number of these units are likely to be coming back onto the market as rental agreements expire over the next 6-12 months.
There might be a few good investment opportunities now, but as we’ve seen from the long AJ/1800 Club debates and whatnot, there are a huge number of people who are getting their rents subsidized by the owners of their units. I have a hard time believing this will continue for many more years on end.
Gixxer 1000 — Just so we’re clear, my last comment (#81) was in re: your comment #78, and not to your more strident comment #80.
Perhaps someone can correct me, but I’m not sure your rising-prices theory really holds water at this point, at least not if it’s prefaced on 4th-quarter sales data. I’ve always thought Q4 sales were the best in Miami, since that’s “season” in Miami. No one moves to Miami when it’s 110 degrees in July; the action is in the winter time, when Miami is more attractive than NYC and Boston and Chicago.
thanks @Gixxer for the info. How do you think the $8K home buyers credit factor into the sales numbers? I know these are median prices, but the values are <$150K. I know a lot of condo buildings don't have many available units for sale <$250K, and houses of reasonable size/quality/location are next to impossible to find for <$250K (for example, I used this site and looked at Marina Blue, 500 Brickell and axis; One Miami has a list of units <$250K)
While I agree that statistically we have not been dropping for 6 months, I still find it hard to see a good deal on a 2/2 condo in downtown/brickell. It also seems if the median is <$150K, then half of the sales are <$150K and even the top distressed sales that we are commenting on have 2 data points above that. It could be that I am not looking at the big picture.
One thing I just did was go to zillow.com (not 100% accurate, but as accurate as any other sites that I have found) and look for all condos for sale and sold in zip code 33131:
price, available, sold (12 months)
0-150K, 78 units, 128 units
150K-300K, 176 units, 378 units
300K-450K, 121 units, 86 units
450K+, 198 units, 113 units
It looks like the majority of condos are selling in the 150K-300K range which would put the median price higher (helping show a stronger market for condos). I could spend a bit more time and look at more details time windows and price ranges to see where the trends are heading. From the looks of it a lot of the 300K+ units need to drop in price as the sales are much less and the inventory is rather high.
That is just my take on things.
Joe,
I hope to keep the debate civil and on point this time. To be clear I have stated that I do NOT think were going to see any real price appreciation. In my post #80 I indicated that 4th quarter prices improvement was “slight”. This was simply a statement of fact by looking at sales numbers. So I’m confused as to where you are getting my “rising-prices” theory from. Whether the price increase was because of the “season” or not is irrelevant. My point is simply that prices for condos were not decreasing like they did during the ’08 “season”. Prices and sales decreased during the 4th quarter ’08, while prices and sales increased during the 4th quarter ’09. When I say I think prices will remain flat I’m assuming there will be some slight movement up and down. In the 2nd and 3rd quarter of 2009 prices were at an average of $138k. But month to month they fluctuated between $132k and $144k. That’s a difference of about 8%. It would be silly to argue the market was going up or down each month as the numbers fluctuated back and forth.
As to your argument about condos coming back onto the market as rental units expires, I really don’t see that affecting the market much. The recent purchases are being done at prices that allow investors to at least break even. If an investor purchased a year ago at an inflated price then once the lease is up he’s going to have to reevaluate and see if he can take the loss. This is no different than the other underwater homeowners. I don’t foresee a huge wave of properties coming at one specific time therefore these properties will simply add to the constant flow of inventory supply. So even as sales have increased the inventory supply will remain fairly stable. This is why I think prices will remain constant for a while instead of rising.
It will be a sort of push pull effect. As soon as prices rise a little more inventory will flow into the market to stop it from rising. But as soon as the prices reduce again so will the additional inventory flow. The same thing goes for foreclosures. The foreclosure stats should be going up, but already for Jan and Feb they have gone down. There is simply to much political pressure to let these units enter the market at the same time. They will at some point have too, but government programs like HAMP and short sale regulations like HAFA will make sure they’re done at a steady pace. I don’t want to argue whether this is right or wrong with people I’m just saying this is what is happening. I think this will continue for a couple years until all the excess inventory is eventually worked through the system. This will also mean new housing starts will be low for a couple of years.
By the way here are the numbers for single family homes:
Oct 08 $247k
Nov 08 $225k
Dec 08 $215k
Jan 09 $208k
Feb 09 $195k
Mar 09 $205k
Apr 09 $177k
May 09 $194k
Jun 09 $211k
Jul 09 $192k
Aug 09 $194k
Sep 09 $190k
Oct 09 $178k
Nov 09 $184k
Dec 09 $183k
Jan 10 $204k
Break that down into quarters and you get:
4th quarter 08 $229k
1st quarter 09 $202k
2nd quarter 09 $194k
3rd quarter 09 $192k
4th quarter 09 $182k
Jan 10 $204k
So the prices of single family homes was still dropping while condo prices were leveling off. This meant that the overall median price of all properties was going down. Most people in the mainstream media are only concerned with the median price for all properties so no one is really going to notice or care that condos were bottoming out when single family homes were still decreasing. Now its to early to tell how prices will go for the the entire 1st quarter for single family but January’s median jumped to $204k from $183k in December. If they level off I think we’ll start to see that the overall median price for all homes has leveled off already in Feb or Mar. Now we may be down 5-10% from last fall and I think that’s when that 30% drop was originally forecasted. But I just don’t see the Miami market dropping 30% by Sep, especially not from today’s prices.
I can attest that I am in no way affiliated with the ace, and or any of his crony posting names. While sometimes “his”posts had some merrit it sems that in recent times it has become banter, and just a call to end this rediculousness..I mean common people can’t we get along??
In regard to above and TMP-before you buy in look at the recent article from last months Daily Business Review, as well as the countless other articles and bloggs that have been posted in regard to TMP as well as Park Waste realities…
No matter who the ace is I do believe in his far fetched prediction from way back when..Perhaps the 125 sq/ft will be a reality as we are not that far off…I think we should have a contest-sell squares to predict which building and when prices will be $125…
Gixxer 1000 — That’s interesting re: single family homes (SFH). I’ve always thought SFH were a leading indicator vis-a-vis condo appreciation or depreciation, but there seems to be a disconnect between the trends right now.
Condo Swindler,
“No matter who the ace is I do believe in his far fetched prediction from way back when..Perhaps the 125 sq/ft will be a reality as we are not that far off…”
If you are serious can you please explain why you believe in this “far fetched prediction”. Also why do you think we are “not that far off…”
The Ace has repeatedly said he is talking about high end waterfront condos. Now I’m assuming most people reading who actually take him serious haven’t noticed that point. But let’s go ahead and talk about the average of all condos. When current prices are in the upper $190’s sq ft why would you think that we’re close to $125 sq ft when prices aren’t even currently decreasing? I could see if sales hadn’t picked up but with sales at the levels that they’re at now why would you think prices will decrease another 35-40%????
Just a quick note…
Lucas says in this posting that unit 1811 is 1,095 sq ft, when if you look at condoreports.com clearly shows that all “11” lines are 837 sq ft. Hmmm… maybe Lucas forgot that you don’t count the balcony when calculating price per square foot.
Anyways, if that unit did sell for $190K it sold at $227/square foot. I have long disregarded stupid comments like that of the ace, but now im starting to even doubt lucas’ credibility.
But just for fun, lets assume the buyer of 1811 did pay $174/foot. Considering there have been 12 closings this year in 1800 club at an average price of over $300/foot, that buyer could sell that condo for 20% less than what everyone else is buying at and still make a nice profit. It may not sell in a week, but from an investment standpoint those numbers look very attractive to me.
Bottom line is there is money to be made in todays down market. Those bears that sit on this site all day fighting back and forth are obviously not doing so.
Joe,
I think the reason is that right now all the sales are in the $250k and below market. About 55% of condos are in this market compared to 40% of single family homes. Also I think a a higher percentage of condos were bought buy investors whereas a lot more people in single family homes used the price appreciation as an ATM . When you put these things together it makes it easier for condos to simply take the price reduction and move back into the market.
Look at it this way. The floor of the market is at some preset point, we just don’t know where it is until we get there. It’s sort of like a reverse auction. We just don’t know what everyone else is going to bid. I think because of the reasons I listed above condos were able to get to that point quicker.
ELVIS……I don’t think there is anyone on this Blog other than OhMy AKA AJ and maybe a couple of alias’s he uses.. that is giving any problem on here.I really don’t think ACE and any other alias’s he uses on here presents any problem on here.He is simply expressing his opinion…..and that might not be far off the mark.
I think the 1 bedrooms in 1800 all face west so bad views but those 2 bedrooms facing east like AJ’s have one of the sweetest views in town.
SLOTH,
Lucas is right and condoreports.com is wrong. Line 11 does have 1,095 sq ft of space under A/C and another 105 sq ft of space on the terrace. This is why the price per square foot seems higher than it should be. Its not really selling at an average of $300 sq ft. If you calculate the right price per sq ft using the right square footage you’ll see that it’s selling closer to $200 sq ft.
Most units at 1800 club simply have not been selling at a price that will allow rent to cover expenses. This short sale is a step in the right direction. At this price with 20% down monthly expense would be about $1700 which is also the asking price for a similar size unit.
This is what a lot of people were trying to tell AJ for a while. Prices at 1800 club have to head in this direction.
Also line 11 faces south not west.
SLOTH — As far as I can tell, most of the bears on this site — with the possible exception of everyone’s favorite, The Ace — are people looking to buy a condo for long-term residential purposes rather than wannabe flippers. No one here has ever claimed there are *no* deals in the Miami market for investment/rental purposes, but that doesn’t seem to be the main interest of the average bear here.
Craigslist’s rental ad for Marina Blue penthouse @ $5,900, with many pictures, fully furnished:
http://miami.craigslist.org/mdc/reb/1634883572.html
Is that Floridas’?
Gixxer, Thanks for clarifying. If you’re right I stand corrected. If condoreports isnt as accurate as I had thought what site do you recommend for sales data?
People, I think AJ has left the building. I do not think he is writing on this site anymore. I looked at 1800 Club after his repeated praises. I like the building but I cannot afford the current rents. At $1250, I will rent a 1 bed room in a heart beat. But the rents for 1 BR in 1800 Club are averaging $1450. As Gixxer 1000 noted, prices in 1800 Club need to come down more to make it more affordable.
slater,
who cares what gixxer thinks. Prices in 1800 club need to come down only if the building is empty and they are in desperate need to sell. From last I know, 1800 club is well occupied and more than 85% sold. Look at this rental report from Lucas
http://www.miamicondoinvestments.com/for-lease/Arts-District/1800-Club/
No wonder you are frustrated as there are very few units available for rent and obviously someone is renting the 1 bed units for $1400 and up. It is all about supply and demand my friend. If you cannot afford it, go somewhere else. Crying poverty is not going to help.
Hey, AJ is back!!
Every time someone mentions 1800 Club, AJ gets here quicker than Superman gets to a damsel in distress.
I like how people post under random names to criticize you. I wouldn’t be surprised if that was AJ himself. Especially when making remarks about the percentage of the building that is sold.
I wasn’t implying that prices need to come down because I want them too. I was saying that prices need to come down to a point to where investors can actually cover expenses with rent prices. So either rent has to go up or sales price has to go down. You take you’re pick. The last time I checked over 90% of the building is owned by people who don’t occupy their unit. Why would investors buy units at prices where rents don’t cover expenses??? And the average price per square foot has been steadily decreasing since 2007. So add in this new short sale and I think its obvious where prices are headed. Also I know AJ liked to brag that there were no foreclosures. Now not only do we have this short sale but unit 3904 also went through foreclosure in Feb and sold for $150k ($178 sq ft).
Also slater take a look here:
http://condosforrent.miamicondolifestyle.com/1800-club-condos-for-rent
One bedroom prices are moving down to $1350. Hang around for a while and maybe you’ll be able to rent one of the recent “distressed” units for $1250.
Sloth,
I’d have to agree with Joe and say most of the bears here still indicate they want to buy at some point. Outside of the Ace and his minions that declare that real estate investing is dead forever, unless you have his infinite wisdom.
As far as condoreports.com, I still think it the best out there right now. Once you eye in on a great building just make sure to double check these type of things. It’s based on public records so there are bound to be errors.
Slater #95
You might find a very spacious 1 br at the Grand for a reasonable sum-1717 no bayshore dr just down the street from 1800..
A bulk owner who bought and sold for years in the building got stuck with inventory and has offered some good deals.
Despite a total of 800 units the building is calm because about 40 % of units are 2 nd 3 rd homes and rarely is there a full house here.
If you want more info leave an email address and I will be in touch-no I am NOT the owner .
The Ace,
Still waiting for you to tell us what building you got that great $97 per sqaure foot bulk deal in.
Nice propane grill on that Marina Blue unit for rent. Too bad it’s against fire code.
Wild Bill said, “Nice propane grill on that Marina Blue unit for rent. Too bad it’s against fire code.”
Exactly, Bill. Who in the hell barbecues, using a grill, on a penthouse’s narrow balcony? That dude who rents an unit there must know.
Aj said, “Enzo, you stupid moron, read your own articles….
That’s what you have omitted:
“Garfinkle and Pollock also were assigned the $12.3 million outstanding balance on the construction loan for the 12-story project.””
Amount easily recovered through HOAs.
Wow, $174 / sf for an unit at 1800. You guys are soooo screwed.
Wow, this blog is better than TV. We have some real men of genius contributing to this blog. This is becoming too funny not to read at least once a day. The perma bears are funny because everything is a piece of shit but the real problem is they can’t afford their dream condo in SB and the banks are no longer giving out NINA loans so they are left with no option but to wait for SoFi prices to hit $99/sf. Face it guys you work for the man and he is not going to pay you that type of money. Better settle for one of those POS condos in Miami and save every nickle until that $99/sf condo in SB comes along….Oh, wait, those HOA will still be a bitch to afford on your salary.
This is so funny, does it remind you of your own Condo?
Sole occupant of 32-story Fort Myers condo wants out
By DICK HOGAN • [email protected] • March 8, 2010
It looks like the loneliest condominium dweller in Fort Myers will stay lonely for awhile longer. Victor Vangelakos is the only buyer to take possession of his unit in the 32-story Tower 1 of the Oasis high-rise project in downtown Fort Myers. Only a handful of purchasers who put down deposits closed on their condos in the building, and except for Vangelakos, they’ve accepted deals with developer The Related Group to swap for units in Tower 2.
But Vangelakos, who paid $430,000 for the home, closed in November 2008 and insisted on taking possession. He, his wife Cathleen, and their three children use the condo as a vacation home when he can get away from his job as a Weehawken, N.J., firefighter. Neither side is happy with the arrangement – the company is spending money because it can’t shut down the building altogether and the Vangelakos family considers the arrangement creepy, especially at night.
But neither side wants to give in to the other’s demands. Vangelakos is suing Related to get out of his contract. But Related vice president and general counsel Betsy McCoy said he’s not entitled to that because he already closed on the property.
Vangelakos said he doesn’t get down much, although the family did stay there over the Christmas holidays.The signs are everywhere that the building is almost abandoned.
“They’re maintaining the pool, but they don’t heat it,” he said. “I only have the lights on my floor and I’m the only one there.”
In the lighting fixtures on the open walkways on each floor, Vangelakos said, “Birds have been making their nests” often leaving piles of droppings.
Meanwhile, Vangelakos’ lawsuit grinds on in circuit court in Miami, where Related is based. Vangelakos’ attorney John Ewing represents several Oasis buyers and said Vangelakos’ case is unusual because most buyers did not close – and certainly don’t find themselves alone in a skyscraper. He accuses Related of using stalling tactics and of playing hardball because of Cathleen Vangelakos’ separate legal problems: Last month she started serving a three-year prison term for pocketing parking ticket payments in her job at Weehawken City Hall.
McCoy denied that Related is stalling and said the company has offered Vangelakos what’s fair: a swap for a condo in Tower 2.Vangelakos doesn’t like that deal. He said it’s tough making the payments, but thinks he’s in the right and doesn’t want to give up now.
“I’m really just in the middle,” he said. “I don’t know what to do. What should I do here?”
Makes Me Think – Obviously you are upset with something and venting toward others on this blog out of the blue. First, one blogger recently closed on his condo on the bay, another just closed on a SFH instead of a condo, gables is still looking, I’m still looking. Another blogger who had insisted he made a great purchase was revealed as not being a good purchase at all. People are making progress in their purchase decisions in a market fraught with misinformation, disinformation, fraud, inflated prices, HOA problems, etc. Prudence is a virtue here.
Condo Vulture – What is funny, is the guy that closes had, apparently, an embezzling wife. Related might want to screw them but they were trying to screw Related. Oh the real estate drama in Florida! Unbelievable.
“NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The percentage of American workers with virtually no retirement savings grew for the third straight year, according to a survey released Tuesday.
The percentage of workers who said they have less than $10,000 in savings grew to 43% in 2010, from 39% in 2009, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute’s annual Retirement Confidence Survey.
Workers who said they had less than $1,000 jumped to 27%, from 20% in 2009. ”
Hey 43% of the population has less than $10k in savings, but they’ll all buy $250k condos, as second homes. Oh yeah, I see bull market everywhere…riiiight.
Enjoy.
ENZO – Nice post… I have a follow up but keep getting the dreaded “Your comment is awaiting moderation.” Don’t know why, there are no links or whatever in the post.
What is a graver concern is who will support these people later …. housing, medical care, food, nursing homes, etc.??? We will, the U.S. taxpayer! Government programs have enabled people to simply not plan for themselves. Sure we need some government programs to assist our fellow citizens, but the way these social programs have worked is they have done more harm than good….like a lot of the low income housing programs. At a time when the fed govt will not be able to borrow, we’ll have even more obligations than projected. It is a a scary scenario. Taxes will probably double. Ouch. But these people with less than $10K in savings will have a house full of China made junk in their homes ….. 100+ paris of shoes, never used kitchen gadgets, walk in closets filled with clothes (some with tags still on them), the list goes on and on and one. If you saw videos of homes being cleaned out after the homeowners abandoned them (a lot videos from CA) you see the tremendous consumer waste left behind and what was being thrown away simply because the trash out companies had 2 hours to clear out the house and put all the stuff in the dumpster and no charity was willing to pick up perfectly good items in such a short time frame. It is a said commentary on our consumer society …. so much stuff that we are drowning in it and not doing what is important or for long term planning. The automaton consumers jumped to buy into the latest hype without critical thought or long term planning … we have seen that in the hype to buy condos in So. Fla. too. Oh well.
^RT (#110), Interesting comment. Presonally, it’s pretty depressing to me knowing that that’s actually reality.
BTW, what happened with the last article on the $20M penthouse? Comments closed….too much nonsense?
RT, not venting just expressing my fondness for this blog.
I’m sorry if you were offended but that post was not directed towards you.
I don’t care if someone buys a condo or not, I have no dog in this fight. I have stated before that I think condo’s are terrible investments for homeowners simply because of the HOA issues. Though, I wouldn’t mind picking up a condo on the cheap as a getaway pad but the HOA issues are worrisome. My point has been that some people are hell bent on buying a condo and have been waiting for years for an opportunity, my advice to those people was to simply do your homework and try to work out the best deal possible during the panic that was Q1 and Q2 of ’09. If you plan on living there you might take another 10% hit. Anyway, my gripe are with those posters that call every condo a piece of shit but they don’t have the means to acquire the PH in SB. They want to live the Miami Vice lifestyle but don’t want to pay the cost, well guess what, it cost real money to live that lifestyle today, money you don’t have so keep it moving cause you can’t afford it. Banks are no longer giving out the NINJA loans to finance that lifestyle. Many people realize they don’t have the means to live the SB lifestyle and are just looking for a modest safe place to live, they inquire about Building X or Y that is more within their means but they are told everything is a POS because it has a certain type of furniture or carpet in the lobby. These pretentious pricks can’t afford to rent a condo in the hood but they criticize everything. Dude, if everyone was to live by your standards we would all be living with mom waiting for the 3 mill PH condo to come down to $125/sf. Thank God not everyone needs to live in a PH on the Beach.
now I’m beginning to venting.
p.s. no offense
“Hey 43% of the population has less than $10k in savings, but they’ll all buy $250k condos, as second homes.”
Enzo, surely you don’t believe the busllshit that you write. Not even you are dumb enough to believe that. The truth is that outside of South Florida, NYC and a few other cities condo’s are a small percentage of the housing stock. Most people in the vast majority of places in this country own more modest SFH that cost much less that 250K.
If I had less than 10k in savings and a bank was foolish enough to offer me a 250K home loan risk free I would be a damn fool to saying no thanks.
The way our economy is structured, the middle class is slowly disappearing – hence the declining savings rate. Not that long ago a decent job gave you a living wage, fully funded health insurance, and a reliable defined benefit pension plan. Union busting and outsourcing gave corporations the green light to reduce your health benefits and reduce the corporations contribution to a stable retirement, while wages have remained stagnant. I am not saying it is imminent, but this is the stuff that revolutions thrive on. Just look at South America. Colombia being the best example – where in the past 10 years or so over 100 union leaders have been executed for trying to obtain these minimum benefits for their workers. Now in Colombia you have a 30 plus year war because of it. The workers revolted and said – “Farc You”.
I AM NEW IN THE AREA BUT, LOVE THE BRICKEL AND DOWNTOWN AREA.
I AM A TEACHER AND WOULD LIKE TO GET A CONDO 2/2 .AND THE PRE APPROBAL IS 149.000
if you have something very interesting for me Please>>>>
MY PHONE IS 786 444 4618
[email protected]
Ok guys I will appreciate all your help.
I find this website very amusing. Lucas is posting $20 million penthouse in South Beach when the average poster on this site lives in a one bedroom apartment in Overtown. At least they all seem to have Broadband. The problem is that easy credit is gone for the Have Nots (Locals). Without that easy credit none of the Have Nots (Local Residents of Miami) will ever be able to afford these Condos. Unless you somehow attract outsiders into purchasing these condos as a second homes most of downtown miami will remind you of Detroit only warmer.
Makes Me Think,
—->100% agree with you on post #112.
—-> I was also worried about the HOA fees going up and up, however that is hard to control since it will happen in most of the new condo buildings.
—> Living cheap (well under my means) is much more important then me buying on beach.
—-> That is why I picked the smallest condo on the highest floor with the best water view in my price range in the location that I wanted to live.
—-> The smaller the unit the less the HOA dues will always be, I will always be paying less then the larger units around my unit for the HOA and I have the same azaming view. Plus I have the same use of the roof top deck, and all the other things in the building just like the larger units around me do, however I paid a lot less for my place since it’s is smaller.
—-> As you know, the smaller the unit the less it’s worth and the less my propery taxes will always be. The larger units around me will always be paying more for their property taxes.
—-> A small place is all I need at this point in my life and I have learn how to live in a small place, after comming from large houses. Although my condo much smaller then my last house, it costs me ALOT less per month to live in it then my house did.
—-> So for me buying a small condo is how I have minized the high propery taxes and HOA dues for the future, while still allowing me live with a great waterview and near beach.
ALVARO FRANCO
You said,
I AM NEW IN THE AREA BUT, LOVE THE BRICKEL AND DOWNTOWN AREA.
I AM A TEACHER AND WOULD LIKE TO GET A CONDO 2/2 .AND THE PRE APPROBAL IS 149.000
if you have something very interesting for me
—> check out http://www.condoreports.com. For most buildings in Dade and Broward it shows what condos are for sales and how much condo sold for in each building.
—> you will see what your choices are in your 149K price range for the area you are looking for.
.
Why Bother Lucas,
You said,
The problem is that easy credit is gone for the Have Nots (Locals). Without that easy credit none of the Have Nots (Local Residents of Miami) will ever be able to afford these Condos. Unless you somehow attract outsiders into purchasing these condos as a second homes most of downtown miami will remind you of Detroit only warmer.
—> I am a local (have been living in miami beach/miami for over 2 years) and I qaulified for a loan on my condo that I use as a primary home that I bought at infinity with a job that I had in miami which showed that I had enough income to qaulify.
—> So you see there are some local folks that can qaulify for a condo loan with a job they have in Miami.
—> I do agree that if more peolpe buy these condo as 2nd homes, that would be great.
owneratinfinity,
—> I do agree that if more peolpe buy these condo as 2nd homes, that would be great.
Look forward, these people will come. I bought my condo as a 3rd home.
owneratinfinity, as I paid in cash, my condo doesn’t burden me much.
If 43% of the population has less than $10k in savings to retire, the other 40% probably has less than $20k to retire. Numbers don’t lie. That doesn’t seem like a bull market, does it? Then you add the 30 million in food stamps, the 25% in FL who are late on mortgages, 20% real U6 unemployment rate, Barry Soetoro’s new plan of offering $1,500 for debtors to walk away from their upside-down homes, Fed done with 99% of MBS purchases, home credit ending in a month…and the list goes on and on and on.
Enjoy.
Enzo, there are also people who have a little more !
You have only to work in the right industry.
Why Bother Lucas said: – “Unless you somehow attract outsiders into purchasing these condos as a second homes most of downtown miami will remind you of Detroit only warmer.”
– Yes, but Detroit doesn’t have tourism….although I hear they are working on that with a marketing campaign! Oh the wise spending of taxpayer dollars. It is no wonder that foreign car makers locate new assembly plants elsewhere….
owneratinfinity said: “—-> That is why I picked the smallest condo on the highest floor with the best water view in my price range in the location that I wanted to live.”
– Ahhhhh, wisdom, from a recent condo buyer none the less. That was a smart move, seriously. Good advice, second only to now buying one? LOL But seriously, that was wise. Also, ALVARO FRANCO is probably a joke post by you know who.
I agree with owneratinfinity. Buyers should start offering $200 / sf for units at Infinity, like he has been proposing here all the time. Go ahead and offer $200 / sf, like he said, because it’s a deal.
Visionary said, “Enzo, there are also people who have a little more !
You have only to work in the right industry.”
Would that be the union parasite industry?
Enzo said,
“I agree with owneratinfinity. Buyers should start offering $200 / sf for units at Infinity, like he has been proposing here all the time. Go ahead and offer $200 / sf, like he said, because it’s a deal.”
I agree with Enzo that would be a good deal.
Enzo said
Enzo Said
“Visionary said, “Enzo, there are also people who have a little more !
You have only to work in the right industry.”
Would that be the union parasite industry?”
Enzo I have been following your posts and I draw the following conclusions;
1. You have a job that you find little enjoyment in doing. Based on your posts I would guess you do not make very much money. I am assuming this based on your difficulty in getting approved for a mortgage.
2. Your only enjoyment seems to come from doubting and putting down other people.
Signore siete un piccolo cretin misero.
Enzo nessun buon lavoro, please don’t insult people, I don’t take the posts on this blog personally.
I miss the gentlemen on this blog !
Did they all vanish or did they all perish due to the recession.
owneratinfinity, I am still awaiting your answer about the Paramount Bay.
I like the architecture of this building.
Back-of-the-envelope calculation re: how much owneratinfinity might be spending on his unit (if true, of course):
– Speculative size: 1,666
– Borrowed: $300,000
– HOA: 0.45 X 1,666 = $750 x 12 = $9,000
– Mortgage 30 @5%: $1,610 x 12 = $19,320
– Taxes: $6,000
– I’m not including the aprox $13,000 he had to spend by installing floor throughout the unit. Unless he put cheap wood floor. The building charges $11 / sf to install, but I’m feeling sassy today and gave him rainbows and unicorns @ $8 / sf.
==
Total = $34,320 / .28 = $122,600 gross annual income?
I don’t recall you being a doctor or lawyer
If you earn that much, why only 20% down?
2 years only in Miami, right into the crash and recession, and you’re already earning $122k in income, without being a lawyer or doctor?
According to the 2000 Census, back then when the good times were rolling, the median income for a household in Dade county was $35,966, and the median income for a family was $40,260. Males had a median income of $30,120 versus $24,686 for females. The per capita income for Dade county was $18,497. About 14.5% of families and 18.0% of the population were below the poverty line, including 22.9% of those under age 18 and 18.9% of those age 65 or over.
Imagine how low the per capita income must be now, during the biggest recession since the Great Depression! The numbers don’t lie and don’t add.
Let the BS begin after his arrows.
A lot of people get Miami and Miami Beach mixed up. Miami Beach is a tourist destination. Miami is nothing..it is neither a city for tourists nor professionals. Jobs are not here and buildings will remain empty.
The only reason tourists go to Miami is because they have to go to the airport.
Visionary said, “Enzo I have been following your posts and I draw the following conclusions;
1. You have a job that you find little enjoyment in doing.
To the contrary, I enjoy my job very much. It seems that you don’t enjoy yours and you’re projecting.
2. Based on your posts I would guess you do not make very much money.
I’m high middle class, not wealthy. Remember that there’s always someone richer than you, so don’t be cocky now.
3. I am assuming this based on your difficulty in getting approved for a mortgage.
Not really, adn I never said I had difficult getting loans. I said that good deals weren’t easy to get and that everything that’s decent seems overpriced. I’m pre-approved and have excellent credit. I ‘ve owned a beachfront condo for many many years. Lucas can check my location through IP, to confirm. Not in a rush to buy anything; I just have extra cash rolling around to buy another investment, if the Cap Rate makes sense.
4. Your only enjoyment seems to come from doubting and putting down other people.
No, I just don’t like BS from realtors and homedebtors trying to pump their upside-down purchases with fluff. I have the same behavior with politicians.
5. Signore siete un piccolo cretin misero.
Sorry, I’m not Italian. Wrong again.
Anything else, AJ?
Renter Tom what is funny is the fact that a 37 story hi end highrise Condo has only has only one occupant, does that not remind you of the many hi end high rise Condo’s Miami Condos that have no lights on afterdark. lol
Kramer — You can’t blame union-busting for the demise of the middle class. Better to blame the Nanny State nature of rising taxes and disincentives for keeping good jobs to the U.S.
I have no sympathy for union members who bitch about their $30 per hour low-skilled jobs disappearing when they’re the same ones lining up in Wal-Mart every day buying cheap stuff made in China. Can’t have it both ways.
Visionary,
I already replied back to you about my thoughts about Paramount Bay twice, however I did see it, do here it is again
You said,
owneratinfinity, what do you think ?
Should I buy into the Paramount Bay ?
—>It is by far the most upscale condo building of the 4 large new condo building on the bay in that area midtown for what I can tell. I don’t think there is nicer building then that in all of midtowm. (I consider Midtown being the Miami area near the bay from north of the 395 and south of the 195 highways)
—>The other 3 condo buildings 1800 club, opera tower and Q by the bay near at in Midtown are the tyyical average large middle of road new condo buildings that are built all over the Miami near the Bay. Which infinity is one of these type of middle of road buildings.
—> I am sure that they have lower their prices alot but I am sure the units at Paramount Bay will be alot more then $200-250 square foot then what the middle of road buildings near it are are setting for.
—-> For me, I would rather have a middle of road building in a better area with Publix supermarkets, etc in walking dsiance in Brickell which is considered a better area then Midtown, then an expenise very nicer upscale building in not as nice of an area that I have to drive to the supermarkets.
—-> Although mid towm is getting better. They are doing alot new contstrction in the area around b blvd with shops, etc and re-doing the B Blvd, which will make the area nicer, however the area just west of b blvd is still pretty run down.
—-> For me, the location is number one. Where I live (where the building is located) is more important then the price of condo, the condo itself and the view.
—-> I have learned by owning many houses that location is number one. Because I always tried to pick the best location to buy into I have always done pretty well when I sold my houses. Of course they built way to0 many condos in the brickell so it would hard to sell my condo if I had to today, I am sure. But I plan to keep for a very long time, that is Ok for me.
—-> In my eys the Paramount Bay building is too nice for the area it is in. However for others it may not be such a big deal and they would buy it if they got the right price.
Visionary,
I already replied back to you about my thoughts about Paramount Bay twice. Look back at the previous couple of postings and you will see what I said
Carlos — Your comment #133 is less true today than it was 5-10 years ago, but it’s still very true. For at least my first 10 trips to Miami, the actual city of Miami was nothing more than “flyover country” on my way from the airport to the Beach. I can’t recall stepping foot in downtown Miami until at least my 10th or later trip to So. Fla. (Unfortunately, new employers still aren’t stepping foot down there.)
——
What the hell is up with the Setai post? I noticed Lucas deleted all of yesterday’s comments and then locked it. Perhaps Lucas is afraid us unwashed commenters will hurt his chances of selling a $20,000,000 penthouse. Good grief.
——
Condo Vulture #135 — Ha ha. Exactly right. I started noticing the dark buildings back around 2005 or ’06. I asked a few Realtards about it and they all said the same thing: “Oh, that’s because everyone is out partying at the Beach!”
Ha ha ha ha … What a bunch of shameless liars. I hope they’re all under a bridge somewhere.
Enzo said
“I’m high middle class, not wealthy. Remember that there’s always someone richer than you, so don’t be cocky now.”
I would be curious to know what your definition of High Middle Class is. I know you might not want to give your exact salary so I am just looking for the Low and High end Annual Salary of this class you call “High Middle Class”
Carlos,
“A lot of people get Miami and Miami Beach mixed up. Miami Beach is a tourist destination. Miami is nothing..it is neither a city for tourists nor professionals. Jobs are not here and buildings will remain empty.
The only reason tourists go to Miami is because they have to go to the airport.”
This simply isn’t true.
Here is a breakdown of jobs, sectors and wages from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics:
DISCLAIMER: This information is based off of May 2008. Rounded to the nearest percent. I added NY as a reference.
Management Occupations
NY – 5% with average salary of $130,140.
MIA – 3% with average salary of $110, 480.
Business and Financial Operations
NY – 5% with average salary of $81,440
MIA – 5% with average salary of $60,910
Computer and Mathematical Science
NY – 3% with average salary of $83,950
MIA – 2% with average salary of $65,290
Architecture and Engineering Occupations
NY – 1% with average salary of $78,090
MIA – 1% with average salary of $62,570
Legal Occupations
NY – 1% with average salary of $117,450
MIA – 1% with average salary of $89,180
Education, Training and Library
NY – 7% with average salary of $58,280
MIA – 5% with average salary of $45,430
Healthcare Practicioner and Technical Occupations
NY – 5% with average salary of $81,550
MIA – 5% with average salary of $67,300
Healthcare Support Occupations
NY – 3% with average salary of $28,610
MIA – 3% with average salary of $25,070
Protective Services (Police, Fire, etc)
NY – 3% with average salary of $47,070
MIA – 3% with average salary of $36,550
Food Preparation on Services
NY – 6% with average salary of $24,620
MIA – 8% with average salary of $21,130
Personal Care and Services
NY – 3% with average salary of $28,530
MIA – 3% with average salary of $25,170
Sales and Related Occupations
NY – 11% with average salary of $48,200
MIA – 13% with average salary of $39,130
Office and Administrative Support
NY – 19% with average salary of $36,630
MIA – 21% with average salary of $$30,130
Construction and Extraction Occupations
NY – 4% with average salary of $57,840
MIA – 4% with average salary of $37,230
Installation Maintenance and Repair
NY – 3% with average salary of $46,700
MIA – 4% with average salary of $38,380
Production Occupations
NY – 4% with average salary of $33, 410
MIA – 4% with average salary of $28,190
Transportation and Material Moving Occupations
NY – 6% with average salary of $35,920
MIA – 7% with average salary of $34,600
22% of the work force holds a job that would be considered “professional”. This number is inline with other cities and as you can see for NY that number would be 27%.
Gixxer 1000 — Your last post reminds me about the old adage that “statistics don’t lie, but liars use statistics.”
When talking about jobs and incomes, Miami doesn’t even belong in the same sentence as NYC, let alone for someone to try to equate them statistically. It’s laughable.
But just to play along, you do understand that 27% of 18,000,000 people is a lot more than 22% of 5,000,000 people, right?
Joe said: “Ha ha ha ha … What a bunch of shameless liars. I hope they’re all under a bridge somewhere.”
– I thought they recently cleared out the people under that bridge?
Visionary
You said,
owneratinfinity, as I paid in cash, my condo doesn’t burden me much.
—> that is great.
—> I am very worried about the future, so I wanted to keep as much cash as possible in my bank account.
—> So it’s a small mortgage, however once things gets better and I am not so worried about saving money, I will pay the mortgage off. But for now I’ll keep my low 5% fixed rate 30 year mortgage – it’s very effordable.
—> I am a self employed consultant so I am what you can call the “working rich” . When I am working manging a project I am very rich (cause my expenses are so low),
However when I am not working I am very very very poor. So I have to have a lot more money in saving then the average FTE person to carry me though the hard times.
—> Since I moved to miami I had to drop my bill rate $70 per hour. However I still make a decent money, when compared to the average income in miami and south florida
—>This is why living as cheaply as poissble is so important to me.
—> So as long as I keep my monthly expenises low and some cash in the bank I should to able to ride out this finanical storm that we are in – Plus I can work in other states that are doing better then Florida if needed.
RT — Those were only the pedophiles. The Realtards *really* deserve to be there.
Visionary
You said,
owneratinfinity, as I paid in cash, my condo doesn’t burden me much. I keep getting the message Your comment is awaiting moderation, so that is why I posted this comment more then once
—> that is great.
—> I am very worried about the future, so I wanted to keep as much cash as possible in my bank account.
—> So it’s a small mortgage, however once things gets better and I am not so worried about saving money, I will pay the mortgage off. But for now I’ll keep my low 5% fixed rate 30 year mortgage – it’s very effordable.
—> I am a self employed consultant so I am what you can call the “working rich” . When I am working manging a project I am very rich (cause my expenses are so low),
However when I am not working I am very very very poor. So I have to have a lot more money in saving then the average FTE person to carry me though the hard times.
—>This is why living as cheaply as poissble is so important to me.
Joe
Thanks for replying on my behalf. Anyone who thinks there is any real comparison between MIA and NYC regarding the job market/income/professional level has got to be toyally uninformed or doesn’t really know anything about NYC.
I guess living in MIA gets your brain fried with all the sun, drugs and idleness on this town.
Joe – But shouldn’t Realtards® have to register as “financial advice offenders” and be shunned too?
I find Peter Schiff interesting to listen to and provocative, but sometimes he comes across as a bit of a kook. He said something this evening that I agree with:
“…there are only two props right now in the housing market, one is government guaranteed mortgages and the other one is artificially low interest rates and neither one is sustainable…”
– Discuss………
Enzo are you going to answer my question?
Enzo said
“I’m high middle class, not wealthy. Remember that there’s always someone richer than you, so don’t be cocky now.”
I would be curious to know what your definition of High Middle Class is. I know you might not want to give your exact salary so I am just looking for the Low and High end Annual Salary of this class you call “High Middle Class”
and “you can’t have a housing market where the U.S. government or us taxpayers…cosigns everybody’s mortgages”
– Peter Schiff
If income is such a downer in Miami – I wonder then who is living in those homes that sell for $500,000 to $1,000,000 plus in Morningside and Coconut Grove and Coral gables and Key Biscayne and the High end high rises on Brickell like Santa Maria and also Key Biscayne. It, s only the people who don’t know how to make it that complain.
Clipper John-
You’re focusing on the high-end outliers rather than focusing on averages. When you look at Miami-Dade incomes in general, you will see that it is substantially less than many other locales. During the boom the home value/income correlation was way out of whack and now you’re seeing the correction.
Also you’d be surprised but most of the $500k+ home/condo purchases down here are coming from buyers who made their money elsewhere (NYC, Europe, South America) and decided to buy 2nd homes or settle down here after the fact. That’s what makes Miami real estate unique and somewhat unpredictable- the large #’s of non-local buyers can artificially prop up the market.
owneratinfinity, thank you for the info about the Paramount Bay.
Sorry that i didn’t find your previous posts.
About getting into debt, I think on should buy 2nd homes only with cash.
The same principle one should obey when buying luxury goods and items for leisure.
That is why I made my comment earlier. I lot of the higher end condo market is not for year around residences (Locals – seems a significant number of bloggers on this site are locals). These condos were built to attract people who wanted 2nd homes and do have high incomes. The problem is that way too many were built and some of the supposed high end Condo buildings are really not high end. Everything is relative. Where I live there is nothing for sale below $1,000 a square feet. So even $400 square foot looks cheap to me especially since alot of it is new construction.
I was wondering if somebody could assist me. I need to rent a place in Miami. I was looking to rent a Condo since I will only be in town about 2 days a week. I like Icon Brickell because of its amenties and location. What do you think would be a reasonable rent for a two bedroom? In addition do you think I could get the management team at Brickell Icon to furnish it for me as well? Thank you for your assistance.
Miami has around the same household income level as Jackson, Mississippi.
Any income and job market comparisons to NYC/DC or any other major metros are insane, and these comparisons always seem to be made by people who haven’t spent much time in Miami.
Miami Skeptic said
“Miami has around the same household income level as Jackson, Mississippi.
Any income and job market comparisons to NYC/DC or any other major metros are insane, and these comparisons always seem to be made by people who haven’t spent much time in Miami.”
But in Miami your surroundings are nicer. I do not know very many wealthy people who want a 2nd home in Jackson MS. As I mentioned before I believe the High End Real Estate Market (Above $750K) is mostly a 2nd home market. So local residences income is not that important. What is important is low crime (good law enforcement), and excellent services – restaurants, recreational activities. If I own a place in Miami what I care most about is that it is safe and that I get excellent service – I want to be pampered. Helping to keep the costs for these services down is a very large nonprofessional workforce in Miami. I believe you would find a very similar workforce in almost any warm tourist destination.
Any sales figures for February availible?
visonary – “About getting into debt, I think on should buy 2nd homes only with cash.”
why would you say that?
Why should someone pay 300K cash for a second home when they can borrow 300k at 5% and bail out risk free with 300k in the bank when things turn sour? I don’t understand. OPM!
“If I own a place in Miami what I care most about is that it is safe and that I get excellent service – I want to be pampered. ” – Why Bother Lucas
Safe? Excellent service? Sorry but you’re not going to get that if you live here. This whole place (regardless of neighborhood/area) is notorious for being unsafe and having poor service.
And if by “pampered” you mean some highrise tenant throwing a dirty Pampers diaper off a balcony and hitting you in the face, then yes, sir, you might be pampered in Miami.
It’s amazing how people ignore actual facts and rely on anecdotal evidence. If you look at the information I posted you can see that Miami is clearly less than NY. Nowhere was I saying that it was the same. I simply put it to show the relation to a large city like NY.
Of course I know there is a difference between 27% of 18 million and 22% of 5 million. But that is besides the point. Do you understand that since there are 18 million workers in NY than you have more people to compete against.
5% of the workers in NY work in business in financial operations just as 5% of the workers in Miami do. So you can be 1 of 250,000 workers in the field in Miami or 1 of 900,000 workers in the field in NY. Either way the percentages are still the same. Which would be the whole reason for looking at percentages. Simply saying there are 900,000 workers in field X in NY compared to 250,000 workers in field X in Miami would be an accurate comparison. The numbers I posted clearly show the average person in NY would make over $20k more a year.
But regardless my main point was that out of the 2.5 million people in the Miami metro area roughly 22% of them work a position that would be considered professional. That’s roughly 550,000 professionals.
Now I can’t comment about the status of Downtown Miami years ago but I have been there multiple times recently. I can tell you that downtown Miami has a more vibrant downtown than most cities. NY, DC and Chicago are a few that come to mind that have a lot more activity. But as everyone here has already pointed out they have more people and more jobs located downtown. But when you look at most metro areas with similar amounts of people Miami’s downtown is not only more active today but getting more active as each year passes.
Take sometime and visit downtown LA, Houston, Atlanta, Detroit, Phoenix, etc. and you see that Miami is not only on par but actually better than most.
makes me think,
in general you cannot strategically default on a $300k mortgage and not owe a penny. this is a misconception of the public. unless you file bankruptcy, the mortgage owners can and will take their time and acquire your assets. and you really will have a hard time filing bankruptcy if you have cash in the bank to pay off the debt you owe (and try to avoid through filing bankruptcy). what visionary is implying is you only buy a second home if you have the cash-buying through the debt of a mortgage is only an accounting game. you just dont buy a second home without significant assets to backstop the purchase. this is why poor people in general do not own a second home!
Drew said, “Safe? Excellent service? Sorry but you’re not going to get that if you live here. This whole place (regardless of neighborhood/area) is notorious for being unsafe and having poor service.
And if by “pampered” you mean some highrise tenant throwing a dirty Pampers diaper off a balcony and hitting you in the face, then yes, sir, you might be pampered in Miami.”
===
LMAO, Drew. You’re so right. Don’t be surprised if your hot date gets a drink purposely spilled on her lap by some jealous waitress or bartender. No only the people here are rude, but extremely jealous.
Regarding the “high middle class”, it was a typo. It should read “upper middle class”. Sometimes I write while busy at work., so expect many typos. I don’t want Bill to stay up at night by not addressing this “serious” issue.
I hardly ever write here but I feel like I have to chip in my two cents. The city of Miami might have a income level of Jackson MS but Miami Dade certainly not. I don’t know where you guys are hanging out thinking there are no six figure jobs in this city.
Enzo, Drew and other jealous types talking about dirty diapers coming from balconies what the hell are you doing on this blog if you think these buildings and this city is so bad? Stop wasting yours and more importantly others people time with your rhetoric
Gixxer said, “5% of the workers in NY work in business in financial operations just as 5% of the workers in Miami do. So you can be 1 of 250,000 workers in the field in Miami or 1 of 900,000 workers in the field in NY. Either way the percentages are still the same.”
===
Human resources doesn’t calculate wages like you said. The local market dictates the wages, according to job analysis and related pay scale. It doesn’t matter what the financial sector earns in NY or LA. The Miami labor market will pay much less, because most earn less and there are too many applicants to the same job. It’s a simple case of supply and demand. If you move here from a major city like NY or LA, you feel like a genius among the predominant low skill market. Some people know what I’m talking about. However, that doesn’t translate into higher wages.
You could also take our cost of living into account when calculating pay scale, but I don’t believe that Miami is that cheap anymore, thanks to unions, fraud, corruption, and mass immigration that requires expensive welfare. All these factors drive costs up, either through higher taxes, waste, or bottlenecks. Miami has the illusion of being affordable, but it’s not. Another thing, if this monstrosity of health care bill passes, it will squeeze physicians and everybody else with health insurance. Do you really think that insurance companies and Big Pharma don’t have Congress and current administration in their pockets? Ha!
It will come down to people choosing between the weather or being able to afford food and shelter, hence the latest exodus to GA, NC, and TN. Just like it’s happening in California. Of course, if you are one of those unionized professors or firemen from NY or NJ, who have golden pensions milking the taxpayer in the private sector, sure you can retire comfortably in FL. Is it sustainable, though? Can the low-wage workers in the private sector continue to subsidize unions forever? Do you follow Greece and California? An unionized bus driver in San Francisco earns $85,000 + benefits + unnecessary overtime, that brings their income up to $100,000 or more. Is that sustainable, when jobs in the private sector there pay only $40,000 on average?
gables – “you cannot strategically default on a $300k mortgage and not owe a penny”
come again? Are you telling me the banks are going after all the homeowners/investors that are walking away from mtgs?
What about the non-recourse states? Are their bank accounts/assets being siezed?
-“the mortgage owners can and will take their time and acquire your assets”
not true, in at least 1 state i know of they have 1 month to begin that process otherwise they can’t go afer you. Many times they just don’t bother because it is too expensive.
Gixxer you are claiming that:
“roughly 22% of them [Miami metro area residents] work a position that would be considered professional. That’s roughly 550,000 professionals.”
That’s a ridiculous, idiotic statement. What’s your definiton of “professional?” A professional, by definition, is a member of a vocation founded upon specialized educational training (engineers, scientists, accountants, attorneys, professors and other occupations requiring advanced degrees). Are you aware that the high school graduation rate for Miami-Dade County is less than 46%???? Over 1/2 million “professionals” in Miami? You’re out of your mind. Maybe you’re considering all employees of a “professional occupation” to be “professionals”, i.e. classifying low-level admin assistants of a law firm as “professionals” just b/c they work in a law firm. But this logic is obviously flawed.
And a downtown Miami comparison to downtown Phoenix or Detroit doesn’t really help your argument about downtowm Miami activity. Why don’t you throw in Jacksonville and Omaha.
Drew, wouldn’t a teacher, nurse, electrican, bus driver, plumber, etc. be considered professionals? I don’t think you need an anvanced degree to be considered a professional. I am not sure but it depends on the way they classify these positions.
MMT, if you think you can strategically default while still holding large amounts of cash, think again. Contrary to the hype in the media, the defaults are occuring to those who cannot afford the mortgage to begin with. Most folks in the position to strategically default to protect existing assets have not done so. There is a reason for this. Very hard to get away with it unless you file bankruptcy. The banks will not allow this to happen-they will pursue vigorously, or perish. Consider the short sale. Banks can still come after you for unpaid principal long after the short sale was completed. Neither the banks nor the government can and will allow solvent debtors to walk away on a mass scale without paying a price.
Local news at 5 today
unemployment in florida up to almost 12%
people on food stamps in Miami up to 2,5 million versus 1.2 in 2007!
Isn’t Miami great?
Gables, I asked you a couple of guestions but you ignored all of them. I don’t think most people who default strategically are stupid enough to walk away from a big mtg while keeping huge chunks of cash in a bank account. Lets just say there are ways to hide assets or to appear as if you have very little assets to go after.
I know banks can go after some borrowers and we are begining to hear more of it but it is still rare.
Drew said
“Safe? Excellent service? Sorry but you’re not going to get that if you live here. This whole place (regardless of neighborhood/area) is notorious for being unsafe and having poor service.
And if by “pampered” you mean some highrise tenant throwing a dirty Pampers diaper off a balcony and hitting you in the face, then yes, sir, you might be pampered in Miami.”
Drew I recommend you see more than just Overtown. When I am in Miami I stay at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel on Brickell Key. I would say it is one of the best hotels in the USA for service. Also I like its location on Brickell Key. Are you saying it would be dangerous to live in Brickell Key?
most state that uses non-judicial foreclosure makes it harder for the lender to go after the borrower.
Enzo,
This is a reply to your comment about the condo I bought at Infinity, Please read this carefully, cause I think you have misses some of may previous postings.
1) You don’t have to be a doctor to make 100K or more a year….Like I said before I am a PROGRAM/PROJECT MANAGER contactor. I mostly manage complex computer projects for corporate america. I get paid anywehre from $50 per hour to $130 per hour depending on the market, the project and if go through an head hunter agency to find me the project or not.
2) in a good year (like I had before I moved to miami) I made $248K that year. Since I moved to miami the maket nationalwide got real bad, however I was able to find a project in miami last year, but for only $50 per hour. Yet I still made a little more then 100K last year with the project I had in miami. The market is still bad, however if needed I can manage these projects anywhere in the US or oversees. I am NOT tied to the Miami or South Florida for my work.
3) like I said before the condo I bought is the least expenise one on the highest floor with the best water view in infinity. The one I bought is smaller then you think and therefore my mortgage, taxes and HOA fees are much smaller then you think.
4) To own my unit per month I pay in total ( including my mortgage (P and I), HOA fees and Proptery taxes) less then $1400 per month.
3) I have zero debit, no child support, no car payment cause I paid cash for my 911 C4 cab back during the days I was making over 200K a year. The only debt I have is my small mortgage on my condo.
4) I live so cheap that I only need $3oK take home per year to live my Miami Lifesylte.
5) So even in this bad market I can make $100K per year, which is the min I make when I am managing a project for a year, so my take home is around $75-80K per year.
6) with take home around $75-80K and my expenises being 3oK a year, I can save 40K or so a year.
7) However, due to the bad market my projects may only last 1/2 of the year, yet that is still $35-40K take home for the year, which is enough to pay my 30K expenese for the year.
IF YOU STILL DON’T UNDERSTAND…email me at [email protected] and I will answer any additional questions you my have.
Enzo now that you have corrected your statement to
“I’m upper middle class” instead of “I’m not high middle class” you still have not provided a salary range. Is there some reason you will not answer the question? It seem you had no problem letting everyone know you are “Upper Middle Class” but you do not feel comfortable providing the salary range?
drew, WHERE IN THE WORLD did you read that 46% of kids graduate high school. i am 100% sure that statistic is wayyy off. maybe you were reading about havava?
Bill, does it surprise you that people don’t feel comfortable talking about their salary on a blog???
To all: many of my REALTOR friends, who I know you all love to hate, clear 100K a year easily. If that kind of salary sounds that unrealistic maybe you should consider a career change.
SLOTH – I just looked it up myself since it seemed low. Says it is 48%. Sad.
miami.about.com/b/2008/04/08/miami-high-school-graduation-rates-rank-poorly.htm
Can anyone assist me om my request?
I was wondering if somebody could assist me. I need to rent a place in Miami. I was looking to rent a Condo since I will only be in town about 2 days a week. I like Icon Brickell because of its amenties and location. What do you think would be a reasonable rent for a two bedroom there with Bay Views? Is there another building you would recommend over Icon Brickell? Thank you for your assistance.
Sloth,
Enzo started the ball rolling telling everybody on the blog he was “Upper Middle Class”. I did not ask for a SPECIFIC SALARY AMOUNT BUT for a SALARY RANGE (Low to High) for this class called “Upper Middle Class”.
I just looked it up myself since it seemed low. Says it is 48%. Sad.
Just google: miami high school graduation rate
Bill
2 Bds in Icon Brickell Would start around 2,800.if you want direct waterviews and higher floors it is probably going to be in the 3-4k range.
I have a very good agent that helps me in my transactions of you need a referral.
Icon Brickell is a great pick if you are working in the area.
Bill – I’m guessing 2500 for 2/2 at Icon w/waterview middle to higher floor. And yes there are better choices as Icon postures their building as high end where most consider it gaudy.
loki #161
Don’t know how a post about safety and poor customer service makes me “jealous”…jealous of what?
MMT #165
I assume you’re being sarcastic about a plumber and bus driver being a “professional.”
Why Bother Lucas #169
Sure Brickell Key is nice. As well the Mandarin. But if you live here, how often are you going to head to the Mandarin for your “pampering?” When you speak of customer service in the context of being a Miami resident (not a 4-star hotel tourist), then you need to assess customer service everywhere: restaurants, gas station, grocery store, retail stores, banks, etc. Don’t give me one stupid example about Mandarin Oriental. Overall, service sucks in this city.
And Brickell Key is safe- but you do have to leave that tiny little island once in a while and venture out into the 305, homeboy. Cuz me and my boyz in Overtown prey on rich white boy fools like you who get daily pedicures at the Mandarin Oriental. Now excuse me while I go smoke some crack and then bang a hooker here in my Overtown flophouse. With wi-fi.
Hey Bill, since you don’t know what upper middle class really means:
“The American upper middle class is defined similarly using income, education and occupation as the predominant indicators. In the United States, the upper middle class is defined as consisting mostly of white collar professionals who not only have above-average personal incomes and advanced educational degrees but also a high degree of autonomy in their work, leading to higher job satisfaction. The main occupational tasks of upper middle class individuals tend to center on conceptualizing, consulting, and instruction.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper_middle_class
Enjoy.
Hey owneratinfinity, for some of us who have been around the block a few:
self-employed consultant/contractor = unemployed
Let’s be realistic here. By checking his writing skills, do you really believe that owneratinfinity earns incomes of $250k or even $100k?
I don’t.
One more thing, pseudo-owneratinfinity:
If you’re going to lie about being a computer wiz who earns $250k, could you please have the foresight of changing your pathetic AOL email address? Any tech enthusiast knows that only low-techs have such email accounts. Please, there’s no reasonable explanation in the world that would justify a “computer science wizard” having an AOL address, so don’t even try it, ok? My grandmother has an AOL account.
Enzo,
I have done my very best to be honest and explain myself and my condo buy at Infinity however all you have done is to be very negative proving that you are a very unhappy sad little man.
If you are lucking, someday you may grow up to make real MAN money like myself.
Until then I guess you will continue to be a jealous little condo website troll judging from all your negative comments to me on this blog.
This may be very hard for you to understand but try to get over the fact that not all of us are losers like yourself and many of us have picked careers that allow us to make good money.
FYI my business email is a gmail acct linked to my smart phone.
The [email protected] acct is only for this blog.
Sad. I love the Skybar and Nobu.
“SFBJ — The iconic Shore Club hotel in South Beach has been hit with a foreclosure lawsuit.
With 309 units and eight bungalows priced from $400 to $3,500 a night, the hotel is one of the most expensive in South Florida. But the beachfront Shore Club, at 1901 Collins Ave., was not immune to the commercial real estate meltdown.
On March 3, JPMCC 2005-CIBC13 Collins Lodging, the representative of a commercial mortgage-backed security (CMBS) fund serviced by Miami Beach-based LNR Partners, filed a foreclosure action against hotel owner Philips South Beach, according to Miami-Dade County Circuit Court records.
According to a report in January by New York-based CMBS analysis firm Trepp LLC, the owner of the Shore Club was 90 days late on its mortgage with $111.5 million outstanding.”
====
Buh buh but that’s odd…if everybody claims to be so rich in Miami, why is one of the hottest spots going bankrupt and unemployment hit 12%? Hmmm…that logic and common sense thingy again.
Enzo said
“Why Bother Lucas #169
Sure Brickell Key is nice. As well the Mandarin. But if you live here, how often are you going to head to the Mandarin for your “pampering?” When you speak of customer service in the context of being a Miami resident (not a 4-star hotel tourist), then you need to assess customer service everywhere: restaurants, gas station, grocery store, retail stores, banks, etc. Don’t give me one stupid example about Mandarin Oriental. Overall, service sucks in this city.
And Brickell Key is safe- but you do have to leave that tiny little island once in a while and venture out into the 305, homeboy. Cuz me and my boyz in Overtown prey on rich white boy fools like you who get daily pedicures at the Mandarin Oriental. Now excuse me while I go smoke some crack and then bang a hooker here in my Overtown flophouse. With wi-fi.”
Drew obviously you missed my point. I pointed out the fact that most of the people who are purchasing the high end homes in the Miami area are wealthy people who use Miami as a 2nd home residences. Meaning they might visit Miami for 3 to 4 days a month. THEY DO NOT LIVE HERE 24 7. I visit Miami about 3 days a month and have never run into any of these issues you have mentioned. I would say that services in Miami are equal or above average relative to other Major USA Cities. When I say “Miami” I am including the area of South Beach and Coral Gables. I have lived in NYC and London. Service in Miami is much better than London. London restaurants and hotels are way overrated. NYC has better service say in the restaurant business. In my opinion no city in the world has better restaurants than NYC, but the service at higher end hotels in NYC are not any better than the high end hotels in Miami. People who hang out at the Mandarin Oriental can actually afford to go there everyday. The same reason goes with all the other higher end restaurants, clubs, spas in Miami area. The reason these wealthy individuals will not run into you and your Overtown buddies is that they can afford to go to places you can only dream about. My guess the only way you could ever step foot in the Mandarin would be to be working as a valet, but unfortunately with your attitude you would not get the job. PS I think you have mentioned Detroit in previous comments. Please I have visited Detroit on business and could not wait to get the hell out of town – now there is a dump.
Kramer,
“Bill – I’m guessing 2500 for 2/2 at Icon w/waterview middle to higher floor. And yes there are better choices as Icon postures their building as high end where most consider it gaudy.”
Kramer thank you for the assistance. You mentioned other Buildings that are better choices. Can you please provide the names? Again thank you for your opinion.
Drew,
You don’t have to believe me, you can believe the bureau of Labor statistics.
First off if you going to copy from wikipedia then at least copy all of it.
“A professional is a member of a vocation founded upon specialised educational training.
The word professional traditionally means a person who has obtained a degree in a professional field. The term professional is used more generally to denote a white collar working person, or a person who performs commercially in a field typically reserved for hobbyists or amateurs.
“In western nations, such as the United States, the term commonly describes highly educated, mostly salaried workers, who enjoy considerable work autonomy, a comfortable salary, and are commonly engaged in creative and intellectually challenging work. Less technically, it may also refer to a person having impressive competence in a particular activity.”
Jobs I would consider “Professionals”
Workers in the Miami Metropolitan Area = 2,334,950
Occupations:
Management (average salary $109,350) = 72,080
Business and Financial (average salary $62,620) = 122,540
Computer and Mathematical Science (average salary $64,400) = 47,140
Architecture and Engineering (average salary $63,190) = 30,290
Life Physical and Social Science (average salary $61,610) = 12,670
Legal Occupations (average salary $88,350) = 26,420
Healthcare Practitioners and Technicians (average salary $67,280) = 122,380
Education Training and Library (average salary $64,800) = 97,430
Total Professional workers = 530,950
I add that this list does NOT include jobs like medical and dental assistants. I basically drew the line at jobs that would be considered white collar, require a degree and have an average salary over $60k.
“Over 1/2 million “professionals” in Miami? You’re out of your mind.”
This was actually for the entire Miami statistical area. It encompasses all three counties and workers working in between counties. If you want just Miami-Dade area the number would be roughly 225,000. But the total number of workers is only 1,027,920.
So roughly a 1/4 a million “professionals” in Miami and another 1/4 of million in the neighboring counties.
“Maybe you’re considering all employees of a “professional occupation” to be “professionals”, i.e. classifying low-level admin assistants of a law firm as “professionals” just b/c they work in a law firm. But this logic is obviously flawed.”
A low-level admin assistant of a law firm would not be considered to be a law occupation. They are counted in the office and administration support occupation. Although a law clerk, court report, legal assistant would. However these jobs still pay very well. I would consider a legal assistant who has a degree and makes on average $40k a professional job.
And whether you consider these jobs professional or not is besides the point. If you make $60k who cares if someone considers you professional or not. To be honest I left out professions like Detectives, Criminial Investigators, Fire inspectors, etc. who all make on average about $70k.
The average salary in Miami-Dade alone is $40k. About 20% of people in Miami-dade makes on average $60k or more.
But the problem is there is about 2.4 million people in Miami-Dade but only roughly 1 million workers. Even after you subtract out the people not old enough to work thats still a big disparity. Which is why household income is low. You have one person making $40k in a household of 3 or 4. And it’s also why the per capita income is low. There are simply a lot of undocumented workers. There numbers are counted in the census but their undocumented pay isn’t. So you have a large gap between groups. But the educated group seem to be doing very well.
Here is another stat. About 20% of the people in Miami-Dade have a bachelors degree or higher. It doesn’t take a genius to see that this 20% is probably the majority of the 20% that makes $60k or higher.
The average starting salary out of FIU for a simply undergrad business degree is $40k. And were not talking about UM were talking about FIU, a school that only cost $4k a year to attend. Heck the starting salary for their law school is almost $70k.
So there seems to be a large disparity between the have’s and have-nots, but there does seem to be a decent size of haves. And given the high concentration of people not attending college (or even graduating high school) transitioning into the haves seem to be straight forward.
Gixxer, I’m not even really sure what point you’re arguing, but relative to other major metros (DC/NYC etc etc) there are far fewer well paying white collar jobs in Miami. Period. Come down here and see for yourself, digging through the BLS archives won’t help you.
This is tied directly to the education stats people have mentioned here. The % of people with at least a Bachelor’s degree in Miami is less than 20%. In the DC and Boston areas it is around 40%, and in SF or Seattle it is 50%. The low level of educational attainment here is and will continue to be, a major barrier in Miami’s economic development.
Enzo – On Shore Club, people were saying the wealthy wouldn’t change their spending, etc., etc., etc. (see a bunch of AJ’s old and silly posts). Well, the truly wealthy probably haven’t changed their lifestyle day to day living, they have made changes and those who aren’t that wealthy, those aspirational consumers and the like were hit hard, very hard. It has affected travel, hotels and restaurants a lot. Combine that with overleveraging and you have a recipe for foreclosure, delayed maintenance, etc…. My understanding is South Beach businesses are hurting and this is just one highly visible example.
I’m pointing out that the numbers are low, why do you need to lie and exagerate the truth to prove your point. The national average for people obtaining a bachelors degree is 25%. Miami-Dade county is lower than that at 21.7% as of 2000:
http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/12/12086.html
You are so bent on predicting doom and gloom that you can’t even read the post clearly. I agree with you that there is a low level of education attainment in Miami. This is a major factor in the haves and have-nots. It baffles me that people in Miami run around and complain that there are no jobs, but yet they don’t even have a degree and wouldn’t be qualified for the job even if it was there.
However among the people who are educated they seem to be doing very well. When you can make an average of $40k a year starting salary out of a fairly unknown school like FIU its pretty obvious that its not hard to get ahead. Most people just seem to be too busy dropping out of high school to notice.
So the problem isn’t really the amount of professionals at the top. Its the lack of people in the middle. Miami has the same percentage of doctors, laywers, engineers as most cities, they just have a disproportionate amount of people at the bottom (waitresses, food prep, maids, grounds keeping, etc) .
Gixxer-
I guess we’ll agree to disagree on the definition of “professional.” While I prefer to cite actual occupations, you seem to prefer a more broad focus on certain industries, given your list above.
I echo the sentiments of Miami Skeptic. Gixxer you sure seem to make alot of conclusive statements about South Fla demographics and you’ve never even lived here. I may take you seriously once you actually reside here for an extended period of time.
Why Bother Lucas-
How convenient of you to only include Brickell Key, South Beach and Coral Gables in your overall assessment of Miami. And your Overtown joke is pretty stupid – I figured you could at least come up with a neighborhood that is a little more remotely believeable. Christ, at least accuse me of being from West Kendall or something like that….
Guys like you who only talk in elitist/pompous overtones are usually the most destitute and envious of all. I can already see you’re an uneducated jackass who prides himself on name-dropping and being a pathetic hanger-on South Beach star-fu*ker.
Good luck with your pampering, douche.
Drew,
That’s just how their grouped because it would take too long to type out all the professions. For example under management occupations here is a breakdown of each occupation:
Chief Executives
General and Operations Managers
Legislators
Advertising and Promotions Managers
Marketing Managers
Sales Managers
Public Relations Managers
Administrative Services Managers
Computer and Information Systems Managers
Financial Managers
Compensation and Benefits Managers
Training and Development Managers
Human Resources Managers, All Other
Industrial Production Managers
Purchasing Managers
Transportation, Storage, and Distribution Managers
Construction Managers
Education Administrators, Preschool and Child Care Center/Program
Education Administrators, Elementary and Secondary School
Education Administrators, Postsecondary
Education Administrators, All Other
Engineering Managers
Food Service Managers
Funeral Directors
Gaming Managers
Lodging Managers
Medical and Health Services Managers
Natural Sciences Managers
Property, Real Estate, and Community Association Managers
Social and Community Service Managers
Managers, All Other
Obviously these are all professional jobs. Instead of copying each one I simply used the industry title.
Every industry I listed is comprised of occupations that are “white collar” require a degree and make on average $60k or more. Why would you not consider any of them professional????
I did not include sales people although many sales people make over $60k in Miami however this profession usually doesn’t require a specialized degree.
Here are some examples of some of the occupations that I did NOT include because they were in an industry that’s not considered professional:
Transpiration and material moving occupations
Airline Pilot, Copilot and Flight Engineers (average salary $127,710) = 2,080
Commercial Pilots (average salary $85,610) = 1,200
Air Traffic Controllers (average salary $113,840) = 650
This industry also includes bus drives which is why I skipped over it. Average salary for the entire industry is $31,590.
Sales and Related Occupations
First-Line Supervisors/Managers of Non-Retail Sales Workers (average salary $83,790) = 6,580
And why do you car if I live here or not. This is the information from the BLS. How does me living in Miami make this information any more or less true??? It’s not like I’m talking about something that a local would be more familiar with. No one knows exactly how many people work any job in Miami whether they live there or not. Studies like the one done by the BLS are going to be the only places where we can get these answers. Unless you going to go to each person one by one and ask them where they work and how much money they make.
All I’m saying is that if you look at the percentage of doctors, lawyers, marketing managers, accountants, analysts, etc. the BLS says the percentage of these jobs is similar to other places. For example Architects and Engineers make up 1% of the work force in Miami and 1% of the workforce in NY.
I’m not trying to manipulate anything I’m just posting facts. Why would any employer bring more jobs to Miami when there aren’t more qualified people to fill them. There is a good balance of jobs among people with degrees. However there is a shortage of jobs that do not require degrees. Here is the latest unemployment report from BLS:
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf
If you notice the national unemployment is 9.7%. But if you look at people who have a bachelors degree that rate drops to 5%.
I’m not trying to make Miami seem all rosy. The percentage of people without a decent education is appalling. But if the Census bureau says 21.7% of people have a bachelors degree I don’t see why people here want to say its lower than 20%????? Its like even the bad stuff isn’t even bad enough for them.
– RT, I agree.
– Dixxer, you’re looking at old stats, when good times and insanity were rolling. Do you know how many jobs in the financial, hospitality, and construction sectors have vanished since then? Architectural jobs in Miami? You must be kidding, right? Unemployment rate just hit 12%, and we know that the real rate must be around 20%.
Jackson Health has just announced that it isn’t getting supplies because payments to its suppliers have been late for months, while money for operations will only last until May. BTW, It’s the ONLY hospital in Miami for serious trauma. Don’t you guys break anything or get into a serious accident.
I’ve just posted that Shore Club, one of the hottest hotels and night spots in South Beach, is filling for bankruptcy.
Drew said,
“How convenient of you to only include Brickell Key, South Beach and Coral Gables in your overall assessment of Miami.”
Let’s see since I am only in Miami around 3 days a month and I am not there to work but to relax, why would I visit any of these other location? When I visit NYC I do not visit the Bronx or Harlem but I guess according to you then I would not being giving a fair assessment of NYC? Like I will repeat again I have never had any of these service issues you keep harping about but again I stick to mainly Brickell Key and Coral Gables. I guess I am name dropping since I like to hang out in the nice sections of the Miami? The reason for my first post was I was amused by all of these year round Miami residents (you) complaining about Miami being a terrible place to live. Not having any good jobs, terrible service, being over priced, etc. I guess the question then is why are they (you) still living in Miami if it is such a terrible place to live? I see I must have hit home when I made the joke “that the only way you could ever step foot in the Mandarin would be to be working as a valet, but unfortunately with your attitude you would not get the job”. I am sorry I did not realize you were actually turned down for that job. I recommend since you cannot stand Miami that you pack up your belongings and move to Detroit. Oh by the way I work in Finance and Lucas can confirm my IP address is coming from Bermuda which is one of the most expensive places to live in the world. Sorry to burst your bubble Drew about me being destitute.
How odd, I couldn’t never find any high-floor 2 bd unit smaller than 1,666 sf, which has been sold at Infinity in the last 5 months.
If there are so many high paying professionals and chichi folks in Miami, why is it that there are 130 homes for sale on tiny Venetian Islands alone (Hibiscus, Marco, Venetian, etc)? If they’re doing so well like Dixxer and others here say, why would these supposedly “wealthy” people from Miami be trying to sell their waterfront luxury pads at the bottom of the market? Some of you know how tiny those islands are; now imagine 130 homes for sale there…not including shadow inventory and delinquencies.
Let’s up the ante a little, shall we? Why would 80 Miami “wealthy” professionals be selling their dream waterfront homes on tiny and exclusive Palm Island? Why would they sell at the bottom?
Folks, these are some of the most exclusive and luxury places to live in Miami. And that’s an stunning amount of homes for sale on such tiny islands. I’m not even talking about the humongous shadow inventory out there and how many more are late on their mortgages. You figure out.
Enjoy.
why bother lucas-
I don’t think its a terrible place to live. I’ve lived here for over 10 years and generally enjoy it. But I am a realist and will point out the negative things in this city and will not sit back and listen to lies or inaccurate statements about Miami demographics or the real estate and employment market.
Lucas can check my IP address too. I’m in a submarine off the coast of Bermuda. I see you in my periscope and am about ready to launch a torpedo at your ass.
bozo,
I disagree. It looks like my other comment is still awaiting moderation so you may have not seen it yet but when you look at the unemployment rate you can clearly see that the majority of the jobs lost were jobs that do not require a college degree. The nation unemployment rate among people holding bachelors degrees is almost 5% lower than the regular unemployment rate. Given the small percentage of people with bachelors degrees in Miami you can be assured that the majority of jobs losses were not among them.
So using your examples hospitality and construction jobs aren’t professional occupations and weren’t in the discussion. Actually construction jobs do make up a bulk of the unemployed and is currently about 27.1%, but again they are not the professional jobs being discussed. Financial services however wasn’t affected as much and the unemployment rate is currently at 7%. By the time you take out the financial jobs that don’t require a degree you back down to acceptable levels.
But regardless I was mainly using percentages as compared to other cities. Architects and Engineers made up both 1% of the Miami and NY labor force when times were good and if that number reduces to .5% in Miami and NY my point still holds true.
Bill – It depends on what your priorities are – price-view-walkability to parks or stores. I just think Infinity is overpriced purchase and rental being near the bridge will be difficult getting out of the parking garage when the bridge goes up and down. If you want to be on that side of the Miami River – look at Plaza. Otherwise the north side of the river has more value in buildings like Marquis-900 Biscayne-Everglades On The Bay or 50 Biscayne. It’s just a personal preference but i like the north side better because you are near a park easier to access I-95 and im my opinion these buildings have better views .
Enzo,
If you would of not been so negative and emailed me I would of provided you with all the details of the condo I bought (the unit #, the size, how much I paid, HOA dues, taxes, etc). This is what I did for the other people that emailed me.
However you have been so very strange and crazy. You worry me and you creep me out. I don’t want you to have enough info on my condo that you can get my name from the public records and post it on this blog.
From what I gathered from your comments to me you are crazy enough and jealous enough to post my name on this blog. I don’t want someone to steal my information and destroy my great credit.
All I was trying to do was to provide honest and good information on the Infinity condo building since not many people on this blog know much about it.
So I don’t care anymore if you believe me or not. I will not be providing any additional information about my condo buy, nor will I be reply back to any of your negative and crazy posts.
I have placed you into the “crazy people jar “ (along with Ace) that comment on this blog.
Lucas – Can you take me off the dreaded shit list (awaiting moderation) on all of my comments. I appreciate the new gatekeeper system for you know who. But I am “usually” a reasonable poster.
LOL Gixxer. I swear I didn’t mean to call you Dixxer. I must have got confused while typing fast. I like the “bozo”, though. haha
Drew,
I hear you. I was only pointing out since Miami is tourist destination the Higher end housing market is not as dependent on local residents so therefore local salaries are not as important to this segment of the housing market.
Kramer
Thank you for your input. Is there any buildings you would recommend in Brickell Key or along Brickell Avenue? What about Asia, Santa Maria or Carbonell?
Gixxer,
1. What’s the date from your stats? When and where those numbers were issued? Does it cover this deep recession, high unemployment rates, and severe pay cuts?
2. If you leave hospitality and construction out of Miami labor market, what’s left? Retail? I already gave you evidence that the financial and health care sectors are in trouble here. A small number of tech jobs you find only in Orlando. What’s left?
3. Care to comment about my examples re: stunning amount of waterfront luxury home sales, by your supposedly “high-paid professionals”? Why would they be selling their dream waterfront homes now, at the bottom, if they’re so rich like you claim? Have you been to Venetian or Palm Islands? Have you been to Fisher Island? What about Palmetto Bay? Do you know anyone who lives in those places?
You keep showing data from websites, from many years ago, while we’ve been living in Miami for decades or born here. We’ve been working here for decades, got our degrees here, we have lived every single boom and bust, hurricanes, trends, bubbles, manage businesses here, invest locally and bought properties many times over, go out daily, live the place daily, etc. But you feel that you know better than us because of internet access, Google map, or a trip to Aventura Mall? Are you a Millennium by any chance? You seem like one.
owneratinfinity,
BOO!
Now I let you go back to “managing complex computers for corporations”.
Miami is fine despite the recession and high unemployment. I was driving down Collins Av. on South Beach both Monday and Tuesday and was shocked at the sheer number of people out on the streets. I kept thinking what are all these people doing out on a Monday until you realize that 90% of the locals and the tourists do have a job and enough money to keep the economy going. It is not collapsing by any means. And as far as enough people with money the “underground” economy keeps us thriving. So don’t believe the doom and gloom. The bottom is in. You want another anecdotal example?. Has anyone here ever been to a Miami Heat Game? I am always impressed at number and the type of people that fill up the arena with 20,000 people just about every game – especially the lower bowl where tickets go for $150. plus and spending $25. for a coke and a hot dog. And that arena is packed even though the Heat is a mediocre 500 team this year. Trust me – Miami is fine. The condo’s are slowly filling up and yes the bottom in prices is behind us.
Gixxer 1000 — If you really believe 1 out of every 5 workers in Miami is a “white-collar professional,” you really are out of your mind. It’s as simple as that.
If there really, truly are 500,000 professionals in Miami, then why the hell is it taking to long to sell 30,000 condos? Why, as mentioned above, are high-end areas seeing huge numbers of homes on the market? Aside from a job relocation, why would just about any educated, “white collar” professional, let alone hundreds of such people, try to sell at the bottom of the market?
Kramer,
You said,
Miami is fine despite the recession and high unemployment. I was driving down Collins Av. on South Beach both Monday and Tuesday and was shocked at the sheer number of people out on the streets. I kept thinking what are all these people doing out on a Monday until you realize that 90% of the locals and the tourists do have a job and enough money to keep the economy going. It is not collapsing by any means. And as far as enough people with money the “underground” economy keeps us thriving. So don’t believe the doom and gloom. The bottom is in. You want another anecdotal example?. Has anyone here ever been to a Miami Heat Game? I am always impressed at number and the type of people that fill up the arena with 20,000 people just about every game – especially the lower bowl where tickets go for $150. plus and spending $25. for a coke and a hot dog. And that arena is packed even though the Heat is a mediocre 500 team this year. Trust me – Miami is fine. The condo’s are slowly filling up and yes the bottom in prices is behind us.
—> thanks it is nice to see a positive comment for a change
—-> yes I see the same thing in the streets of South Beach and Brickell. Peolpe are spending money. The eating places in brickell are getting busier since I moved into my place.
—-> more peolpe are moving into these empty condos, too – in Feb my developer sold 15 new condos in Infinity and none were bulk sales.
Gixxer 1000,
Why do you keep insisting are trying to tell the bloggers on this site that there is any high paying jobs in Miami? If this blog is a random sample of Miami area then I would say there is no year round resident in Miami that makes over $75k.
Kramer, in the past some parts of MIA were a ghost town-during the dark days of the financial collapse. Agree with you now, however, as activity is occurring all over the place. just not at the crazy pace and level of 2006. people are out and about, enjoying themselves. just not doing so through debt. lots of people have cash to spend. even the performing arts center sells out.
Joe,there are a fair number of white collar jobs in MIA. plenty of people make decent money. we just have a larger share of people who make very little money (it all goes to the folks who make decent money!) Lots of money does exist in south florida. the reason 30,000 condos are still on the market has much less to do with a lack of potential white collar buyers-and more to do with asking prices which are too high. upper middle class folks will buy a bargain unit, but not over pay for a unit. the 30k units will reduce to zero as prices drop-simple economics. no demand for the supply at current prices. drop another 10% to 20% and you will clear the market. A 300k condo is risky, but a $200k condo carries far less risk for the owner.
why bother lucas, are you serious? nobody making over $75k? plenty of households and many individuals exceed that number. we have an enormous number of financial, higher ed, international trade, law, etc sector of workers who do make plenty of cash. how carefully they spend it is really what is of importance to people today.
Enzo #199 – Nice post. It is telling for sure.
Kramer #210 – Is is spring break…about time South Beach got busy! I was getting seriously worried. We need a resurgence of modeling industry, movies being filmed, and other visible stuff to reinvigorate SoBe. I want Miami area to do well but it is unfortunately a bit more than a tad lawless down here.
gables said: “no demand for the supply at current prices. drop another 10% to 20% and you will clear the market. A 300k condo is risky, but a $200k condo carries far less risk for the owner.”
– I agree with the $200K versus $300K….but that is 33%, not the “10% to 20%”. At 1/3 lower, the market would clear here. 🙂
Kramer — “Miami is fine”? Really?
I love Miami, but it’s far from fine. When’s the last time a big company came into Miami and created good jobs? What’s the unemployment rate? The local government, by its own admission, could be as little as weeks away from bankruptcy and/or receivership. Mass transit is being cut, not expanded. Taxes are trending higher and higher. The r.e. scene is a mess. Statistically, Miami remains one of the 5 poorest Metro areas in the *country,* and it’s only something like 2% wealthier than it was when Time magazine ran its famous cover story on Miami 20-30 years ago.
Miami is “fine” for people who move to Miami with money. Miami is far from fine for people trying to make it *in* Miami.
Joe
Good point.
Remember in the go-go real estate years the target demographic for downtown condos was the ubiquitous “young professional.” The only problem with this marketing ploy was that there were not alot of young professionals here anyway, and of the ones here, nobody could afford the astronomical prices. So now instead of young professional end-users you’ve got vacant units or developers and absentee Venezuelean owners renting out to Hialeah streetwalkers.
Gixxer the argument has grown tiresome but I’ll say one more time that your define professional way too loosely. I’m sorry but professional occupations require more than just a bachelor degree. Just b/c your title has a “manager” in it does not make you a professional. But at least you’re right about the income inequality issues here.
I pray that owneratinfinity does not have nightmares about that crazy strange creep Enzo. And owneratinfinity I hope you lock your balcony sliding glass door so that sicko boogeyman Enzo doesn’t scale 51 floors and attack you tonight.
“this blog is a random sample of Miami area then I would say there is no year round resident in Miami that makes over $75k”
Just FYI:
—>In my last project I worked with managers like myself and execs who lived full time in miami who made 100K or more a year. Plus I have some white collar freinds who also live full time in Miami who makes over 75k a year. So there are some folks.
—-> However I have noticed that there seems to be ALOT less peolpe in miami making 100K incomes then where I came from. I think it is only like 2% of the folks in Miami earn 100K or more.
—>The city I came from has been rated as the wealthiest city in the United States by CNN. It was ranked the most affluent city with a population over 250,000 in the United States with the lowest poverty rate of 6.3%. In 2007, it had the highest median income of a city with a population exceeding 250,000 in the nation at $84,942
—-> It had a low cost of living (250K for 3000 sf brick house with a pool) and high incomes (median 85K). Many large corporations had thier head offices in the city.
—-> So it was a big change for me to came to miami. There is a very large diff between rich and poor in Miami.
Joe,
you said,
“upper middle class folks will buy a bargain unit, but not over pay for a unit”
“A 300k condo is risky, but a $200k condo carries far less risk for the owner”
—> I agree 100% with you. That’s was what I was thinking when I purchased my condo.
sorry that last comment was for gables not for joe
Drew,
You said,
“I pray that owneratinfinity does not have nightmares about that crazy strange creep Enzo. And owneratinfinity I hope you lock your balcony sliding glass door so that sicko boogeyman Enzo doesn’t scale 51 floors and attack you tonight”
—> thanks for thinking about me – but I had a good life I do not need to live forever 🙂
I doubt if any one on this board makes minimum wage by looking at the number of posts. Unless of course if you work for the government. lol
Joe – Could you enlighten us to why you plan on moving to Miami if it is to quote you – “Taxes are Trending Higher” – “5th Poorest Metro Area” – “High Unemployment” – “Bankrupt” – ” A Mess” and about to be blown away in a Category Five Major Hurricane? People like me and Owner@Infinity and DJ and JCrimes and Charles and Wild Bill and Enzo and Visionary and JL and RenterTom and Drew and Carlos and Swiss Luxury and MakesMeThink and couple hundred thousand other current Miami residents are doing fine thank you here in Miami. Your problem is, that we in general tend to see the glass as half full whereas you see it as half empty. You see – Attitude is half the battle.
Miami Herald Front Page online 3/11/2010
NEW LIFE IN THE BIG CITY AS CONDOS FILL UP – “Condos In Downtown Miami are no longer ghost towns as YOUNG PROFESSIONALS move in and drive new business stores and restaurants”.
“South Florida Business Journal, Thursday, March 11, 2010 — Florida continues to be dogged by an increasing number of foreclosures, according to the latest numbers from RealtyTrac.
In fact, foreclosure activity in the Sunshine State rose by nearly 15 percent in February, over the previous month, and was up more than 16 percent from the prior-year period, according to the Irvine, Calif.-based online real estate company.
Florida also continued to post the nation’s second-highest total number of foreclosures, with 54,032 properties receiving a foreclosure filing in February.
The picture was even more bleak in Palm Beach County, where there were 4,490, or one in every 143, homes in foreclosure. That was up 62.5 percent from a month earlier, when there were 2,762 foreclosures filed, and up 68.4 percent from February 2009, when there were 2,665 foreclosure filings.
In Miami-Dade County, there were 6,671 foreclosures, or one in every 147 homes, up 44 percent from a month earlier, when there were 3,393 filings, and up 86.6 percent from a year earlier, when there were 3,575 filings.”
===
Oh yeah, everything is fine in Miami. Look all the people walking on South Beach, while one of the hottest hotel there, Shore Club, is facing foreclosure. Look all those rosy stats from 2000. But that’s weird; if Miami is full of “professionals” swimming in money, why are they losing their homes? If everybody here is so wealthy, why did foreclosures in Miami increase 44% from Jan 2010? No, that’s not typo, it’s a stunning 44% increase in foreclosures as the article above states.
Please, don’t pay attention to actual numbers and reality, just keep walking on South Beach during the day. Financial responsibility is only for grown-ups, and as we know, everyone will be young forever and retire happily after. Everyone will be a self-employed consultant or model! Please don’t pay attention to the fact that there currently are 130 homes for sale on Venetian Islands and another 80 homes on Palm Island alone, two of the most exclusives places to live in Miami. I know, who would want a waterfront luxury home with a boat dock and pool. Maybe those “wealthy professionals” got sick of those nice homes and want a condo instead, right?
owneratinfinity – “—-> … There is a very large diff between rich and poor in Miami.”
– I agree. Miami-Dade County is pretty close to a third world area in the U.S. where you are either rich or you are just scraping by. I think this is more a function of the high percentage of people from third world countries (and second world) that have come to the U.S. and settle here….for one reason or another they don’t move north, or if they are smart and ambitious they move north causing a bit of a brain drain leaving behind the others. Part of that is the lack of opportunities here. Another issue to consider is the geography, Miami is after all the further most tip of the peninsula so it is a far distance to a lot of things…doesn’t work as a central U.S. hub like Atlanta, Denver, etc…. except for South America. So, the geography is both a plus but also a negative in that it is remote to the rest of the U.S. The population demographics are skewed too due to the fact that a high percent of residents are retired so they aren’t adding to a dynamic growing economy, rather pay for low level services (except health care of course). Just some of my observations….
“South Florida Business Journal, Thursday, March 11
Bauer: Half of South Florida banks problematic
Bauer Financial found deteriorating financial conditions at half of South Florida’s banks ranking them problematic or worse.
The Coral Gables-based company issued ratings for 72 of the 78 local banks, with those not rated either too new or recently closed by regulators.
Bauer Financial gave 36 of the banks it rated just two stars (problematic) or worse in the fourth quarter, up from 28 in the third quarter.”
===
No problema, keep on walking on South Beach.
The Miami Herald, posted on Thu, Mar. 11, 2010
New life in the big city as condos filling up by Elaine Walker
Opera Tower resident Jennifer DeVoid walks her dog Emma Lou through Margaret Pace Park Thursday, March 11.
Out of the ashes of the downtown Miami condo collapse, a bright spot is emerging: a community of full-time residents slowly starting to turn the area into a 24/7 city.
A new study by the Miami Downtown Development Authority, in partnership with Goodkin Consulting/Focus Real Estate Advisors, has found that 74 percent of the 22,079 urban condominium units built since 2003 are occupied. They stretch from the Brickell district south of downtown Miami north to State Road 112.
This reflects a 20 percent increase over the 62 percent occupancy rate reported in a similar study completed in May 2009 and means the glut of new condos is being absorbed more quickly than expected. Sharp price cuts and a willingness to rent units, rather than sell them in a down market, have paved the way.
Before the real estate bust, young professionals such as Melinda Reilly wouldn’t have been able to afford a two-bedroom condo at Met 1 in downtown Miami with its wrap-around balcony and view of Biscayne Bay. But last July she sold her suburban Hollywood house and moved downtown where she is renting.
“It’s cheaper than the mortgage on my house and I get more for my money, plus somebody to take care of everything,” said Reilly, 31, a group sales manager at Doral Golf Resort & Spa. “It’s exciting downtown. It’s really social. Whether it’s a Tuesday or Saturday, you always find a lot of people out in all the restaurants.”
A wave of new urban residents began arriving last year as developers and lenders got more aggressive about cutting prices to move units. At the same time, individual owners, who bought condos for investments, realized renters could at least generate some revenue to cover hefty mortgages.
For downtown leaders who have been pushing for years to revitalize the area, the condo bust has worked to their advantage.
“In a weird sort of way, it has been good for revitalization,” said Neisen Kasdin, vice chairman of the Downtown Development Authority. “It accelerated the revitalization of downtown. Without the overbuilding and the great pool of rental units, downtown would not have been populated to the same extent.”
The DDA study found that 68 percent of the 22,079 new condos in the area have been sold, a 6 percent jump from the May 2009 survey. The average sale price downtown was $300,306, although prices were significantly lower than that in every area of the greater downtown area except Brickell Avenue.
“It’s all about affordability,” said Craig Werley, president and owner of Focus Real Estate Advisors.
“The availability of discounted pricing and good rental values is what’s creating this dynamic. It’s a dramatic improvement over what might have been and what a lot of folks expected.”
Now, downtown is no longer a ghost town after5 p.m. or on weekends. It’s not uncommon to see people walking their dogs or jogging along Biscayne Boulevard, and young families with baby strollers on Brickell Avenue.
“It’s like a little mini-Manhattan,” said Andreas del Corral, 28, who closed on his unit in Met 1 in May 2008. “When I first moved in, you would only see a few people here and there. Now, the restaurants and bars are filling up. You see groups of five and 10 people walking up and down Brickell, going out for the night.”
The study shows there are still 7,010 unsold units in the new downtown area condominiums, compared with the 8,000 that existed seven months earlier. The biggest chunk of remaining units — 51 percent — are in the Brickell area, followed by 23 percent in the Central Business District.
If occupancy trends continue, the study predicts that downtown Miami’s existing condo inventory would effectively be eliminated over the next 25 months.
But Werley and partner Lew Goodkin also caution that this is by no means a sign that the condo real estate crisis is nearing an end.
“For the developers and lenders we’ve got years ahead of us before we create a real true equilibrium,” said Goodkin of Goodkin Consulting.
Renters account for about 52 percent of the occupied condo units downtown.
As far as Landy Labadie is concerned, renters are better for business at his downtown restaurant and nightclub. The director of operations for Mia at Biscayne has been “shocked” since opening in August with the amount of foot traffic. Mia’s business is running about 20 percent over projections.
“Renters are the ones that have the disposable income to go out,” Labadie said. “Owners are typically older and they’re worried about paying the mortgage, maintenance and insurance.”
As the condo buildings fill up with new residents, it’s having an increasingly positive effect on downtown Miami’s commercial base. Residents want places to eat, drink and shop.
The number of retail businesses in downtown Miami grew by 42 in 2009, according to the DDA. That marked the third straight year the district has seen 40 or more net new openings. Since 2005, 152 new retailers have opened downtown. And the growth have come amid an economic downturn that has seen retail contract across the country.
A recent Integra Realty Resources survey of the 50 largest markets in the U.S. found that downtown Miami’s retail vacancy rate of 5.06 percent is among the five lowest in the nation. That’s a big drop from mid-2008, when the vacancy rate climbed as high as 12.5 percent, according to CoStar Group.
“I think people are looking to downtown in terms of leading the way for economic recovery,” said Leo Zabezhinsky, manager of business development and real estate for the DDA.
One of the newest retail arrivals downtown is New York Bagel Deli, which opened about three weeks ago. Already owner Evan Steinman has had to add more employees for the busy lunch hour and extend his closing time to 6 p.m.
“Business is a lot better than we thought, without even advertising or telling people that we’re there,” Steinman said.
AT Ecco Pizzateca + Lounge, weekend crowds have grown over the last year to about 100 each night with a steady crowd of regulars, owner Brian Basti said.
“People are getting more accustomed to their surroundings and venturing out of their condos,” he said.
“It’s still dead some nights, but right now it’s really on the verge of turning the corner.”
Even downtown veterans such as retailer La Epoca see the impact of the new residents. La Epoca’s sales are up more than 25 percent so far this year.
“I see new people coming in and introducing themselves every week,” owner Tony Alonso said. “It’s definitely moving in the right direction. I’m a merchant. . . . I want more.”
Gables
Obviously you did not get my joke. It seems everyboy who is a local that posts on this site keeps arguing there are no high paying jobs in Miami. I was just pointing out the obvious fact that since they believe there are no high paying jobs then they must not have one. By the way I would not consider making $75K a year a high paying job. Where I live if you earned $75K you are probably an adminstrative assistant or a secretary.
I thought you might find this table of Household Incomes of interest. For example taking the top segment in the table of Households in Miami-Dade making over $200K matches up pretty well with all of the USA. Unfortunately at the lower end this is not true with Miami having a much greater proportion of the Have Nots. Looking at the table you can see that Miami Household Incomes have a much greater divergence(Deviation) between the “Haves” and the “Have Nots” relative to the rest of the country (distribution is much more skewed) . I am guessing this difference is even greater today than it was in 2005 (Pre recession). I can see why now there are so many angry posts from the year round residents because there is a very good chance they are a “Have Not”.
Table 1: Annual Household Income United States, and Miami-Dade 2005
Miami-Dade United States
Less than $10,000 12.4% 8.7%
$10,000 to $14,999 8.1% 6.2%
$15,000 to $24,999 14.2% 12.0%
$25,000 to $34,999 12.4% 11.5%
$35,000 to $49,999 15.5% 15.1%
$50,000 to $74,999 15.2% 18.9%
$75,000 to $99,999 9.1% 11.4%
$100,000 to $149,999 7.4% 10.1%
$150,000 to $199,999 2.7% 3.2%
$200,000 or more 3.1% 3.0%
Median income $37,148 $46,242
Mean income $55,430 $62,556
RT, my point was if the market drops another 10-20% you will clear it. A secondary point is regarding the absolute value of condos. A 300k condo carries much risk-and many condos were purchased in the past well above this value and will require concessions by the mortgage holder to sell below this point. People are very leary of opening their pocketbook for $300k. But at $200k they are much more likely to buy.
The market really does not need to drop much more. Two bedrooms that are priced in the $200k-$250k area sell off quite effectively. But many of those same types of units are offered for $300k-$400k due to the mortgage. These dont sell. Dropping their price to $250k is not actually a drop in the market-the market is already there. People just need to recognize where the market is and equal that value in list prices. Distress sales are legitimate and have set the market.
We just have alot of fantasy owners who dont understand this-just like we still have alot of fantasy buyers who think the market will drop to $125 sq ft. There does exist an equilibrium point that appears to be rather solid in the area of $150-$200 sq ft. It will not drop below that in general because the units are too much of a bargain. and it will not rise above that because units are overpriced and too risky (ie buying at $250 sq fot and the unit drops to $200 sq ft is a 20% loss-too much risk for many with $200 a legitimate reality).
New article for more controversy. Although it may one day really become a nice place to live, I wonder who has all this connection or how Miami Herald is affiliated with the RE market that they keep try to sell the same story!
New life in downtown Miami as condos fill up
Condos in downtown Miami are no longer ghost towns as young professionals move in and drive new business to area stores and restaurants.
Joe,
“If you really believe 1 out of every 5 workers in Miami is a “white-collar professional,” you really are out of your mind. It’s as simple as that.”
For Miami-Dade alone I said there are 225,000 white collar professionals. which is close to 1 in 5 workers in Miami. But were talking about actual workers. There are 2.4 million people in Miami. So out of 2.4 million people, 225,000 hold a white collar professional job. So basically 1 out every 10 people in Miami has a professional white collar job as of May 2008. This isn’t my interpretation, these are facts.
If you look at census figures you see that there are 2.4 million people in Miami-Dade. When you subtract the people under 18 and over 65 that leaves 1.5 million people. However if you look at the civilian labor force (which even includes 16 year olds) the civilian labor force is 1,262,400 people. This number is used to calculate the unemployment which is now 11.7%.
So while you have roughly 225,000 white collar professionals out of a total of 1,114,700 workers. If you actually wanted a true comparison you should probably compare it to the 1.5 million people who are eligible to work. So basically 15% of eligible workers in Miami have a white collar professional job. This is a very low number, especially considering there isn’t much of a middle class. I don’t see why you guys think having 225,000 white collar professional jobs is not possible in a city of 2.4 million people.
Let’s leave Gixxer alone! He is entitled to his opinion regardless of how wrong it is.
Gixxer,if you were a resident of SOFL like us, you would really know what you are talking about. Once you move down here and realize the reality going on, I am sure you will agree with most of us.
Miami is a jobless city. Most people with a college degree do not live here..salaries are low and the city does not offer much other than better climate conditions if you like the sun.
I do respect your points of view, but as someone has already posted before, you should be less cocky and listen to people who live here.
Welcome to Miami, but do not expect to find DC or NYC here, or you will be very frustrated.
More great news from the wonderful Miami city! And some people say the real estate market is rebouncing..lolol
Every single day is another project going down.
Miami building housing Capital Grille loses $63M foreclosureSouth Florida Business Journal – by Brian Bandell
The downtown Miami office building housing the Capital Grille restaurant is set for foreclosure auction.
On March 9, Bank of America, representing a commercial mortgage-backed securities fund, agreed to a $63.8 million foreclosure judgment with defendant Rivergate Investors, according to Miami-Dade County Circuit Court records. It was based on $58.5 million outstanding under the mortgage, plus interest and fees.
The Rivergate Plaza, at 444 Brickell Ave., home to The Capital Grille, and the adjoining building, at 77 S.E. Fifth St. are set for public auction on April 28 on the county’s Web site.
The 10-story building at 444 Brickell contains 342,978 square feet. It was built in 1972. Rivergate Investors’ building on Southeast Fifth Street has 168,101 square feet in three stories and was built in 1976.
Rivergate Investors bought the buildings for $30 million in 1998 and refinanced them in 2006. BofA and the CMBS fund filed for foreclosure in October.
Rivergate Plaza is tired old decrepit building. The owners milked it for every cent they could then BK it. But it is a great location and would look nice with a new 60 story office tower maybe hotel – or just high enough to block the view of Brickell On The River condo owners who thought they were buying “water view” apartments. Please, if your going to buy in a building always check the property next door to see if they have rights to build higher than you. Btw – I agree with most of owner@infinity commentary but one day he may lose his precious ocean water view.
How is my opinion wrong. I’m simply reciting facts from the BLS. How would me living there change these facts. Its not like I’m going to go around counting people if I move there. I never said there was an abundance of jobs. Only 15% of people eligible to work have white collar professional job. How is that an abundance of jobs. Its a low number. All I’m saying is that a small minority of educated people are doing very well while the majority of uneducated workers are struggling.
I swear I don’t understand you people. How am I coming off as cocky by giving the actual statistic from the BLS. These statistics are low so I don’t know why they seem to be so offensive to people. No one is giving any statistics to refute them. This is how the conversation is going.
Gixxer – The BLS says there are 225,000 people out 2.4 million making x amount of money.
Rebutall – That can’t be right because everyone knows Miami sucks and I don’t have a good job and neither do the people I know. How dare you give us these statistics we live here and know exactly who has what job. Besides those statistics are from the middle of 2008, don’t you know they’ve been laying off people with degrees left and right. I know this contradicts all the evidence actually collected and reported but we see it every day so we know.
Why on earth would you trust the BLS for unemployment statistics but NOT for employment statistics.
It sound to me like a lot of people here are the ones who are stuggling and they don’t want to face the fact that the reason they’re struggling is them not Miami. Get educated and become part of the 15% that are doing good and stop saying its because there are no jobs in Miami. My fiance and I have already lined up positions in Miami that would put our household income over 100k if we decide to move. I have no reason to talk Miami up or down. I don’t even know if I’m moving here. I’m simply relaying the data that I have collected.
So again the BUREAU of LABOR STATISTICS says that about 20% of people working have a white collar professional job in an occupation that makes on average $60k or more as of the middle of 2008 when unemployment was about 7%. I don’t think all these people were fired as the unemployment rate moved to 11%. Especially when we know that the unemployment rate for people with bachelors degree is HALF of the regular unemployment rate.
On a side not I just got my acceptance letter from Columbia University! Still waiting on MIT and Harvard. So far I’ve been admitted to UM, USC, and Columbia. Maybe I’ll get some scholarship $$$ from one of the Ivy’s and I’ll skip Miami and you guys wont have to put up with me posting actual facts and stuff.
I was wondering if anybody had opinion of the following buildings – Asia, Santa Maria or Carbonell? Is there any buildings you would recommend in Brickell Key or along Brickell Avenue? I am looking to rent a 2 bedroom condo with Bay water views. I want the building to be newer with nice amenities – Pool, Spa, gym. I do not need alot of storage since I will be only using this place for approximately 10 days per month. Thank you
Kramer,
you said,
Btw – I agree with most of owner@infinity commentary but one day he may lose his precious ocean water view.
—> in front of my building looking east there are some low rasie office buildings, (between s maimi ave and brickell ave) so they could build a tall building in front of my building, however it would have to be well over 50 stories high to block my view and also the new building’s east view would be 100% blocked by Conrad hotel since the new building would be so close to it. The new building would have to be like 70 stories for it to have some good views, and it’s unlikly that they will build something that tall on that land.
—> So i am not worried about
Guys,
I have lived in major cities on the West coast, the middle of country and now on the East coast. (Miami).
What I have noticed is that if you make good money (like over 100K per year) and you are very careful with how you spend it (be smart, see value, be a good shopper, get the best deal you can, buy the smallest house in the best areas, don’t rush into things, do lots of research) and live below your means you can have a pretty nice lifestyle regardless of what city you live.
In these cities, I was homeowner (found the smallest houses that would fit my needs in the best areas in my price range) and I had the best lifestyle possible while paying the least amount of money per month.
What I notice is that many people when they are young they make a lot of bad decisions, they get involved the wrong person who is liability rather then asset, they don’t apply themselves by going to college or working hard to obtain a good paying career. They try to find the easy way out, however making good money is hard no one gives it to you.
They buy houses that are too large for just them, so they can show off to their friends and credit was easy. If they do start making good money, they think the good money will keep coming forever so they raise their monthly expenses to match their higher income. Then their high income goes away.
Even though I have very low expenses and have enough in savings to weather the economic storm we are in I still worry about the economy now more then ever. I think the high incomes that we enjoyed for all those years may not be coming back for a very long time.
I think the smart people will save their money and reduce their expenses so they can live under their means for the long term.
This bad economy may actually help young people who are just stating out in the job market to live under their means. (just like the folks that lived though the great depression did)
And instead of bragging on how much they spent on something, they will brag on how they got a good deal on something and how much money they are saving per month.
More celebrities unloading real estate….and golly gee he didn’t turn around and buy in Icon downtown! LOL Oh, and now HE IS A RENTER! LOL $3.5M late to the renter’s camp Alex.
———-
A-Rod unloads Coral Gables home for $8.5 million
JOAN FLEISCHMAN
Alex “A-Rod” Rodriguez and ex-wife Cynthia Scurtis Rodriguez, owners of a bayfront estate in Coral Gables, just sold the one-acre-plus property — for $8.5 million. They paid $12 million for the six-bedroom home at 181 E. Sunrise Ave. in December ’04.
No word on the buyer’s identity. Deal closed in the name of a trustee, Jorge Gavira.
Coldwell Banker’s Polly Schiff and Susy Dunand Silva (she’s A-Rod’s sister) represented the Rodriguezes. Raul and Javier Brizuela of Brizuela &Associates handled the sale for the buyers.
Cynthia Rodriguez is now renting a home on Miami Beach’s Palm Island.
A-Rod has house-hunted on celeb-studded Star Island, as well as exclusive Indian Creek Island. But word is he is looking to build on Miami Beach’s North Bay Road.
bill,
you said,
I was wondering if anybody had opinion of the following buildings – Asia, Santa Maria or Carbonell? Is there any buildings you would recommend in Brickell Key or along Brickell Avenue? I am looking to rent a 2 bedroom condo with Bay water views. I want the building to be newer with nice amenities – Pool, Spa, gym. I do not need alot of storage since I will be only using this place for approximately 10 days per month. Thank you
—> it’s great to get folks opinions from this blog, however do what I did, go to condoreports.com check the costs of the condos in the buildings in the area you want and select the buildings that are in your price range.
—> then have the listing agent or the devlopers sales agent show you the various condos in the buildings. This help you top pick hat building and location you want then focus your search for condos in that building.
—> Get all the information about the building HOA fees for that condo, check the property taxes on the condo on-line, do your research.
_—> work all the numbers
—-> then make the best deal you can on the place you want in the building you want, if you can not get the deal you want then wait, there is no rush to buy condo. The good deals with around a while.
—> the process is simple, it just takes some time.
Gixxer –
You said,
It sound to me like a lot of people here are the ones who are struggling and they don’t want to face the fact that the reason they’re struggling is them not Miami. Get educated and become part of the 15% that are doing good and stop saying its because there are no jobs in Miami. My fiancée and I have already lined up positions in Miami that would put our household income over 100k if we decide to move. I have no reason to talk Miami up or down. I don’t even know if I’m moving here. I’m simply relaying the data that I have collected.
—-> I agree in what you are saying here, I have noticed the same thing on this blog.
—-> And for the record you have always been a very level headed very sane person on this blog using common sense as well as facts to support your opinions, I wish everyone was like that.
—-> Your career will be a success regardless of where you go to college.
Bill,
I think Icon Brickell is the most affordable of these buildings.
I have found this info online for you. Hope it helps.
A 2bd in Asia is around 1800 sqft and is going about 5k
Carbonell – 2bd around 1,300-1,700 sqft for 3.5k
Santa Maria- 2bd around 2,100 – 2,600 sqft for5.5-6.5k
My favorite is Santa Maria if budget is not an issue. I own an apartment there and did live there for many years before I moved to the beach.
If you like nice ammenities and want to pay less, I would still go for Icon Brickell. You can get something there around 3k.
Isn’t it interesting that posters who hardly brag about their assets, even though being more insightful and sincere, are the ones being more vilified or discredited? That’s Miami. It’s all about appearances and hustling, baby. Everyone in Miami is supposed to be special, classy, deserves a medal, and has a bull’s eye on the back. No, and you don’t actually need cash flow producing assets to achieve all that…just brag how wonderful you’re.
Why Bother Lucas post #230,
Excellent post. This is the type of information I have been trying to relay. You touched on the difference being more post recession. Here is the information that I complied from 2008 tax returns. This information is based on adjusted gross income so actual income would be higher but it gives you an ideal about how things break out.
Total tax returns filed in Miami-Dade for the 2008 year = 976,699
Adjusted Gross Income
$50k and under: 762,512 (78%)
$50k – $75k: 91,054 (9%)
$75k – $100k: 44,990 (5%)
$100k – $200k : 50,945 (5%)
$200k and above: 27,198 (3%)
So just as Why Bother Lucas pointed out the top is not the problem. And considering 21.7% of the people in Miami-Dade have a bachelors degree or higher, again it seems pretty simply what you need to do to be in the top 22% that make $50k or more. But you have a huge amount (78.3%) of uneducated workers. Where do you expect these people to work at without a degree????
The national unemployment rate among people with a bachelors degree is 5%!!!!!
Here is the current national employment changes from Jan 10 to Feb 10 for several industries.
Construction
Jan 10 Employment 5,619,000
Feb 10 Employment 5,555,000
Change -64,000
Trade, transportation, and utilities
Jan 10 Employment 24,637,000
Feb 10 Employment 24,623,000
Change -14,000
Transportation and warehousing
Jan 10 Employment 4,140,700
Feb 10 Employment 4,128,700
Change -12,000
Professional and Business Services
Jan 10 Employment 16,518,000
Feb 10 Employment 16,569,000
Change 51,000
Education and health Services
Jan 10 Employment 19,373,000
Feb 10 Employment 19,405,000
Change 30,000
Job losses have essentially stopped with us only losing a net 36,000 jobs in February. However many sectors have started adding jobs. The biggest industry bringing job losses down is construction. And remember the northeast was just hit with huge blizzards which essentially stopped construction in February. Take out construction and we would have had a net increase.
Also take a look at the industries adding jobs and the industries losing jobs. If you have a bachelors degree or higher I doubt you in the category of the industries losing jobs.
Gixxer, you keep presenting old stats from 2008. Since then the labor market has had deep pay cuts, furloughs, full time jobs replaced by part-time jobs, closings, bankruptcies, etc. You’re living in the past.
owneratinfinity,
Thanks, I’ve always been more analytical which my fiance and I guess most people here relate with ANAL. Oh well, I own it. I wish more people would focus on actual numbers instead of news story that are written to make $$$.
I’m pretty pumped about the schools. I’m leaning toward going to school up north and then heading down to Miami after school, I think the market will be much better in 2011 anyway. Just worried about giving up my salary for a year.
Enzo,
The changes in employment are from Jan 10 to Feb 10. It doesn’t get more current than that. Professional and business services are adding jobs NOW.
As far as the other information from 2008, the unemployment rate hit 8.5% by the end of 2008. How does another few percent change anything, And I’ve clearly showed that the majority of the job losses are to people at the bottom without degrees. The majority of the job cuts, full-time to part-time changes, closings, etc. only serve to continue to push down the lower end. What does any of that have to do with what I’m talking about.
gables quote:
“Joe,there are a fair number of white collar jobs in MIA. plenty of people make decent money. we just have a larger share of people who make very little money (it all goes to the folks who make decent money!) Lots of money does exist in south florida.”
Why Bother Lucas quote:
“I thought you might find this table of Household Incomes of interest. For example taking the top segment in the table of Households in Miami-Dade making over $200K matches up pretty well with all of the USA. Unfortunately at the lower end this is not true with Miami having a much greater proportion of the Have Nots. Looking at the table you can see that Miami Household Incomes have a much greater divergence(Deviation) between the “Haves” and the “Have Nots” relative to the rest of the country (distribution is much more skewed) .”
I don’t know if you’re catching these posts or not, but it’s not just me. We are all saying pretty much the same thing. There is a decent amount of people at the top, there is just a LOT of people at the bottom. I could see how if you were at the bottom you’d think there aren’t many people at the top, but they’re there. You just don’t seem to notice them.
Gixxer 1000,
It is great to see that there are still young guys like yourself that are making plans so they can make a success of their lives.
A lot of guys I have met in Miami have been mostly lost and have no plans for the future.
You being pumped about your school and your future makes me feel more positive about my future.
I like being around positive people. Although I am worried about the economy I still try to think that tomorrow will be better then today.
Bulk buy at Related loft project for 35% off
South Florida Business Journal – by Brian Bandell
A Jamaican company bought 19 units in the Related Group of Florida’s Loft Downtown II for $2.7 million – or 35 percent less per square foot than the previous sales.
Kingston Properties Ltd. bought the units in the building, at 133 N.E. Second Ave. in downtown Miami, on March 5. The company’s executive director, Fayval Williams, said it is a publicly traded real estate investment trust in Jamaica with $6 million in assets as of Dec. 31. This is its first deal in Florida.
Williams said each unit was leased to residents.
“The units have flexibility in whether we rent or sell them down the line,” Williams said.
According to research by brokerage firm Condo Vultures LLC, Kingston Properties paid $168 a square foot for the units. Before the bulk deal, units in Loft II sold for an average of $259 a square foot.
Kramer — Like a lot of your amigos on this board, you seem to have a big problem with reading comprehension. As I said above, and as I’ve said about 50 times before, I love Miami. But I love Miami because I don’t need to *make a living* in Miami. As I’ve said, and as others have agreed, Miami is great for people who make money elsewhere and then move to Miami for the So. Fla. lifestyle. But there’s not a big population of young professionals in Miami, and upward social mobility is extremely difficult. That’s the reality, whether you want to admit it or not.
Gixxer,
Your data from 2008 won’t convince anyone who actually lives in Miami for many years, who doesn’t sell real estate/loans for a living or have to pump their r.e. purchase. Labor figures from the government are distorted by manipulations such as: temporary Census jobs, hilarious Job Birth/Death rates, stimulus to cronies, millions of unemployed who gave up looking for a job, part-time nation, etc.
Why would recruiters pay top dollar if there’s a gigantic supply of applicants? Simple law of supply and demand. Pay cuts, furloughs, outsourcing, and part-timers are the new norm.
Do I believe that we’re all going back to horse buggies? No, but I believe that there was an income bubble in America, which is another intrinsic part of the current deleveraging. Anyone who could fog a mirror was earning large incomes in the last ten years, while spending all into oblivion. It was a world phenomena. I called this income bubble long time ago, along with the other more visible bubbles. As usual, I took a lot of heat back then, too. Remember the story I told here about the know-all from MI who was going to save lots of money by moving to WPB? Now he’s destitute, by his own admission on another blog about real estate. Keep in mind that this fellow was always bragging about his Phd.
It may sound like an old cliche, but employees have to really bring money to the company now, in order to earn a good income (please don’t ask me what a good income is). And to achieve that takes unusual skills, real world experience, or be a well-connected crony. CA, MA, NY and several unions still have to face reality, but the day of reckoning will come sooner or later, as it’s unsustainable for 5 jobs in the private sector be paying for 1 job in the public sector. Don’t forget to include all the expensive welfare and mass immigration on top. The numbers don’t add.
I think that all this cleansing is a good thing, because the US has lost its ways. I come from a time when a CPA and Realtor would be the source of good deals. You always had a couple of good ones around, within your team. They used to help you make money, not only take away. Nowadays all they do is charge big $ for clerical work. That will eventually change, because it’s unsustainable as well. Check for yourself, ask Realtors in Miami what’s Cap Rate.
I’m not sure what else you need, as I’ve stated my case by posting current data (not from 2008, not from 2005, not from 2000), constant bankruptcies from supposedly thriving businesses catering to the well-off, fresh 44% increase in foreclosures from Jan 2010 and a 87% increase from Feb 2009, warning from Bauer Financial about 1/2 of SoFlo banks being in trouble, hundreds of homes for sale in exclusive tiny islands of Miami, ever growing unemployment rate, Jackson Health System disclosing that 4,500 layoffs are eminent and that its suppliers stopped delivering for lack of payment, etc, etc, etc.
In my opinion, if you have a stable job and life up there, now is not the time to take risk or bet all the chips. The time now is to hunker down and invest wisely. Don’t seek false trends from glossy brochures with long-legged models on boats or pools. There’s a reason all these young people are renting in downtown. They’re broke, live for trends, have low incomes and no credit. Or are looking for content to post on their Facebook and Twitter, to look interesting and adventurous. It’s called, Millenniums.
Gixxer 1000 — With all due respect, do you really believe those quotes prove your prior points?
For one thing, when people sell their homes and then *rent,* that doesn’t show a lot of short-term or even long-term confidence in the market as a whole, does it?
For another, the quotes in that piece seem to confirm what Renter Tom and others have been saying for a long time here: Renters love downtown right now because their rents (and, thus, lifestyles) are being *subsidized* by the actual unit owners. That might be good, on a short-term basis, for some renters and some restaurants and whatnot, but how is it good for the r.e. market overall?
One other thing: Is it just me, or do the numbers in that Miami Herald article not add up? If there were 8,000 condos available downtown 7 months ago and there are now 7,050 condos available, how is that a “24-month” absorption rate? Unless there’s been a massive uptick in sales in the past month or two that was masked in the data, my public-school math tells me this is a 48-month absorption rate. Otherwise, what am I missing here?
Gixxer #237 last sentence
Hooray! From my warped perspective as a born+raised northerner from the New England tundra glad to see that you now have the thought of deferring your “miami lifestyle” for another year or so.
I bet that the opportunities that could develop from staying up north and getting a degree from a Col Harvard Mit might cause you to defer your Miami life until later years .
Gixxer,
If you’re so convinced about rainbows and unicorns, why aren’t you in Miami already? You should stop wasting precious time searching feel-all fuzzy-inside data from 2000 and 2008, and call Lucas to buy your unit already. It’s been many months since you started posting your deep knowledge about Miami and how you have job positions line up already. How many more months is it going to take? You keep saying that good -paying professional jobs are abundant in Miami, so you can’t use anything related to that as an excuse to not be here already, right? Your pal owneratinfinity can even show you the place around on his brand new 911 Porsche.
Lucas, why don’t tell Gixxer about that 1 bd deal at Brickell at the River North, which you posted before. Please tell us how easily and fast that unit sold, and for how much. It must have sold really fast, because it was a great deal and everything is so easy in Miami. Please Lucas, tell Gixxer all about it.
New life in downtown Miami as condos fill up
Condos in downtown Miami are no longer ghost towns as young professionals move in and drive new business to area stores and restaurants.
BY ELAINE WALKER
[email protected]
This is exactly what I have been talking about. The condo boom essentially priced most young professionals out of the down town market. As a side not there is almost no actual apartment buildings. If you want to live downtown then its going to be in one of the many condos. When I started looking to rent downtown, the only decent not condo building I found was Camden Brickell.
Quotes:
“Before the real estate bust, young professionals such as Melinda Reilly wouldn’t have been able to afford a two-bedroom condo at Met 1 in downtown Miami with its wrap-around balcony and view of Biscayne Bay. But last July she sold her suburban Hollywood house and moved downtown where she is renting.”
“A new study by the Miami Downtown Development Authority, in partnership with Goodkin Consulting/Focus Real Estate Advisors, has found that 74 percent of the 22,079 urban condominium units built since 2003 are occupied. They stretch from the Brickell district south of downtown Miami north to State Road 112.”
“The DDA study found that 68 percent of the 22,079 new condos in the area have been sold, a 6 percent jump from the May 2009 survey. The average sale price downtown was $300,306, although prices were significantly lower than that in every area of the greater downtown area except Brickell Avenue.”
“If occupancy trends continue, the study predicts that downtown Miami’s existing condo inventory would effectively be eliminated over the next 25 months.”
“Renters account for about 52 percent of the occupied condo units downtown.”
Now I’m going to be lazy and repost something I posted on a month ago:
Gixxer 1000 /Feb 15, 2010 at 11:52 am
I thought AJ’s article about downtown was very interesting. One of the thing it highlights is something I was trying to post a few days ago but my comments are “awaiting moderation”.
The apartment vacancy rate in Miami is very low and going lower. The apartment vacancy rate in Nov ‘09 was 6.5% and in Jan ‘10 it’s 5.8% and the average rent is $1,063. The US average is 8% with an average month rent of $1,023.
This article suggest that condo vacancy rate is 38% or less. A lot of people here seem to want to use the condo vacancy rates as the entire vacancy rate. If you want to rent an apartment anywhere but downtown you can expect your rent to increase. Downtown has hardly no apartments. If you search most apartment sites for downtown almost all the listings are condo’s.
Here is an excerpt for the rental apartment market in southeast florida:
“As of May, 2009 the vacancy rate in Miami-Dade Count apartment developments stood at a moderate 6.6% level while in Broward County the rate was at 6.8%. The vacancy rate is somewhat higher in Palm Beach County at 7.9%
During the four year period of 2003 through 2006 a total of 64,501 apartments in Southeast Florida were converted to condominiums. During this same period only 19,403 new apartments were added to the market. These factors resulted in vacancy rates falling to 3.0% or less in each of the three counties.
Following 2006 many ownership housing units, including both condominiums and single family homes, were placed into the rental market by developers and individual owners unable to sell their units, creating a “shadow” rental market. By mid-2008 the shadow rental market had at least stopped expanding and vacancy rates tended to level out. Soon, however, the economic recession became more apparent and job losses grew pushing vacancy rates upward.
The dual factors of the shadow rental market and the recession would have pushed vacancy rates to considerable higher levels in recent months were it not for two other important market influences working in the opposite direction. One factor was the continued low level of new apartment construction while the second was the reduction of rents.
Over the next one year there is an estimated demand for 4,888 additional market rate apartments in the three-county area and demand from 2010 to 2012 is for 7,124 units per year. The total demand potential over the next three year period, therefore, is for 19,136 units, almost twice the estimated supply potentail.
Assuming that all of the planned/proposed apartment developments are built and delivered to the market of the next three years, the following shows the forecasted Miami-Dade county:
Miami-Dade
May 2009 6.6%
May 2010 5.2%
May 2011 3.0%
may 2012 3.0% or less
Apartments rents are expected to hold rather steady over the next one year with a 1.0% increase possible. From 2010 to 2011 a 2.0% increase is expected and from 2011 to 2012 a more normal 3.0% increase is forecasted. ”
This new article which refers to a more recent study shows that the condo vacancy rate has gone from 38% to 26%. Rental prices are putting a floor on the market. Many condos need to be reduced to be in line with new pricing but I don’t see the bottom going much lower.
Joe,
“For one thing, when people sell their homes and then *rent,* that doesn’t show a lot of short-term or even long-term confidence in the market as a whole, does it?”
It does for Brickell if the person chooses to sell in Hollywood to live in Brickell. The only reason people like this were in Hollywood in the first place was because housing was to high in Miami in the first place, pushing young professionals out. $1500 rent is a decent amount for a young professional. $3000 rent is for someone who is pretty affluent.
I’ve never argued against renting. You can look at old post where I wrote that during the bubble high housing prices pushed out people who should be renting. This led to extremely low vacancy rates and high rent prices. This is not healthy and led to no net migration from within the US for the first time in decades.
“For another, the quotes in that piece seem to confirm what Renter Tom and others have been saying for a long time here: Renters love downtown right now because their rents (and, thus, lifestyles) are being *subsidized* by the actual unit owners. That might be good, on a short-term basis, for some renters and some restaurants and whatnot, but how is it good for the r.e. market overall?”
The only owners *subsidizing* are the ones who bought years ago. All the new deals are being done at prices that allow owners to at least break even. This is what is setting the floor. If rent prices were dropping fast then the bottom would keep going down. But there is great demand for rentals. These are the people that should have be there in the first place but during the boom a one bedroom would have cost over $3k.
So just as many homeowners who bought houses at inflated prices, its no different for the many developers and owners of condos. As I have shown with data before, the owners of condos were more flexible in taking these losses which is why condo prices fell and stabilized faster than single family homes.
So yes this is good for the market. Owners can purchase at prices today and be assured that prices aren’t going to go much lower because they can rely on rent prices to maintain the unit. If there were already a lot of renters then this would be a problem. But again as mentioned earlier the boom created a disproportionate amount of home owners.
I thought the discussion we had about the ACTUAL home prices was going in the right direction. A lot of people here seem to be arguing about how bad a shape our social economic system is and are upset about a lot of social policies. I’m only concerned with actual housing prices. If unemployment is at 12% and home prices are stabilizing then I could care less about unemployment. I actuall look at the reverse. If home prices are stabilizing while unemployment is at 12% then what will happen when unemployment starts reducing???
Every single indicator show that prices are stabilizing. Any economist (Renter Tom should know) that unemployment is a trailing indicator. And unemployment is going lower as we speak. But instead of looking at the numbers they rather listen to people whip them into a furry about this and that. Now that not to say a lot of units don’t need to fall because they do. You can look at some buildings and see short sales at $170 sq ft while people are still advertising the same units at $220 sq ft. These units still need to fall but if the units at $170 sq ft are bring in rent to cover expenses then that prices isn’t going much lower.
nice post from miami herald
Joe,
“One other thing: Is it just me, or do the numbers in that Miami Herald article not add up? If there were 8,000 condos available downtown 7 months ago and there are now 7,050 condos available, how is that a “24-month” absorption rate? Unless there’s been a MASSIVE UPTICK IN SALES in the past month or two that was masked in the data, my public-school math tells me this is a 48-month absorption rate. Otherwise, what am I missing here?”
In a word, yes. There has been a MASSIVE uptick in condo sales downtown. While the overall condo sales has only inched higher by a few hundred units a month the concentration of downtown units has gone from 20% of those sales to 50% of those sales. You can read the report at the Miami DDA website but I’ll post the sales for those too lazy to look.
Jan ’09 100
Feb ’09 154
Mar ’09 147
Apr ’09 144
May ’09 171
Jun ’09 203
Aug ’09 279
Sep ’09 268
Oct ’09 339
Nov ’09 234
Dec ’09 486!!!!!
Like I mentioned before once you hit a certain point where brand new downtown condos get close to older outdated condos they become that much more attractive and start to cannibalize from the older condos and apartments. That’s why prices will never go close to what some “other” people were mentioning.
As a side note the average price per square foot for downtown condos was $239 and the average unit price was $278,336 in January ’09. In December ’09 the average price per square foot was $273 and the average unit price was $303,780.
So for downtown condos, the actual floor isn’t going lower, there are just more condos selling closer to the floor.
Hi Everybody,
Please be cool with me! This is not a joke..
Im a young french from Paris
I m one of the dumb who bought a pre construction in Icon brickell in the end of 2006..
I paid 10% of 560 000 for an apartment in Viceroy Brickell.
I know that it was a crazy price, really over priced..
Please dont tell me that! I understood since the time.
In Paris the price is really crazy so i thing that i dont think that it was too expensive in the past.
Anyway. I paid 5%, so 28 000$ to sign the deal. Later, i paid 5% more.
So i paid a total of 56 000$.
You know, the icon brickell team was really rude with me. When i sent the bank wire transfer of the second 28 000$, i didnt include the wire fees, and they sent me ” threat mail” to tell me to pay the last 240$… I gave us some answer by mail but they treated me like a ****..
After that, i was really surprised to dont have news from her team to ask me my choice about the floor that i wanted and the finishing of the bathroom. I just received some invitation to party on icon brickell and for the spa! I live in Paris!!
So contacted there.. And they sent me a mail to tell me that i cant choose the floor and the bathroom because they already made the choice!!! It was too late!!!
I was really furious, they was really cool when i was buying the fucking apartment, but just after, they showed me their real faces..
To finish MY STORY, this is the best part : Since the mail for the party in the end of 2008 by fedex, i never received something from the related group or icon brickell team. No info about the closing, no news… I seen on the web they propose big discount, i seen lot of video, and party, but they never contacted me. I dont think about it all the time. But 2 month ago i sent 2 mails to the person who sent me the apartment in the icon brickell showroom, no reply. I resent 2 mails on 4 adress of the icon brickell team and related group that i found on the web 5 days ago, and i dont have any reply again!!!
It’s a real crazy story! They never asked me if i want to close…
What can i do ???
Please give me some advice
Ad
hire an attorney ! That’s the best you can do. Good luck!
For the ones who think the market is getting better
Article posted on Sun Sentinel
Broward, Palm home prices won’t reach prior peaks until 2030, firm says
> Posted by Paul Owers on March 11, 2010 01:30 PM
Another dire prediction for South Florida home prices.
Prices in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties aren’t expected to regain their previous peaks until at least 2030, Moody’s Economy.com told The Real Deal.
For a look at the entire country, click on this map. As you can see, few areas are as bad off, price-wise, as South Florida.
Median prices for existing homes in Broward and Palm Beach counties peaked in November 2005, according to the Florida Realtors. Broward’s top price was $391,100, while Palm Beach County’s peak was $421,500.
Economy.com, which compiled its data along with help from Fiserv and the Federal Housing Finance Agency, has been one of the more pessimistic voices when it comes to South Florida real estate.
The West Chester, Pa., research firm has said the avalanche of foreclosures will keep prices here depressed for at least the rest of 2010.
POSTED IN: South Florida home prices (32)
Ad,
I talked to the icon sale persons about buying a condo there but brought in another building in brickell instead.
If you email me at [email protected] with more information, I will go to the sales office in icon and find out what is going on.
I have lots of time on my hands and I am not afiard to battle with the icon developer to help you out with teh status of when your closing will me.
Also I know from what the salesperson at icon told me, that have redcued the prices to the pre-construction peolpe to order to get them to close.
I am good at solving problems, I am sure that I can find out from icon what your opitions are.
Ad,
sounds like a crazy story. I think you should e-mail to them and try to call them. I am sure if you call someone will answer since they have a sales office in the building. May be you can ask Lucas for the #. They probably will offer you a current discounted price. Then you’ll have to decide if this is what you want now.
AD – what are you trying to say? You lost your 10% or you are boasting that you did not close? Or you need a lawyer?
I do know a Nigerian, who wants to send few million dollars to anyone who is willing to help him cash the check from his father.
Ad, contact a lawyer down here in Miami. I can put you in touch with one if you want. Email me: [email protected]
Ad,
If you really want to finalize the purchase of your unit, I think your best bet is to buy a ticket and come on site at the Icon to solve your problems. The sales center is open every day.
thx for your reply!!
I will contact the people who let me their mail contact. I will send the detail of the contract.
“poor and unemployed” : i dont understand your reply!
dear regards!!
Gixxer 1000 — The Miami Herald numbers I posted were a downtown-to-downtown comparison. It does look like there was a big uptick in Dec. 2009, but what about Jan. 2010 and Feb. 2010? Did the absorption rate stay at or above 486 or did it drop down again?
the change in the past few months (and next couple of months) inventory numbers will be severely biased due to the housing tax credit. be careful when you use this time period to extrapolate into the future. Sales which occur from June on will most likely drop quite a bit compared to previous numbers.
I just sold my 1650 sq ft pool home in Cape Coral for $253k. Located on a Gulf access canal, seawall and boat dock, new paint, new tile, new bathrooms, granite counter tops, stainless steel appliances, built in 2003 plus fully landscaped…..
So that being said…..I am now thinking about a condo in the same price range in a decent building possibly around the greater Miami area.
My wife and I are in our 40’s. She is sensitive to noise and does not like to hear traffic noise at all.
We like bide trails or walking trails….what areas up and down the east coast would you suggest? We are not tied down by job location so North up to Ft. Lauderdale could be ok. We know little about the area so we have lots of research and hunting to do. Just trying to figure out where to start….
Condo-Shopper ,
—> it’s great to get folks opinions from this blog, however do what I did, go to http://www.condoreports.com . It shows nearly all the condo buildings in dade and broward. It proived what they sold for, what is for sale and a map of where each of the condos are located.
-check that web site for condos in the buildings in the area you want and select the buildings that are in your price range.
—> then have the listing agent or the devlopers sales agent show you the various condos in the buildings. This will help you top pick what building and location you want
—> then focus your search for condos in that building or buildings.
—> Get all the information about the building HOA fees for that condo, check the property taxes on the condo on-line, do your research.
_—> work all the numbers
—-> then make the best deal you can on the place you want in the building you want, if you can not get the deal you want then wait, there is no rush to buy a condo. Prices are still going down a bit more, so good deals with around a while.
—> the process is simple, it just takes some time.
Condo -shopper…just curious..What do you think of the Fort Myers area? I see a lot of homes there for 100K-150K range similar to what you sold.
carlos – The 2030 prediction is for nominal prices, so in real dollar terms the prices will never regain the peak bubble prices, absent another huge real estate bubble which seems unlikely in our lifetimes…
Joe,
I don’t see what you don’t understand, you public school math should be able to figure this out. The inventory of new condos decreased by 950 in 7 months. Now I can see how you would say that’s an average of 135 condos per month (950/7 = 135). The problem is that those sales went from 87 (new condo sales) in May to 343 (new condo sales) in December.
“If occupancy trends continue, the study predicts that downtown Miami’s existing condo inventory would effectively be eliminated over the next 25 months.”
If the trend continues then the condo sales will be closer to 343 than to 87. The survey data goes only to December 09. The article was written in march. So the 7,050 doesn’t include any sales from January or February. So you’re talking about 27 months. 7,050 (condos) / 27 months = 261 condos per month.
This is why we went round and round about condo supply before. It’s all based on what you think monthly sales will be. Will new condo sales go back down to 87 or even 53 units that were sold in Jan ’09 or will they stay closer to the 343 that were sold in Dec ’09. Or will they fall somewhere in the middle. They have chosen somewhere in the middle.
Gixxer 1000 — I understand how the absorption rate is calculated. I was asking if the Herald was basing the 24-month absorption rate on the Dec. 2009 figure or a Jan./Feb. 2010 figure that no one seems to have posted here. Sales seemed to have spiked in Dec. 2009, but it’s unclear if sales have remained at the Dec. 2009 level three months into 2010.
As for your numbers, they seem to be shifting all over the place. Above, you said 486 condos were sold in Dec. 2009 but now you’re saying it was 343. Since we were talking about downtown, I figured you posted the sales numbers for downtown, but maybe you posted the Miami Dade numbers instead. ???
condo shopper,
If you buy a condo any where on Brickell on the water or the North Bayshore drive, you will have almost zero traffic noise. If traffic noise is a major complaint for you, do not go at all towards any building in downtown or Park west.
condo shopper,
if traffic noise is an issue, then neighbor noise is also probably an issue. you should investigate your tolerance for living in a condo building before you buy. there is noise everywhere. granted some buildings are better than others. but for those accustomed to living in a SFH, the noise issue is quite relevent unless you have an open mind. condos are noisier than homes. cannot get around it.
joe and gixxer, as i stated before. using Nov-March sales numbers to predict the next year or two of sales is a big mistake due to the tax credit. neither of you will be correct no matter how you want to apply the math.
Condoshopper,
Look at Brickell key. Your wife will love it. However, I guess in this price range the only building there you can afford is Isola, which is an average building ( not glam at all ).
Brickell Key is very quiet, safe while being close to everything.
Good luck!
Joe,
The first numbers I posted was downtown units. The numbers in the next post was specifically new condo sales only. That why I specifically put NEW CONDO SALES in parenthesis. So to be clear 486 condos were sold downtown and 343 of those 486 were condos that have never been sold before.
“I was asking if the Herald was basing the 24-month absorption rate on the Dec. 2009 figure or a Jan./Feb. 2010 figure that no one seems to have posted here”
“A new study by the Miami Downtown Development Authority, in partnership with Goodkin Consulting/Focus Real Estate Advisors, has found….”
All the predictions were simply taken from the DDA study whose information was only up to December ’09. So no information from Jan/Feb was used.
Why does this owneratinfinity keep blasting his email up here for everyone to email him. That looks fishy to me. Why would anyone agree to send a copy of their contract to a stranger who is clearly not an attorney. What is this guy going to do for you? “If you email me at … with more information, I will go to the sales office in icon and find out what is going on. I have lots of time on my hands and I am not afiard to battle with the icon developer to help you out with teh status of when your closing will me.”
Battle with the icon developer? Who are you to battle with the icon developer. They have no reason to talk to you. You are not the purchaser. You are not a licensed broker. You are not an attorney. Yet you make it sound like you can get results for this poor guy in France. What a scam.
An article from the NYC, march 14th, which might be of interest to you:
“IT’S a great time to buy a home.” Robert F. Bukaty/Associated Press
Real estate agents were saying that in 2001, as home prices were rising. They also said it when home prices peaked in 2005 — in fact, David Lereah, former chief economist of the National Association of Realtors, published a book that year titled “Are You Missing the Real Estate Boom?”
And many real estate agents said it was time to buy as prices began to drop — and continued to say it over the past several years as prices fell by an average of 33 percent in America’s 20 largest cities.
Mr. Lereah would acknowledge that he had gotten it wrong. But from the perspective of many real estate agents, it is always a good time to buy.
“What they are really saying is that it is a good time to be involved in a transaction that generates a commission,” says Barry Ritholtz, C.E.O. and director of equity research at FusionIQ, a quantitative research firm. He’s also author of “The Big Picture,” an irreverent blog on markets.
If agents are always motivated to make a deal, buyers are often asking an impossible question: “Will the price of this house go up?”
Although the National Association of Realtors said for many years that home prices historically don’t fall, actually they do, and sometimes quite sharply. The housing market is complicated, and the future unknowable. Still, for clues to the overall direction of prices, Mr. Ritholtz advises buyers to look at three metrics: the ratio of median income to median home prices, which suggests whether people can afford a house; the cost of ownership versus renting; and the value of the national housing stock as a percentage of gross domestic product.
All those measures were aberrationally inflated during the housing bubble. And they still aren’t back to historical norms. We can get back to the norm in either of two ways, Mr. Ritholtz says: home prices can either drop an additional 15 percent or go sideways for seven years or so, while G.D.P. and income presumably grow.
To complicate matters, even if home prices rise or fall nationally, they may not follow that pattern in Las Vegas or South Florida or Maine, to say nothing of the neighborhood where you want to buy.
There may be a better way, however, for potential buyers to approach the problem. “Predicting interest rates is a whole lot easier than predicting home prices,” says Glenn Kelman, chief executive of Redfin, a multistate discount online real estate brokerage company based in Seattle. “Before you buy the house, you buy the money,” he says.
It’s a little like walking into a dealership to buy a car, and finding the saleswoman immediately jotting down what your monthly payments will be and starting the negotiations there. That’s absolutely the wrong way to buy a car. But for a prospective homeowner, it’s a good place to start the analysis to determine how much house you can buy.
Instead of betting on home prices, you make a bet on whether money will become cheaper or more expensive, allowing you to buy more or less house.
That’s where the regular Joe has a pretty good shot of being right. You won’t know day to day, or week to week, what’s happening to rates, and a jolt like a default in Greece or a change in Chinese monetary policy can throw everything off. But, generally, the Federal Reserve is telegraphing where things are headed over the next six months.
“I can’t prove to you that housing prices have definitely bottomed out,” Mr. Kelman says. “I can say with a fair degree of certainty that the cost of money will go higher.”
OF course, if rates go up, home prices tend to dampen. Borrowing $300,000 at 5 percent costs you $1,610 a month. If rates rise to 6 percent, that’s $188 a month more, or $67,680 over 30 years. Would the price of a $375,000 house fall because of a half-point rate hike? Now you are back to guessing about home prices. Don’t go there. Maintain your focus.
“People are frequently buying for the wrong reasons,” says Frank LLosa, a real estate agent working in northern Virginia. In most cases, he says, they think that they are getting an income tax break or that their home is an investment.
He points out that a buyer of a $300,000 home would have to see the house appreciate $18,000 just to cover the commission and closing costs. Then figure in the predictable costs of maintenance, the opportunity costs of the mortgage down payment and the amount one could have saved by renting a similar place more cheaply.
Then there are property taxes.
In California, taxes alone can be $5,000 a year on that $300,000 house. In New Jersey, where property taxes are the highest in the nation, the extra cost can be even more. (The Star-Ledger of Newark calculated that, on average, residents in the town of Lodi pay 10 percent of their income in property taxes.) But who would have guessed that property taxes in that state would keep climbing, doubling over the course of seven years in some cases, even as home values stopped appreciating?
Mr. LLosa thinks that many people — including him — would be better off renting. People ought to buy a house for what he calls “warm and fuzzy feelings,” but they shouldn’t try to predict home prices. Nor should real estate agents, who aren’t much wiser.
“I don’t think real estate professionals should be in the business of telling people when it is a great time to buy,” he said.
quote from article above: “It’s a little like walking into a dealership to buy a car, and finding the saleswoman immediately jotting down what your monthly payments will be and starting the negotiations there. That’s absolutely the wrong way to buy a car. But for a prospective homeowner, ***it’s a good place to start the analysis to determine how much house you can buy.***”
The part I put between the *** above — the old “how much house you can buy?” — is the same old r.e. agent B.S. that got people into this current mess. “How much house you can buy?” isn’t the question. It’s “how much house do you NEED?” (And an important #2: Is your potential purchase a good value?) It doesn’t seem like people have learned much from such a major r.e. crash.
Carlos,
Thanks for your suggestion. I can afford a lot more than what I sold my home for in CC. My home was appraised for 700k at one time…but so goes the market…up then down. Luckily I never got out of line with equity lines of credit/refinancing or I could have ruined my retirement.
I was just giving the background on my SFH because the prices are very cheap now even on a gulf canal and fully loaded. Ft Myers prices are a little higher but not significantly. There are no decent SFH on gulf access canals that are less than 10 years old for under $250k right now. The market here has turned but is by no means in great shape.
So Condos being a good deal now in Miami does not surprise me one bit. There are more foreclosures coming in the next wave so the prices should remain depressed for a while longer is what I keep seeing. Rents seem to establish a bottom but like somebody mentioned Condos may be to noisy for my wife so they may turn out to not be a good deal for me. Going to have to take a long hard look.
We will definitely take a look at Brickell Key. 300-350k is in our range along with a condo fee of 600-700 if the building warrants it. Its all about lifestyle for me now since I am retired so I don’t want to end up house poor but I also do not want to end up in the wrong place either. We will probably look for bank approved short sales to see what we can pick up and possibly get a little more square footage since we have time to shop and a quiet location is the only criteria I have to watch then its look for walking/riding trails/paths and hopefully some decent beach areas. We are planning on traveling a lot and we are relocating to Miami for the airport and the cruise ships plus the warm Winter weather. We will probably only ever spend 6 months or so at home.
We decided to put off looking until the fall after reading the posts here and doing some research on the market. It looks like plenty of deals will still be available when we get back from vacationing in Asia in 5 months. We actually extended the trip for 2 months based on this blog and the links so freely given. We were thinking about heading back in July but September is so much cooler and will be perfect weather in which to find a home.
I really appreciate everyone’s help!
carlos /Mar 14, 2010 at 12:05 pm Vote: Add rating Subtract rating
Condoshopper,
Look at Brickell key. Your wife will love it. However, I guess in this price range the only building there you can afford is Isola, which is an average building ( not glam at all ).
Brickell Key is very quiet, safe while being close to everything.
Good luck!
Any sales stat’s for February out yet?
Condo-shopper,
Good luck in your quest! There is absolute no need to hurry.
Market here is slow and will remain so for a long time.
You need to come and check the neighborhoods by yourself and fell what is more appropriate for you and your wife.
Some areas are sold as the new Miami or as luxury living, but when you see them in person, you will realize there is more to the story.
Good luck!
Does anybody have an opinion about BLUE vs. MARINA BLUE? I have been fixated by the wonderful architecture of the former, but feel that the views and closer proximity to the AA arena/Bayside of the latter would be better. Blue seems isolated by contrast.
Being an observer from 1500 mi away doesn’t help though.
Thanks,
Gene
Gene,
Stay away from these buildings.. awful residents who are destroying the buildings. They may look cool from outside, but, in reality, they are very cheap.
Blue has a terrible location near the highway and in a terrible hood.
MB has a lot of issues. Look somewhere else.
Who are these people trying to fool?
Maybe investors from the NE, because if you live in Miami you know this is just cheap talk.
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/26184891/vp/35907802#35907802
Does anyone know what’s happening with The Mint at Riverfront, I had optioned at pre construction and there’s been no talk of closing nor prices . This is going on over 5 years. I’ve been told the buildings ready to live in, Starwood bought the loan from Corus, and developer is negotiating with new bank to lower prices.
Gene..I am also considering buying an upper-floor condo at Marina Blue….could you tell me a bit more about the issues in that building? I have heard complaints about the design of the parking garage, about the elevators breaking very frequently, and about the influx of renters…is there anything else i need to be looking out for??..my most important factor in buying a condo is the view…any suggestions on a building with similar views?? what about Everglades?? Anyone know what is going on with Mint?? THANKS>
Sorry my questions were directed at Carlos, not at Gene.