Starting this past July, attorney Scott Rothstein began a series of deed transfers that, given the allegations about his financial misdeeds, figure to interest his many investors. Broward County records show that on July 22, Rothstein transferred a $1.9 million property on Castilla Isle in Fort Lauderdale from his name to a Delaware limited liability corporation, CI 08. The Broward County Property Appraiser's website shows that he paid $2.73 million for the property in 2005.
A few weeks later, on August 10, Rothstein did the same with another parcel he owned on Castilla Isle, transferring this $2.2 million property into a Delaware corporation called CI 27. That same day he transferred this $1.33 million parcel to CI 07 and this $1.4 million parcel to CI 16. That's nearly $8 million in real estate that figures to grow in value when the economy bounces back -- all controlled by corporations in Delaware, which the Tax Justice Network found to be the world's most notorious tax haven.
Southern California and South Florida are the two regions in the U.S. where the housing crisis has been felt most severely. So this story from Southern California should be a cautionary tale for us. However inclined we may be to torture the loan agents who said they could save our homes, we should probably not act on that impulse.
All the same, it's clear that law enforcement is overwhelmed with fraud cases, which is a recipe for exactly this kind vigilantism. It's a miracle we haven't had more stories like this one in our backyard.
Boynton Beach is now giving Sunrise a run for its money in the competition for ghostly condo buildings. These 14-story cream-colored towers perched on the edge of the Intracoastal Waterway are part of a project known as Promenade, where just four years ago buyers camped out overnight to snatch units priced from $200,000 to $500,000.
Promenade was supposed to help revive downtown Boynton, and the developers negotiated a a deal to receive nearly half of the new tax revenue generated by the project that would normally go to the city's Community Redevelopment Agency.
Today, Promenade's 395 units are completely empty. According to the Palm Beach Post, not a single buyer has closed on a deal. That's worse than Tao Sawgrass in Sunrise, which has closed on about 54 of 396 units.
If you happened to be a highly prominent person of color visiting West Palm Beach in the first half of this century, chances are you would have stayed at Haley Mickens's house at 801 4th Street.
Mickens and his wife Dr. Alice Frederick Mickens, a well known civil rights activist, played host to dozens of African American athletes, musicians and political figures during the years they lived in their spacious two story wood frame house, in part because no local hotel would give black dignitaries a room. The celebs that slept in the Mickens's guest room included Coretta Scott King, Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Ralph Bunche, and Count Basie.
Now a local group of historic preservationists headed by attorney and historian Harvey Oyer III are
That's the living room on the right -- not bad for a quarter million, eh? You can see a bunch more photos at the realtor's site, here.
Every week, Realtor.com puts together a list of the nation's five most-searched-for homes that fall within the median price of an American home. This Boca Raton home, on Sealakes Drive in Stonebrook Country Club, came in fifth. It has three bedrooms, two and a half baths, and 3,259 square feet.
But it looks as if some mysterious factor beyond the usual market forces is sending this property off the cliff. Appraised for $431,000 in 2007, its 2009 appraisal is just $284,000.
They call them Flippers, Flippers, Faster than lightning; No one you see Is smarter than they....
That's right folks, our favorite highly intelligent mammal has been spotted cavorting in Florida waters. Florida Trend reports that the flipper is schooling again, only this time the goofy grin is for real and these animals really are our friends!
The report says real estate speculation is in vogue again, with a difference:
Unlike the speculative flippers during the boom -- scourges who unnaturally jacked up prices, spawned reality-TV shows, and led to the economic crumble -- today's flippers are erudite capitalists who could usher in positive change by buying dilapidated and abandoned homes, patching them up and selling them for a market-bearable price, experts say.
Near the beginning of Michael Moore's new movie, Capitalism: A Love Story, the filmmaker calls upon Wallace Shawn, an actor/writer friend of his, to explain our economic system in terms he could explain, presumably because Shawn is one of the more knowledgeable people Moore knows when it comes to that subject.
With that in mind, I invited a real-life, flesh and blood, Ron Paul-supporting, Glenn Beck-watching, tea party-attending capitalist (who happens to be a well-paid financial consultant specializing in currency markets, extremely well-versed when it comes to the economic collapse of 2008, and a very good friend of mine for many years) to see the film with me and "fact check" Michael Moore.
In Davie: Roughly 27,000 more square feet than you really need
South Florida homebuyers who can afford to buy mansions are opting to buy, well, un-mansions, according to a story on yesterday's huliq.com.
Huliq reached its conclusion by looking at home sales in South Florida and studying census figures: Turns out the average size of a new single family home declined by about 62 square feet over a two year period, "the first significant drop in home sizes in 14 years." There were also far more homes on the market in Boca, Delray, and Lauderdale priced from $500,000 to over $1 million, indicating a glut. Luxury homes, huliq says, "are piling up."
g.shepherd
Downsized in Lake Worth: Let the bidding wars begin!
We have good news for families looking to downsize though, to a charming 1/2 bed 1/2 bath. In Lake Worth, for example, there are plenty of iddy biddy widdle houses for sale, like the one at left. These have many of the compact advantages of your typical trailer-park trailer, except without the hookup fees. While they lack "entertainment wings" like the Davie spread pictured above, we've found that a clean white sheet hung from a tree makes a great outdoor movie screen. Your family can rest assured that since most of these historic Lilliputian digs were built in the '20s and '30s, they've safely weathered many a hurricane. But it's a seller's market for these babies, so you'd better move fast.
After a summer of dire predictions, Corus Bank's failure late Friday was almost an after-thought. The Chicago-based bank gorged itself on condo loans during the real estate boom, then hemorrhaged cash as many of the projects it financed sat empty.
But the bank's demise has serious ramifications for condos in South Florida. The FDIC has seized Corus's assets -- at a cost of $1.7 billion -- and will be selling them in the next month. That means the mostly-empty Tao Sawgrass towers in Sunrise will soon have a new owner. Experts have predicted that any new owner will start selling and renting those condos at greatly reduced prices, lowering the value of the few units (roughly 52 out of 396) that have sold.
Meanwhile, Trump International Hotel & Tower in Fort Lauderdale faces an uncertain future, because Corus lent it $139 million, and the building has yet to finish construction or open to the public. The Edge in West Palm Beach also has a mortgage from Corus, as does the Ivy in Miami and at least 11 other condo projects in South Florida, according to the South Florida Business Journal.
Having a new owner or lender is probably good news for these condos in the long run, because Corus has been flailing around uselessly for months now, keeping buyers and sellers in limbo. But if the new head honcho at a place like Tao decides to stop paying for maintenance and upkeep of mostly-empty buildings, you can bet the few unlucky residents will be screaming.
Did we mess up the bagels that badly? Did a reporter get mauled by an 85-year-old practicing parallel parking on I-95 last season? Why won't the New York Times let South Florida suffer in peace?
It's true. Tao's ghost towers are an embarrassing symbol of the condo boom, and the heady days when Sunrise leaders believed the edge of the Everglades was the perfect place to build a luxury high-rise. Here at New Times, we devoted a cover story to Tao and other condo tales of woe.
Like many who ask, "What is Fort Lauderdale"? we at Juice have answer for you. It is beautiful foreclosure capital, playground of good deals for opportunity investment. Indeed, some have called "Venice of America" this place because (in addition to canals, beaches, and boats,) Fort Lauderdale have many empty housing sinking steadily into muck. Also many 4B 4BTH previously listed maybe $800,000 now shall be plucked for $50,000, perhaps!
So say this article* with which we agree wholeheartedly. Visitors also maybe enjoy taking Palm Beach County tour on world-famous foreclosure express.
Also in news: Much outsourced journalistic jobs here, possibly writing jobs now being done by freelance overseas contractors. Are you agreeing?
*Caveat Emptor! "Now, it is not really hard to understand that investing in foreclosures
is a good option but no investor can expect any profit whatsoever
without spending a lot of time in researching and analyzing the latest
trend in real estate market. Same thing holds true for Fort Lauderdale
real estate market and like all other states, real estate market in
Fort Lauderdale is full of ups and downs."
With CityPlace South Tower in foreclosure, what is Related thinking?
You have to hand it to the Related Group. No matter how bad the economy gets or how many ghost towers dot the skyline, the Miami real estate giant keeps looking for ways to make a buck. Here's the current philosophy: We can't pay our own bills. But hey, let's buy more stuff and hope for the best!
According to the Wall Street Journal, Related Companies of New York is now trying to buy the assets of a bank that impaled itself on South Florida's condo market. Corus Bank lent money to at least 16 projects in South Florida, including the nearly empty Tao Sawgrass in Sunrise and Trump International Hotel & Tower in Fort Lauderdale. Now that Corus is on the brink of failure, vultures such as Related are hovering.
Experts use high tech gagetry to test drywall at Whitney
Residents at the Whitney in downtown West Palm Beach aren't particularly happy to know that they're living in one of the only condo buildings in Florida to have a suspected problem with Chinese drywall, at least so far. Especially since that's about the sum total of what they've learned since one apartment owner found she had corroded pipes, a signature of the problem drywall, in her apartment.
A few residents have complained of headaches and allergy problems; others have demanded a full report from The Continental Group, which owns the building. But response from management has ranged from slow, to confused, to downright nonsensical.
One resident, who asked not to be named, said the company first tried a random sampling of apartments. "They went around to a couple of units on each floor with some machine that was supposed to be able to sense the presence of Chinese drywall," he told The Juice. When the results came back positive for 50 percent of the tested units, outraged residents demanded an explanation. "They told us that 'there might be people with more sensitive olfactory responses than the machine,'" the resident remembers.
Last month, Bovis Lend Lease, the Whitney's builder, hired Environ International to perform its own round of tests. This time they removed safety plates and outlet covers and took samples of drywall from every unit. On Wednesday of this week, residents received this email from property manager Paul Wilkis:
But that hasn't stopped Related's thirst to keep building. According to the Palm Beach Post, Related Companies is one of five development teams now vying to build a hotel to serve the Palm Beach County Convention Center. The delicious irony in this scenario is that the convention center is next door to the nearly empty, foreclosed CityPlace South Tower. Just a few months ago, local real estate agent Christian Morrison Pearce, actually proposed converting the condo tower into a hotel to support the convention center, but county leaders shot down the idea.
Now here comes Related wanting to build a whole new hotel. Just to be clear, The Related Group and Related Companies, which is based in New York, are not the same firm. But Related Companies CEO Stephen Ross is a partner, with Jorge Perez, in The Related Group. So the two development giants are thorougly entwined.
Ross surely has noticed that his Florida venture is saddled with debt and losing money by the boatload due to the condo market collapse. But hey, building one more hotel couldn't hurt, could it?
Behind some of the area's biggest condo ghost towers -- Tao Sawgrass in Sunrise and Trump International Hotel & Tower in Fort Lauderdale -- lies one very cash-strapped bank. Chicago-based Corus Bank has become a poster child for the condo meltdown, because it lent money to at least 16 South Florida condo projects before the real estate bubble burst. Now that condos aren't selling, developers can't repay their construction loans, so Corus is taking a hit.
"I think that there's just too much uncertainty right now," says local attorney Joseph Altschul, who represents buyers in Trump International and Tao who are trying to get their condo deposits back.
Corus now owns Tao, having taken the project back from the developer last fall. If the FDIC seizes Corus and then sells it to private investors, the new Tao owners will probably start renting and selling units at greatly reduced prices, lowering the value of the few units in the building that have closed (property records indicate that's just 48 out of 396 units). Plus, there's no telling if, or for how long, the new owner would keep covering the cost of maintaining the twin condo towers. So current owners could get stuck with rising maintenance fees and plummeting property values.
Sounds delightful, doesn't it? "I would really be a little nervous right now," Altschul says.
In a real estate industry that's grown fierce since the bubble burst, it's time to band together and focus on a goal we can all profit from: Fooling Canadian homebuyers.
That starts with fooling the Canadian media, and we're looking good so far, if this recent report in The Gazette of Montreal is any indication:
The subprime meltdown has devastated the United States, leaving behind a
sea of foreclosures and empty homes -- all ready to be snapped up by
frost-bitten Canadians with a red-hot currency.
That's the spirit! Now, just so we all stay on message, listen carefully to Kimberly Kirschner, a past president of a realtor association.
"You can get a two-bedroom apartment on the beach for US$150,000," says
Ms. Kirschner, talking about a unit near Hollywood, Fla., a popular
Canadian snowbird destination about 30 minutes north of Miami.
And only a slightly longer drive to the nearest outdoor hockey rink! (Or are we laying it on too thick?)
CityPlace South Tower was taken over in a "friendly foreclosure."
The hits keep coming for Miami real estate giant The Related Group. First, the lenders on its extravagant, 420-unit CityPlace South Tower condo in downtown West Palm Beach took control of the project in a "friendly foreclosure." This is a polite way of saying that Related couldn't pay its mortgage on the project because most of the buyers refused to close on their units. And it wasn't exactly shocking news. When New Times visited the building in May, we found a bored valet waiting to help invisible residents.
Now Related is back in the headlines because of another failed condo project in downtown Fort Myers. New Jersey firefighter Victor Vangelakos and his family are the only people living in the 32-story Oasis tower. They've been spooked by intruders knocking on their door late at night and throwing chairs into the complex's pool, according to a report in the Fort Myers News-Press.
This isn't the lifestyle Vangelakos had in mind when he paid $430,000 for what was supposed to be a vacation home. Now he wants Related to buy him out. And the company is left to argue, hilariously, that living alone in a deserted condo building isn't that bad.
"We have not discontinued the service or done anything that would make
life uncomfortable for them," Betsy McCoy, a VP for Related, told Fox 4
in Fort Myers.
Indeed, ghost towers are all the rage in New Depression condo living. To read more about some of South Florida's local gems, check out New Times' feature, "Postcards from the Bust."
When Ira Goldstein found out his house in Delray Beach was made with
Photo provided
Goldstein outside his home in Vizcaya.
defective Chinese drywall, he did the first thing most people would do: He called the home's builder. And unlike most of those calls, this builder actually offered to help Goldstein.
But his builder, Centerline Homes, did nothing short of use Goldstein, even taking a chunk out of his wall for "testing." Then Centerline ignored him.
"They used me to death," Goldstein told me recently. "It's unbelievable."
Last month, we introduced you to some of the saddest tales from South Florida's condo meltdown, including the ghostly Tao Sawgrass towers in Sunrise and the now-foreclosed CityPlace South Tower in West Palm Beach.
It would be easy to assume that downtown Delray Beach was immune to such problems, since Atlantic Avenue's chic restaurants and clubs still draw a trendy, cash-laden crowd on the weekends.
But for months, the CODA town house project on SW Second Avenue -- just a block south of Atlantic Avenue -- has been forlornly announcing its troubles. This "47 percent sold" sign (above) has been out for weeks. In fact, Palm Beach County property records indicate that just ten of the 41 units have closed.
Three of the unsold units are owned by the nonprofit, publicly funded Delray Beach Community Land Trust, which is offering the homes at reduced prices to working families. Delray's Community Redevelopment Agency, an arm of the city government, owns two more units. A call to the agency's assistant director, Jeff Costello, was not immediately returned.
Flickr User: NIOSH - Nat Inst for Occupational Safety & Health
Who will mind the builders in Pembroke Pines?
Few places illustrate South Florida's housing bust better than Pembroke Pines. A few years ago, it was one of the nation's fastest-growing cities, with a population that more than ballooned from 65,500 in 1990 to 147,000 in 2007. Now, thanks to a multimillion-dollar drop in permit revenue from new construction, the city has axed its building department. The job of reviewing plans and inspecting wiring, drainage, and other building essentials has been outsourced to a Fort Lauderdale firm, Calvin, Giordano & Associates.
This is troubling, not just for the 33 city workers who have lost their jobs, but also for those of us who worry about little things like conflicts of interest. Calvin, Giordano already does engineering work for the city of Pembroke Pines. The company's most recent project, approved in May, was a $2.7 million contract to overhaul the city's waste-water treatment system. Another big-ticket job the firm snagged was planning and surveying land for the City Center project-- an 80-acre housing and shopping center that the city invested $66 million in, but is now trying to unload because of the real estate bust.
Can Calvin, Giordano really be objective when reviewing building plans for projects that could also pad its pocketbook? The Juice called City Manager Charles Dodge to inquire, but his secretary said he's on vacation until next week. I'm sure that's a great comfort to all the former building inspectors who are now looking for a vacation from unemployment.
Something for nothing -- just $34,000 in annual taxes!
Miles Brannan and his wife are feeling the crunch just like everybody else. The Brannans are both South Florida realtors, and when their income dipped with the economy they put their $3 million Fort Lauderdale waterfront house on the market, only to watch it sit there idling. The Brannans had bought the place, at 2824 NE 36th Street, almost new in 2005; they'd added a movie theater, a salt water system for the pool, and a lot of expensive stonework to a house already replete with luxuries: a separate game room, a 4-car garage. But this year they'd had to sell the boat they parked at their 100-foot dock, and when the house failed to move, Brannan came up with the idea of offering it by lottery.
$10 sound like a pretty good deal for a 6,000 square foot, six bedroom house? The Brannans have already sold 75,000 tickets for $10 a piece on the website they set up, and they plan to keep the lottery going until they sell 300,000 -- or until December 25th, whichever comes first. "Actually we just looked on zillow.com [a real estate site] and the value of the house is going up, I think it was $3.2 million last time we checked," Brannan said by phone today. "For awhile the mortgage market took a lot of people out of the market, foreign investors were not buying because the lending policies were against them. They could just go to the Bahamas for a vacation home. But it looks like things are starting to turn around again."
Kitchen fit for temperemental chef
The Branans plan to move to a "more affordable" Lauderdale neighborhood "for the time being," Brannan says. He doesn't sound particularly pained about it either. The final drawing, he hopes, will be held at the house, maybe with a celebrity to do the honors. "We've approached Jason Taylor," Brennan confides. "But I suppose it depends on his schedule."
Lisset Sanchez-Schwartz and Ian Schwartz pose outside their newly purchased house in June 2007. They're now on the verge of losing the place.
For many homeowners suffering with Chinese drywall, it's safe to say they wouldn't mind a chance to confront the builders who installed the defective walls in their homes. A woman from Coconut Creek did just that when she hurled tough questions at the CEO of Standard Pacific Homes on a conference call broadcast live to investors.
A bit of background: Lisset Sanchez-Schwartz bought a townhome in Julia Gardens in Coconut Creek from Standard Pacific in June 2007. She figured out in April that Chinese Drywall was responsible for her corroded AC coils and faucets. Sanchez-Schwartz also thinks it might be be to blame for her new asthmatic bronchitis, which sent her to the hospital last year.
After an inspector confirmed that Sanchez-Schwartz had Chinese drywall on April 14, she moved out the next day. She and her husband, Ian Schwartz, now live in a condo they used to rent out. They've contacted Standard Pacific many times about getting their house fixed, but the company has refused to work with them.
Ah, South Florida: Where the women are strong, the men are pretty, and all the foreclosures are "friendly." Developers of mixed-use, work-live-playgrounds might take a moment to contemplate, as they plan their latest forays into the market for pseudo cities, the fate of the unsellable CityPlace South Tower in West Palm Beach, recently described by a parking valet to New Times as perhaps the most boring place on Earth -- where the Related Group has managed to get rid of a mere 39 units. Or the foreclosure proceedings against the Las Olas Riverfront Mall. The warning trumpets should be blaring for the developers of the planned billion-dollar mixed-use community 321 North in Plantation and its shiny multibillion-dollar girl-next-door neighbor, City of Oz in Sunrise.
You've really got to hand it to developers: They're such optimists. The site for 321 North (see their website here) is the failed Plantation Fashion Mall, which limped along, losing one retail customer after the next, until Hurricane Wilma in 2005 finally dealt it the death blow. Part of the reason for the original failure was the mall's proximity to both the Broward Mall and the Galleria on East Sunrise. It turns out that there really is only a finite number of shoppers (and condo dwellers, and latte drinkers -- as Starbucks has discovered). You put too many Gaps or Banana Republics or Macy's too close together, and well, you end up with something like what artist Cristy Joy documented in her famous short film "Abandoned Mall in Plantation, Florida," an urban dystopia strikingly similar to the old Fashion Mall (don't miss the creepily on-target grafitti: "Your things will start to own you, free yourself!"). The planned 321 North comes to us courtesy of a Chinese Investment Group, U.S. Capital Holdings: 35 acres, reconstruction of the 650,000-square-foot mall; 613,000 square feet of office space; 590 new residential units. The company mission? "To identify and reposition underperforming or distressed properties in advantageous locations." Distressed: You betcha. Advantageous: Well, one out of two ain't bad.
And just 7.3 miles away in Sunrise: City of Oz, the $2 billion redevelopment brainchild of Sunrise Sports & Entertainment, to be built around the BankAtlantic Center and planned as "one of the world's great retail destinations" along with housing, a theater district and... scones for everybody.
Those who watched the siting of CityPlace just blocks away from the West Palm Beach retail district Clematis Street, which have been killing each other softly for more than a decade, may be having deja vu all over again. Below, Joy's poetic take on what happens when customers forsake the malls we build for them. They're just yesterday's "mixed use communities."
Here's a story that brings home just how morbid this housing crisis can be: Heather Newnam of Tamarac shot herself yesterday instead of letting cops evict her for failing to pay her rent.
It's a depressing tale, but perhaps what's more depressing is reading what amounts to Newnam's final public words on her Twitter account. Writing under the name rsangel04, bits of Newnam's life played out in her posts. Then she seemed to foretell her own death in this final post at 7:04 p.m. on June 24. She sent this from her cell phone:
Rich get richer, poor get poorer, families on the street, govt doesn't care. God bless the usa, but can He save it?
What's even sadder is that previous posts seem to show Newnam in a better place, talking about going to the tattoo convention and watching the TV show Rescue Me. The day before that last message, she wrote:
five minutes til Rescue Me, Woo Hoo! then bed, Im beat
Newnam's photo from Facebook.
A few days before that, she tweets about having a tooth pulled and using tequila to kill the pain. She writes about hating Florida, wonders what tattoo she should get next, and talks about watching her husband play a videogame.
The site gives only a few clues about the financial state she's in, like this post from June 3:
this working shit sucks! When do I get to hit the lotto?
According to the Broward Sheriff's Office, Newnam shot herself at 1 p.m. yesterday when a real estate agent, a locksmith, and movers showed up at the home at 6902 NW 79th St. in Tamarac. Newnam told them she needed to secure her dogs before they could come in. Then they heard a gunshot. The SWAT team showed up, and at 4 p.m., they found her dead.
Details of her life are also played out on her Facebook page, where she writes that she worked in sales for Success Resource Group in Oakland Park. Her profile describes a woman who lived a happy life before Monday. In the line for her favorite quote, she wrote:
""I live to love, and laugh alot, and that's all I need"
How many condo bust stories can one newspaper write?
Did anyone else get déjà vu reading the front page of the Miami Herald yesterday? Its feature story, "Condo Caverns," was strikingly similar to New Times' cover story last week, "Postcards From the Bust," written by yours truly.
My story looked at life inside some of the ghostly high-rise condos that crowded South Florida's skyline during the real estate boom and are now struggling to find residents. The Herald story did the same thing, except the reporter, James H. Burnett III, focused mainly on Miami, while I spanned Broward and Palm Beach counties.
Don't get me wrong -- I appreciate the compliment. And my ego isn't quite big enough to believe that Burnett copied my idea. During this historic housing bust, more than one reporter is bound to be curious about what's happening inside a bunch of mostly empty buildings. But the timing of the article still seems odd.
In this week's feature story about South Florida's condo bust, we introduced you to one of the biggest symbols of the real estate boom's folly: Tao Sawgrass in Sunrise. The twin, 26-story condo towers were built on the edge of the Everglades, next door to the Sawgrass Mills outlet mall. When construction began three years ago, Sunrise leaders predicted the project would bring wealthy new residents to western Broward County.
But so far, property records show that about 36 of the 396 units have sold. And it's not clear how many people are living there. Many of the buyers were investors, who never intended to move in. (When New Times inquired, Carolyn Van Gorder, marketing director for Hyperion Development, which is selling Tao's units, said she could not confirm or deny the presence of residents.)
Now, at least one owner is trying to rent out a unit. An online ad posted by Exit Team Realty II touts a two-bedroom, two-bath unit available for a mere $2,800 a month. Plenty of amenities are included--spa, pool, tennis courts, gym, wi-fi and cable--but the best perk is listed at the beginning of the ad: "Be the 1st to live in this luxurious new condo," it says.
Lorna Reyes-Diaz, a listing agent with Exit Team Realty II, says she has already rented a one-bedroom unit, and the tenant intends to move in soon. When she last checked a few months ago, she says she was told that about eight people were living in the complex. She now visits the complex regularly, to show units, and is pleased to see that there's more activity. And she doesn't appreciate the negative publicity about the place being vacant, because that makes it hard for her to get clients.
"There's people living there for sure," she says.
There you have it. A handful of people living amid hundreds of ghostly units. Sounds like paradise, doesn't it?
Huh? Isn't Miami the center of the nation's worst condo meltdown?
Well, yes. But this particular article made an extraordinary effort to address only the good news about our housing calamity. Specifically, the good news as told by a downtown Miami agency that receives public funding to promote economic growth in the area.
According to a report commissioned by the Miami Downtown Development
Authority, 63 percent of downtown condos built since 2003 are now
occupied. A few years ago, this would have been terrible news, conjuring images of half-empty buildings and economic apocalypse. But
in the New Depression, we're supposed to consider it good news, because
it means a few more warm bodies to fill the streets. According to the Herald article, renters are flocking to the center of the city to take
advantage of great deals in luxury buildings.
Tad Ground can see the Trump International Hotel & Tower from his office window, its wave-shaped curves gleaming in the sunlight. It taunts him, because three years ago he imagined it would be his home. Ground, an attorney in Fort Lauderdale, was going to give up the hassle of a house and a yard for a simplified life on the beach, with a concierge desk, housekeeping, and all the luxuries of a condo hotel.
"It was something I was going to move into," he says. "That's the reason I bought."
The car parts decorating a Hollywood man's front lawn.
For people like Stephan Cleveland who are trying sublet a condo, the weekend is prime time for prospective tenants to come calling. Which is why he was mighty peeved when on Friday afternoon, he discovered a pile of busted car parts on the grassy swale in front of his condo.
Turns out a car accident had happened one block to the north, on Hollywood Boulevard. A tow truck contractor with the Hollywood Police Department had come to haul away the cars, but it had moved the debris just one block -- to Cleveland's condo. A bumper, a rocker panel, a two-gallon radiator fluid overflow container, and hubcaps among other scraps of what was once a Chevy Impala: "The towing company just dumped it near one of the main walkways to the condominium entry," says Cleveland.
He phoned Hollywood police, and an officer told him they'd send someone by to pick it up. As the hours ticked by, Cleveland became more and more furious. "I didn't want the condominium property looking like a junkyard when a potential tenant showed up," he says.
An even-more-frustrated Cleveland called again Saturday, and this time the officer told him that the junk couldn't be picked up till Monday. "That's 72 hours of garbage being in my front yard," fumed Cleveland. "No way!"
So he gave the police officer her choice of three options: 1) Have the tow truck company come to pick up the stuff; 2) send police department staff to pick it up; or 3) "I load it in the back of my [Dodge] Nitro and throw it into the Hollywood PD's parking lot."
Cleveland says the officer responded with one word: "Fine." Which sounded to him like Option No. 3. So that very day, he loaded the debris, drove to the police headquarters on Hollywood Boulevard, and deposited it in the east parking lot.
"Last time I drove by, it was already gone," says Cleveland. He has filed a complaint with the city attorney, asking that the police and tow truck company be cited for illegal dumping.
Last week we introduced you to the saga of the Trump International Hotel & Tower in Fort Lauderdale. Buyers have filed lawsuits alleging they were misled to believe that Donald Trump was a developer of the building -- or, at the very least, that the tower would bear his name.
Three years ago, the Donald himself came down and hosted a star-studded party for buyers. Brochures featured Trump's bio and a letter signed by him, saying, "It is with great pleasure that I present my latest development, Trump International Hotel & Tower, Fort Lauderdale."
But now the Trump Organization is saying that the real-estate mogul was never a developer or owner of the project. He simply struck a deal to lend his name to the building and manage the hotel, and that deal is now looking shaky.
Here's the statement emailed to the Juice by Selma Langer, VP of marketing for the Trump Organization:
Neither The Trump Organization, nor its affiliates, are the owners or developers of the property in Fort Lauderdale. As was disclosed to buyers in their purchase agreements, Trump Marks Fort Lauderdale LLC licensed the "Trump" name to the owner of the property, SB Hotel Associates, LLC, for purposes of identifying the property, subject to the terms of a license agreement, which may be terminated according to its terms...
Contributors: Eric Barton, Michelle Centrone, Deirdra Funcheon, Keith Hollar, John Linn, Michael J. Mooney, Bob Norman, Lisa Rab, Nicole Rodriguez, Gail Shepherd.
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