Retired NYC Cop to Live Like a King in Royal Palm Beach

By Thomas Francis Thu., Jul. 30 2009 at 8:50 AM

South Florida is so rarely the site of good news about the housing market, it seems worth celebrating with Kirit Shah, a forensic chemist recently retired from NYPD who scored a great deal on a house in Royal Palm Beach that was built three years ago but has never had a dweller. Shah is cited in a New York Times story about silver linings in the housing mushroom cloud:

Mr. Shah was not dissuaded when the salesman at K. Hovnanian Homes told him the five-bedroom place had been empty since it was finished three years ago. "It was waiting for me," said Mr. Shah, 64. "I'm on a lakefront. I never dreamed I would be on a lakefront. I'm within walking distance of a swimming pool."

As an aside, isn't sweet how new arrivals from the North are dazzled by such staples of South Florida living?

But the thing he likes best is this: he paid $260,000 for the five-bedroom house, half of what that model was fetching during the boom. "An excellent deal," he said. "Plus I got a good rate on my mortgage, under 5 percent." Turning markets are full of uncertainty. If Mr. Shah was one reason new home sales were up 11 percent in June from May, it is unclear just how many others like him are out there.