August-September Statistics
Punta Gorda-Pt. Charlotte
Below are numbers sold each month, and prices are average. Total Units Homes Home Avg $ Condos Condo Avg $
August 252 214 $133,620 38 $94,492
September 223 184 $124,426 39 $81,024
The total units sold dropped slightly in August as did averages in homes and condos. In the over $500,000 price range 1 home closed in August.
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Credit Report Will Reveal Personal Info
Fair Isaac Corporation(FICO) and data provider CoreLogic will be joining forces to gather more personal information to those applying for a mortgage or credit card. Not only will they be providing information on payday loans, evictions and child support but also utility, rent and cellphone payments.
FICO has been the company behind the credit scoring formula. Since 1995, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have used the scoring developed by FICO to determine a person's ability to repay a loan. The 3 major credit reporting companies do not use CoreLogic data. The new partnership between FICO and CoreLogic will provide this new information with a separate score to lenders.
Whether this new reporting will increase the volume of "safe" loans-which is the goal- or make a customer look worse, remains to be seen. For the customer who looks "worse" more mortgage fees and higher interest rates will be charged. |
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Babcock Ranch
It looks like the planning and engineering for the 17,000 acre Babcock Ranch community is now going to continue after Kitson and Partners settled a $100 million debt for $48.2 million to Capital Trust Inc. Kitson purchased the 91,000
acre Babcock Ranch for $455 million in 2006. The state purchased 74,000 acres from Kitson for $351 million, leaving the remaining acreage for development.
The economy went downhill shortly after the Kitson's purchase and the developers found themselves unable to obtain financing for the $100 million owed. The developer did settle at least a portion of the debt owed instead of totally defaulting. However many of the investors lost their money. Currently the development of Babcock Ranch will be postponed until the economy improves with a projected 2012 groundbreaking. You can learn more about Kitson's dream of a solar-powered 50,000 resident community by clicking here, although some of the information on the website is a work in progress.
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Visas for Real Estate Investment?
The Wall Street Journal reported that there is a proposal in the U.S. Senate to give foreigners a new type of resident visa in exchange for a $500,000 cash investment in U.S. real estate. At least $250,000 must be spent on a single residence - the other $250,000 can be spent on other investment real estate. The idea behind this proposal is that this will help the glut in housing supply.
International buyers purchased $82 billion in real estate for the year ending in March 2011-an increase of $66 billion from the year before. Approximately 5.5% of Miami real estate is sold to international buyers. |
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Wells Fargo Market Forecast
Wells Fargo, in a report released this month projected Florida is recovering faster than most states with a 2% growth rate. Almost 40,000 new jobs are projected for 2011 and 64,000 new jobs are projected for 2012. People are continuing to move to Florida with an expected 110,000 new residents for 2011 and 130,000 in 2012. The number of foreign investors may decline due to economic problems in Europe. |
