I can understand the need to hire a professional home stager to help sell your house, but is a home blessing service really necessary?

Many homes carry residual spiritual effects from previous or current inhabitants which can be sensed by prospective buyers. These can be a block to the sale of a house. Often the sale goes through after a home blessing service has been performed for physical/spiritual healing and well-being.

My 1% fee may be written into the real estate sales contract payable at the time of sale. Fees start at $350 for a basic non-sale home blessing, nursing home/hospital bed area, school/dormitory area, houseboat/rv, and for the blessing of businesses or administrative areas. $1000 for aura/spirit cleansing including ancestral or generational ghosts that affect families. $2000 for alien visitation, plus any travel or lodging expenses incurred. Payment is accepted in U.S. funds by cash, money order, or cashier’s check.

Perhaps in the high-rise condo market it is.

Hooray! Midtown Miami has announced the main retail anchors that will service their Midtown Miami Shops. The big-box retailers that are slated to open include Target, Linens’N Things, Circuit City, PetSmart and West Elm store, an affordable home furnishings concept by Pottery Barn. 

Home Depot and Wall Mart were in negotiations to take up a main portion of the complex, but both projects have been canceled.

The Shops at Midtown Miami will also include a selection of specialty stores and restaurants when it opens in the fall.

The shopping center will be a 645,000-square-foot retail development, minutes from downtown Miami.

This will make life for people in Miami, Miami Beach, Brickell and Key Biscayne much easier. Currently, we have to go to Aventura or Kendall to shop. But after Midtown opens, a shopping mall will be just minutes away.

The former Palm Court Apartments in North Miami and being transformed into the Ola Condos.

Now you might be asking yourself, what is so special about another condo building in Miami? Here’s what’s nice about this one—prices for 1 bedrooms are starting at $120,000 and 2 bedrooms start at $160,000. For those who don’t know these prices are about 200k cheaper than the next cheapest condo on the market.

Advenir Developers say Ola will be a pet-friendly property and landscaped oasis with courtyards around ancient trees. Amenities include a swimming pool, picnic area and a clubhouse with a media center. Covered parking and storage units are available. Interior features include redone kitchens and bathrooms, large walk-in closets and private balconies.

Related:
• Miami Condo Buildings

For the 14th straight time (the longest run in 25 years), the Federal Reserve has raised the federal funds rate to 4-1/2%. This was the final meeting chaired by Alan Greenspan.

Will Greenspan’s replacement Ben Bernake continue to raise rates? The next meeting is March 28th.

You can read more from the Federal Reserve press release.

The Pointe, a 320-unit rental community in Miami is turning condo.

The Florida office of ARA (Apartment Realty Advisors) has disclosed the sale of The Pointe, located at 17460 NW 67th Court in Miami. The ARA said Noah Breakstone, of Miami-based Breakstone Homes, and Luis Machado, of Renegade Investments, bought the property.

The Pointe has of 22 two-story apartment buildings and a clubhouse/leasing center, ARA said.

Amenities include fully appointed kitchens, a washer and dryer and walk-in closets, the company noted. Community amenities include a swimming pool with a spa, two lighted tennis courts, fitness center, sauna and indoor racquetball.

ARA said The Pointe’s units will be priced “well below” the median home price in Miami-Dade County, which it said was $381,600 as of November.

Related:
• Miami Beach Real Estate

Even though Las Vegas, Neveda leads the nation in population growth, developers have begun to cancel plans for high-rise residential towers near the Vegas Strip due to rising construction costs and slow sales.

The Related Group of Florida has called off its “Icon Las Vegas” project due to escalating construction costs. The $325 million, 514-unit development, consisted of two 48-story towers. Designed by Arquitectonica, Miami, the 4.5 acre project was nearly sold out when Related Group canceled the project.

The Carl Fisher Estate is up for sale. The asking price? $40 million. From Miami Herald:

Located at 5020 N. Bay Rd., the 79-year-old villa stands three stories tall and boasts 12 bedrooms and 19 bathrooms. It sits on a 1.57-acre waterfront lot and comes with an open pavilion, an outdoor fireplace, an open-air Jacuzzi, a wine cellar, a $65,000 stove and an original walk-in vault.

But the real showpiece is the 85-foot observation tower, which has its own elevator and bathroom.

Your reward, after getting to the top, is breathtaking views of the Atlantic Ocean, Biscayne Bay and Miami’s downtown skyscrapers.

Architect and businessman Jorge Almeida bought the historic home in 1978 for $550,000 and sold it just before his death last year for $16.5 million.

The current owners, Todd Michael Glaser, Chad Oppenheim and Armin Mattli, have spent the last several months reworking and remodeling the luxury villa.

Here are more vintage photos of the Carl Fisher Estate from a vintage version of MiamiBeach411.com The old site looks funny, but the Fisher Estate pictures are nice.

Via:  Stuck On The Palmetto

Has Miami’s high-rise condo market peaked? Henry Fishkind, an Orlando economist who spoke at the Urban Land Institute seminar thinks it has.

“Miami is ground zero for the housing bubble. It’s going to be severe in Miami, and it’s going to be problematic in West Palm. We’ve built too many units compared to the projections for real users.”

Here is a telling fact, in Miami-Dade, more than 71,500 units are built or planned, but only 9,100 units were completed county wide in the past 10 years.

Will someone please answer:

• Who will occupy all of these units?
• Where are the local jobs to support this?
• Why isn’t the city building the infrastructural and fixing the roads to support the growth?

Henry Fishkind’s advice is if you are buying a single-family home or condo, plan to live in it long term because the days of making fast cash in real estate are over.

Related:
• New Condo Construction
• Florida Real Estate Prices

Michelle and I spent the holidays with my family in San Diego. While we were there, we decided to look at some real estate for sale. Out of the 15 properties we saw, 14 were vacant, and most had already lowered the original asking price $50,000.

The best house was in Oceanside. It was a 3-bedroom with an oceanview. The asking price was $650,000.

Search the MLS in Miami and see what you can get for $650,000.

Prices are better in San Diego…but not for long.

Related:
•  Florida Real Estate Future Projections

  The National Association of Realtors (NAR) home price survey covers changes in 147 metropolitan statistical areas. The survey revealed that the average home nationwide appreciated by 14.7 percent since last year. Homes in only six metro areas lost value.

The strongest price increase in the nation was in the Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale area of Arizona, where the third quarter price of $268,000 rose 55.2 percent from a year earlier. Next was Orlando, Fla., at $261,300, up 44.8 percent from the third quarter of 2004. Cape Coral-Fort Meyers, Fla., with a third quarter median price of $277,600, was up 42.5 percent in the last year.

Prices in Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Miami Beach averaged $386,600 and rose 28.9 percent.

Willard Shepard of NBC 6 is airing a special report on “Real Estate Reality”. The segment focuses on current market conditions and how a family with a middle-class income can go about buying a home.

NBC 6 and Keys Realty examined all the properties for sale in South Florida, and used ZIP codes to find affordable homes in established neighborhoods.

“The reality is, in today’s market, you can rent a lot more than you can buy.  A family making the median income, $45,000, could qualify for a home in the $170,000 to $215,000 range.

Serrano located 146 single-family homes like that in Miami-Dade County. Fourteen are in or just outside Miami Shores, in ZIP code 33150.

In Sunrise, ZIP code 33313, there was a 1,100-square-foot, two-bedroom, 1½-bath home selling for $213,000.

In that price range, far more condominiums and townhouses were available—622 in Broward County. The most were available in Coral Springs, ZIP 33065, or Hallandale, ZIP 33009.

In Miami-Dade County, there were 651 condos, with the most in Aventura, ZIP 33160, with 45 units.

It took a while to find the right price and the right house. Zaldivar and her husband, who make about $80,000, decided on Homestead, where $215,000 got them into a three-bedroom, 1,600-square-foot townhouse.

“The financing is getting a lot more creative. The couple pays an interest-only mortgage, cutting the bill to $2,100. “Without these kinds of new programs, a lot of people that are in medium income brackets will not be able to afford the homes,” Keyes Mortgage Broker Jorge Ballerino said.

Using traditional income guidelines, only 20 percent of the population could afford a home if it cost $300,000. About 13 percent could buy a $400,000 house and only 5 percent can buy a $600,000 house, Shepard reported.

Via: nbc6

Plans have been recently announced to convert the Seville Hotel into a new Ritz-Carlton Club and Residences. The new development will consist of three oceanfront residential towers featuring 44 fractional ownership Club residences, as well as 94 whole ownership Residences.

The Miami Beach location is through a joint partnership with Miami-based developer Lionstone Development and real estate developer and brokerage Fortune International.

Prices will be announced next year. Residence real estate reservations are scheduled for release in early 2006, with fractional ownership reservations following in mid-2006.

The Private Residence Club promises to deliver something no other home can offer, five-star service from the world’s premier hospitality company.

The Ritz-Carlton takes customer service VERY seriusly. In the early 90’s, I worked at the Ritz-Carlton in Marina Del Ray, CA.  Everyday, at a pre-shift meeting, we had to recite this credo to our co-workers:

The Ritz-Carlton Hotel is a place where the genuine care and comfort of our guests is our highest mission.

We pledge to provide the finest personal service and facilities for our guests who will always enjoy a warm, relaxed, yet refined ambience.

The Ritz-Carlton experience enlivens the senses, instills well-being, and fulfills even the unexpressed wishes and needs of our guests.

Funny, I can still recite it like was yesterday.

Via: RitzCarltonClub

In one of the largest sales yet of virtual property in an online game, a Miami resident refinanced his real home to buy a virtual space station for $100,000. He plans to call his space resort, in the game Project Entropia, “Club Neverdie.” 

What is virtual real estate you ask? Forget waterfront condos and zen gardens. Domain names, the virtual real estate of the Web, can deliver far better returns. Here is an interesting story in Business 2.0 about buying domains:

But the way domainers look at it, they own the property. “And if you own the real estate,” Rabin says, “people are going to wind up there at some point.” Soon, he figures, Wall Street at large will begin to catch on, providing opportunities to tap into the public markets. Then big Internet players like Rupert Murdoch or Barry Diller could buy out the domain owners. Some even speculate that Google or Yahoo — or Microsoft, which is entering the paid search business — will roll up the domainers, cutting out a layer and serving up the type-in traffic directly to their advertisers.

Virtual real estate is not boom or bust; it’s here to stay. Grab a shovel and stake your claim. Even the guy in Miami who owns club “Neverdie” will make his money back from the online business.

Related: Oldest Websites on the Internet

A study, conducted on behalf of the American Resort Development Association shows that in 2004 domestic time share sales climbed 21 percent to $7.87 billion.

Florida leads the way with 378 resorts (23 percent of the total), followed by South Carolina, California, Hawaii and Colorado. The average price for a time share interval was $15,789.

Bankrate Tax Talk expert says non-resident aliens selling U.S. property have to file some extra forms, and pay 15 percent tax on capital gains. They also reccommend speaking with a CPA that is familiar with the Foreign Investors Real Property Tax Act.

Via: Bankrate