After falling for nine months straight, single-family home prices in South Florida rose in May as the spring buying season boosted values, according to Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller 20-city housing index released Tuesday.
Home prices in the region including Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties rose 1.2 percent between April and May, after falling 0.2 percent to a new recession low in April.
Still, compared to the same month last year, prices were down 5.3 percent, as foreclosures and distressed short sales continued to dominate the market.
Prices are back on the level they were at in the summer of 2003, according to the Case-Shiller index, which tracks repeat sales of existing homes and does not include condo sales.
Nationwide, prices across the top 20 cities rose 1 percent in May but remained 4.5 percent below their year-ago levels.
Bridgeport Investments, an Orange County-based real estate investment banking firm, said since the spring of last year it has provided financing for a number of real estate acquisitions throughout Southern California, including some in Riverside and San Bernardino counties.
Its Inland Southern California deals include a $12.5 million equity commitment from an institutional investor that enabled CapRock Partners, a real estate investment company in Irvine, to buy up to eight small-to-mid-sized industrial properties with delinquent notes in Southern California. So far the fund has made two acquisitions, one in north San Diego County and one in the San Jose area.
Also on the commercial front, Bridgeport said it arranged $4.1 million in financing for CapRock Partners to acquire two defaulted loans secured by two industrial buildings in Chino, totaling 75,000 square feet of space.
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An 8-year-old girl was taken to Bay State Medical Center Saturday night after nearly drowning in her family’s pool.
Police said the girl had been swimming in her family’s pool on Spruceland Road under the supervision of her mother. The girl was diving into the water to retrieve toys that had sunk to the bottom, police said.
One of the toys became stuck behind the pool ladder. When the girl submerged herself to grab the toy it appears her braid became ensnarled around a bolt on the ladder and she was not able to come up for air.
Her injuries were not life-threatening.
Is home (price) where you should hang your hat?
Here at the Economic Time Machine, we’re starting to get a complete look at South Florida housing numbers for the first quarter of 2011. The broad-stroke analysis is this: Sales are on the rise, prices continue to drop (plummet, if you live/sell/invest in Miami-Dade). Broward on the other hand is exceptional.
Our real-estate-writer colleague, Toluse Olorunnipa, wrote about the trend in late March, when February numbers came out:
The sales bump came amid heavily discounted prices. In a surprising uptick, however, prices of single-family homes in Broward surged 22 percent to $167,000, and condo prices were up 4 percent to $67,100.
Terri Bersach, president of the Broward board of governors for the Miami Association of Realtors, said the sharp price increase in the single-family market is being sparked by local “move-up” buyers who are now confident enough to buy a larger home.
Bersach’s “moving-up” analysis is one theory as to why Broward single-family median home price saw the biggest year-over-year jump in the last five years.
The
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Q: Our concrete front porch has indoor-outdoor carpet glued to it. We want to remove the carpet and glue. Can you help?
A: Getting the carpet off usually isn’t too difficult, but removing the adhesive cleanly can be a real hassle.
One of the best tools you can have for both carpet and adhesive removal is a shovel with a flat blade and a short, grip-type handle. If you don’t have one, they are sold in garden-supply stores. Before starting, sharpen the blade with a file. Use a sharp utility knife to cut through the carpet to form strips a couple of feet wide, then loosen each strip by whacking at the edges with the shovel- scraper.
When you get enough carpet loose to get a good grip on it, you can usually pull it off. When all the carpet is off, you will still have the adhesive and probably some carpet backing to remove. There are several approaches to removing the residue. Read more…