Find Your Florida

Note the info regarding the investors in Naples - there has been investing like that here as well: One partnership bought five properties in Old Palm - with a long-term mindset.

There’s Value in Real Estate, if You Find Your Florida

By PAUL SULLIVAN
Published: August 7, 2009

<-(Photo by Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times) Greg Rand, managing partner at Better Homes and Gardens Rand Realty.

THE last thing most people are thinking of investing in right now is real estate. The collapse of residential values stung almost all homeowners. And the commercial market, from offices to shopping malls, is full of uncertainty as unemployment rises and consumer spending continues to be weak.

“Florida is in a storm right now,” said Greg Rand, managing partner at Better Homes and Gardens Rand Realty. “It’s overdeveloped, overspeculated and overleveraged.”
Yet there are those who argue that this is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to buy property. Greg Rand, managing partner at Better Homes and Gardens Rand Realty, a brokerage in the suburbs north of New York, even has a theory to guide investors. He calls it “house rich.”

Read on, or perish... http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/08/your-money/08wealth.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

Luxury homes sales up in South Florida

We've been witnessing this from the front lines since the end of last year...

Luxury home sales on the rise again in South Florida
Luxury homes are selling again in South Florida -- a promising sign of new life in the housing market.

BY MONICA HATCHER
mhatcher@MiamiHerald.com
Patricia Delinois' Blackberry is buzzing again. After a long, dreary drought, her Sunday afternoons are filling up with open houses.
Delinois, who handles very expensive real estate, says a flurry of new activity is providing hope that the luxury home market has a pulse again, after taking a beating in recent months -- albeit with kid gloves.
"We were having open houses and nobody would come," said Delinois, president of Century 21 Premier Elite Realty. "Now, we're getting five, six, 10 families coming through. I'm really praying and keeping my fingers crossed this is a permanent thing."

You know you want to finish this: -> http://www.miamiherald.com/business/story/1167851.html

Six rules every real estate investor should know cold

Ken Rosen has been investing in Florida real estate for 40 years - in this piece he outlines the six rules he has for every investment. Print them, and pull them out every time you make a real estate investment decision...

Real estate investor shares six great ideas
After decades in South Florida real estate, Coral Gables investor Kenneth D. Rosen put his principles into a book to help buyers in good times and bad.

BY MATTHEW HAGGMAN
mhaggman@MiamiHerald.com
Kenneth D. Rosen has been a real-estate investor in greater Miami for 40 years. All the while he employed a formula for buying property, but he did it intuitively. Not until he was asked to give a talk before a Realtor board several years ago did he actually write down his investment principles.
In the past year, he expanded on those notes by putting into book form what he calls his ``Big Six'' investing guidelines. His book Investing in Income Propertieshas even caught the attention of an Egyptian publisher and is being translated into Arabic.

Keep reading -> http://www.miamiherald.com/103/story/1168012.html