The Orlando Condo Blog

Federal banking regulators have just closed California leviathan IndyMac Bank FSB. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has been named as conservator. I think this is the fifth bank to fail this year.
The FDIC said it will transfer insured deposits and “substantially all the assets” of IndyMac Bank, to a newly created successor, IndyMac Federal Bank, [...]

I’m pleased to announce that the news relating to mortgages and economics has gotten a lot more in­teresting for everyone this week. Lots of reasons to feel positive about where rates may be headed.
At least in the short-term.
First off, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke announced earlier this week that the Fed governors were con­sidering extending [...]

“I’m not buying yet. I’m waiting on the sidelines for the market to hit rock bottom.”
You and the rest of the country.
I’m not saying you’re wrong. But I have two questions for you:
1.) How will you know when rock bottom happens in a complex market where the only perfect vision is hindsight, and the best [...]

The headlining article at money.cnn.com yesterday was titled Did the Fed go too far?, asking whether or not the Fed was prudent in hacking our Fed Funds Rate all the way down to 2%. I’ll save you some time and skip to the end of the story: yes. Yes the Fed did go [...]

As most of you know, I’m not a rose-colored-glasses-Realtor, more of a tell-it-like-it-is-Realtor, and that makes some call me a “pessimist” - so here’s some good optimistic news - and big yellow, non-pessimistic, crack-smoking smiley face to boot.
It’s claimed that the single most accurate forecast tool for housing activity is the “Pending Home Sale Index” [...]

According to a recent (Star Tower) press release, their half-acre rooftop garden on Osceola St. in downtown Orlando is fast becoming the new “in” venue in downtown Orlando.
Albert Kodsi, president of Royal Palm who along with Historic Creations of Orlando developed the Star Tower condo, said recent rooftop events have included political rallies, charitable fundraisers [...]

This week was a mixed bag of encouraging economic news and dismal forecasts from everyone who matters. I’ll do my best to keep the statistics to a bare minimum, but there are a couple of pertinent numbers that deserve our attention.
First and foremost, our 1st quarter Gross Domestic Product growth was revised upwards from [...]

Renting out your Orlando vacation home, condo or villa will not only help offset some of the costs of second home ownership but the U.S. Tax Code also provides some pretty decent breaks.
1.) If you rent your home for 14 days or less in a given year, you don’t have to pay any tax on [...]

For all his aggressive responses to our current credit crisis, Ben Bernanke certainly does like to end with a light touch. The Fed Funds Rate and the Discount Rate both received a 1/4 point cut on April 30th. This was what most experts predicted. Since rate cuts really take about 6 months [...]

The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock indexes both experienced a slightly better than 4% gain over this past week.  Mortgage bonds (and rates) suffered as a result.  Is this indicating a fundamental change in the direction of the markets?
 Yes, we are seeing a change.  But it’s not a change [...]

You are Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke. It is 6:00 pm on a Thursday. You get a phone call from Bear Stearns, a major investment bank, saying that they are experiencing a lack of liquid funds and will have to declare bankruptcy unless something is done by the opening of markets tomorrow. Taxpayers [...]

With tax season upon us, individuals who own vacation condos must be certain they are able to claim every tax credit and/or deduction allowed them by law. The following is an excerpt from my book, Condo Living: A Guide to Buying, Owning & Selling a Condominium and is part of a tax credit series [...]

It was a surprisingly quiet week, given that it was the final week in the 1st quarter of 2008.  Typically, markets tend to be quite fidgety as fund managers and investors shift their cash around to make their balance sheets look nice.  However, we saw a decline in volatility across both stock and fixed-income markets [...]

The Fed has flexed some serious muscle in the last week and a half, and I am feeling very positive about the outcome thus far.  Here’s the play-by-play:
Bear Stearns suffered a liquidity emergency (kinda like what would happen if everyone in New York flushed at the time to water, only with money),  ignited by some [...]

A National Association of Home Builders quarterly index that measures builder and developer confidence in the condo market dropped 11 points in the final quarter of 2007 compared to the same quarter in the previous year.
The Multifamily Condo Market Index, based on a survey of builders, stood at 18.8 in the fourth quarter on a [...]