The Orlando Condo Blog

Another Super Bowl has come and gone.  Congrats to the Steelers for winning, and congrats to the Cardinals for putting on such a terrific back-and-forth contest.  Arguably one of the best Super Bowls I’ve seen in recent history. And at this year’s Super Bowl party, I heard plenty of people talking about the economy and [...]

I hate to beat a dead horse, but… each day we get folk calling in on Orlando condo conversions – foreclosed –  that cost under $50K – and they want to finance them. When we tell them it will be very difficult, we get the “Oh that’s not a problem - I have a great credit score [...]

With mortgages so hard to come by, investors who can’t pay “all-cash” are having a hard time scooping up some of today’s “fire sale” deals – which can be incredibly frustrating. It’s like being (a diabetic) kid in a candy store. (I’m diabetic so I know how that feels.) However since first time home buyers are not [...]

It’s official: Barack Obama is the Commander-in-Chief, despite some impromptu rewording of the presidential oath.  He even still has that new president smell.  In the midst of two wars, rapidly increas­ing unemployment (Caterpillar, ING, Microsoft, Home Depot, Sprint, Pfizer, and US Airways all cut thousands of jobs today), and a sharp and growing international recession, [...]

High-end fraud. It’s the latest blow that has been dealt to the investment markets.  First, Bernie Madoff misappropri­ated $50 billion dollars of investors’ money in a gigantic pyramid scheme (and no, it was not called Amway).  Those affected include high-net worth individuals, hedge funds, pension funds, even charity funds.  This event undermined the already faltering [...]

Multiple Offers are soooo 2006… Well if you think so, take a deep breath because while it might seem ludicrous to make an offer on an Orlando condo – or any other home, if it means competing with another buyer, things have started to change. In the last few weeks, there has been a sharp rise [...]

The new year is upon us.  2009.  Wow.  This time last year gasoline was over $4.00 a gallon, all five of the major investment banks still existed, our country hadn’t ‘bailed out’ any major institutions, and Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were still battling for the democratic nomination.  Seems like so long ago already. 2008 [...]

What the left hand giveth, the right hand taketh away… After the good news that Fannie Mae will no longer treat vacant and foreclosed condos as non-owner occupied comes news of ever more underwriting restrictions. January 15, 2009 is the cutoff date when Fannie Mae toughens its policies on condo properties in the Sunshine state – potentially [...]

Yesterday the Fed finished their final Federal Reserve Open Market Committee meeting of the year and stunned markets with an unprecedented drop in key interest rates.  They opted to reduce the Fed Funds Rate to a range for the first time in target setting history as opposed to a definite value.  They also dropped them [...]