Yes NySS guy is right. ALL over Apartment buildings are converting over. A documented Condo or Townhome will be a recorded with the County or City the building or unit is in. You can ask to see the by-laws before purchasing. The recorded date will be in the by laws 'if' the builder turned over the property recorded as a 'condo' or 'townhome' to the ASSociation usually around 60% owner occupancy even before completion.

Condo's in my area run 185K-198K- (I paid 65K for mine in 2002 so don't barf) and it's withstood 3 canes in 2 seasons (mine was built in 1984 by K Hovnanian) There are brand new ones further down the road going for the mid 200's<--it sounds relatively cheap compared to Mass.......or CT but not really!

Insane I can move to NC and buy a brand new 3/2/2 on some land for $180K

Ask me why I'd stay here?

 

The good news is, when you buy a new condo you get a right of rescission period. This allows you to review the condo docs. If you buy one, find out if it's 3 days or 15 days. Also, make sure to look at the budget. Make sure there is money in reserve accounts to cover major repairs down the road. Otherwise you will be assessed for them later (big $$). I think that's all I know about this stuff. Good luck.

 

Thanks everyone. The reason I'm asking about Condos is that I was down in Miami this past august, and took with me the real estate section of the newspaper. In it was new condos being built for $140k and up in I beleive Coral gable or Coconut Grove. I'm going to have to look that up again to see if I'm reading it right. Does a new condo for that price range seem right, or there must be something else to it for it to be that cheap? I could've sworn it was under development condos that woud be opening soon.

 

More like $400K and up in those areas.
1/1's maybe in the 3's.

 

Then what the hell was I looking at? I distinctly remember seeing a few with tennis court, fitness gym, spa etc starting at $140k. Now I'm going to dig that up to see exactly where and what it is.

 

Sounds like a condo conversion to me. There's no way to tell the difference by looking at their ads. They make sure it looks like it's a new condo they are advertising.

 

140K in August...I bet they are 180k now. It is really appreciating that quickly.
I was looking into some condo-conversions in this real nice development back around August. They were fetching 150k for a 1/1, I checked yesterday and the 1/1's are 185k now.
Anything new around here is 300k and up..for condos that is.
A house in a decent area in Broward County is 300k and up. For 300k you are talking a 2/1 with maybe 1000 sq-ft under air.

 

that's friggin insane. I honestly don't know how you all live here. Ya'll must be supplementing your income with another job (probably not legal, hehe)

 

Jeff, while you are here.....grab a local newspaper on Sunday. You will see insane prices. The average median home price in Palm Beach County is now $411 whereas........it WAS 129K back in 1999.

I remember when prices for lots in the arcreage used to be 16-40K......for an acre. You cannot touch an acre now for under 200K.

That's pricing on demand and well...........a sign of the times. Read it the other day on CNN that people are moving to other States to buy where it is affordable.

I cannot think of what it would be like to carry a mortgage for 300K for a house.........might as well consider yourself working for your house and having no life outside of it unless you are earning over 100K a year to support it.

 

exactly. i make a good buck now but that's because i make a good salary and work a **** LOAD of overtime but literally all my pay would go toward a mortgage payment.

 

Damn, then I'm going to need to make a decision quick if I intend to go down there. I remember looking back in January- February, and housing in WPB was about $175-200k for what seemed like nive, new homes. I can't beleive it's appreciated that quickly.

 

Noway, last year decent home prices were still in the 300-350K area.........they've gone up since. I am not sure what you were looking at but things I looked at back 18 mths ago homewise were in the 240K area for what we wanted are now 100K more.

I can give you an example, my Mom sold her house in Sept 2004 for 340K it had a contract on it in 24 hours. Great sale for both realtors who each got 10K on it........but her neighbor just has his appraised to sell last month and the price now is about $470K.......she's a bit sick over that........but hey, she wanted to move back to CT.

So this is why we are leaving..........can't stay in an overpriced market with the cost of living that doesn't reflect the surge.

 

I don't even want to disclose what my house is worth. We bought expensive 1 year ago, and the damn thing has near doubled already. Things are bonkers. Things should level out soon (that's what people have been saying for 5 years now).
Seems like the entire world wants a piece of Miami- from Supermodels to people who come here on rafts. It's been popular for over a decade now.
I remember when South Beach was full of old farts on rocking chairs (watch Scarface- scene when Tony escapes the chainsaw in the hotel and guns the guy down on Ocean Drive).
I live on a well travelled touristic route and you wouldn't believe me when I say a Murcielago, a Gallardo, or an F360 (etc.) drives past my house basically every 15 minutes. It's like living in a Miami Vice episode. Actually, where Sonny was portrayed to have lived (on his sailboat with his pet alligator), is down the street from me.

 

Sorry to quote myself but among leaving due to pricing I also HATE it here, I have no Family here, I cannot stand the rude people, the people constantly in a hurry on the roads or in a store...........so yeah, leaving cause I hate the ******* people here. All FL has going for itself is the nice weather only this time of year.

Nuff' said

 

I agree, the people are ruder down here. Much more ruder than in Orlando. When I first got into West Palm Beach I was walking down the sidewalk minding my own business and some lady carrying boxes walked into me and just kept on walking. No apology, no excuse me nothing. She acted like nothing happened. I wanted to backhand her. This seems like typical behavior down here.

southflo2ss I want to come visit, sounds like a cool place where you live.

 

Kinda hard to tell the wife (who's really defensive about her newborn son) that we'd have a stranger from the internet coming by the house to hang out.

But sure, if you're in town, we can grab a beer somewhere. Cheers!

 

LOL

yea i have a few applicants around Miami that I have to hit, I'll be visiting them probably sometime next week and in January.

 

I definitely think appreciation is going to slow down dramatically over the next year. More out of necessity than anything else. How long can we see 25-35% yearly increases?!?! But, even a drastic slow down would put us around 10-15% increases, which is still high. I'll tell ya, I know things are slowing down in some areas, but my partner and I just sold 11 houses in 2 days. And these things are not cheap ($600-$800k). Some people have made soo much on their current houses that the high prices don't matter. It's the people that are trying to just get started that are getting hurt. Of course, everybody has to pay the ridiculous property taxes!

 

yea its easy when you already have money but the large majority of us don't have that kind of scratch layin around. Like I asked before, what the hell are these people doing that they can afford 800 k houses?

 

All I can say is bring your car.