Back in 2006, New Jersey boxing promoter-turned-South Florida real estate mogul Marc Roberts was the face of the largest urban renewal project in the country. It was called the Miami World Center , and it was supposed to transform a rundown ghetto into a glitzy strip of shops, restaurants, and…
Forbes.com is always busy making their lists, and Miami has finally taken the number one spot on one. Unfortunately it’s called “Ten U.S. Cities In Free Fall.”Miami boasts a popular South Beach club scene, Art Deco Architecture, and perhaps the best Cuban food in the country. But residents don’t have much…
Both New York’s SoHo and Miami Beach’s South Beach were once forgotten urban districts: SoHo full of warehouses and factories, SoBe home to poverty, the elderly, and all sorts of vice. Then came the cool people and creative class, shortly followed by the developers and eventually the fancy shopping, boutique…
12.2 percent. That was the unemployment rate in Florida for February, and the highest ever recorded. Miami-Dade’s adjusted unemployment rate sits at 11.8, up from 11.7 last month. The national rate sits at 9.7 percent.All in all the sunshine state has lost 211,500 jobs in the past year.There’s a bit…
The hotel component of the Four Seasons Millennium Tower has been sold to a New York investment group for just $29.5 million according to Condo Vultures. The hotel had been previously valued at $85.5 million according to tax records. That’s a pretty steep discount.Located inside the 70-story Four Seasons Millennium…
Brickell, the so-called Manhattan of the South, was supposed to be Miami’s next hot spot. Developers fully bought into the idea, and for a while it seemed a new luxury condo high-rise was breaking ground every other month. Then, whoops, the housing bubble burst, the recession hit, and many of those condo…
The owners of the Fontainebleau Miami Beach borrowed about $620 million to complete its recent $1 billion makeover, but according to Business Week, they haven’t made payments on any of the loans since September. Now BW says they’re offering a restructuring plan to lenders. Yes, yet another Miami Beach megahotel…
If you’re a strapping young lad or lass fresh out of college and looking to plant your foot on the career ladder, Miami is apparently not a good place to start. Believe me — all I could snag out of college was writing this here blog*, and that is considered…
There was a time — say, last summer — when no clerk wanted to enter a certain room on the 15th floor of 140 W. Flagler St., a drab Miami-Dade County municipal building downtown. Inside lurked a multiton beast made of dead trees: the collection of pending foreclosure case files…
W Hotels, a chain so chic it needs but a single letter to identify it, finally came to South Beach last fall, but now owners who bought condos in the complex allege they were deceived and want their deposits back.Potential owners were told there would be larger units, additional condos,…
Despite some concerns that new management might put a damper on the unadulterated chicness of the Gansevoort South Hotel on South Beach, The Wall Street Journal reports that the hotel is still tragically hip.Though the hotel portion of the complex was reportedly very successful, slow sales on the condominium side forced Credit…
That condo you bought in downtown as an investment property in 2005? You might not be able to make a reasonable profit on it until sometime after 2030.Moody’s Economy.com says housing prices in Miami-Dade and most other southern Florida counties won’t recover until 2030. The predictions are based on Fiserv’s Leading Case-Shiller…
Oh look, former Gov. Jeb Bush has apparently joined Twitter, and even though he hasn’t twatted anything into his tweet machine yet he already has 2,323 people following him!That works out to a little less than 1 percent of the people who have followed Conan O’Brien since he joined the…
As Lil Wayne gets ready to trade in his baller lifestyle for a jail cell, he’s liquidating his Miami real estate portfolio. He’s put his four-bedroom condo in the Murano Grande on South Beach up for sale for $2.8 million, according to AllHipHop.com.This isn’t the same apartment Weezy was renting that…
William and Michael Achenbaum, the father-and-son team that own the Gansevoort Hotel in New York City, now have officially nothing to do with the massive Gansevoort South in South Beach. The duo officially lost ownership of the hotel-and-condominium building last month when they failed to find a another buyer, Credit…
Fallen superproducer Scott Storch lost his 20,000-square-foot Palm Island mansion to foreclosure. He paid $10.5 million for the pad in 2006, but SunTrust Bank foreclosed on the property last year and bought it back at auction for $5.5 million. Now the property, known by the classy and sophisticated name of Villa Ferrari,…
Diddy is probably one of the only people in the world who can say”That’s always been a hobby of mine, collecting estates,” with a straight face. Collecting estates? Most of us would be so lucky just to have one.Anyway, despite taking pride in his hobby, Diddy has a policy of…
Brian Hope, a 36-year-old attorney, moved into a Brickell condo at Quantum on the Bay in October. He signed a one-year lease for unit 3701, which has one bedroom and a sweeping view of Biscayne Bay. He was quite pleased. But then, a couple of days after moving in, he noticed…
Not long ago, Riptide implied — via a Moron of the Week post — that Miami rapper Bow Wow isn’t very smart. Sure, maybe he did announce his own drunk driving — in a “Lambo” — via Twitter. And, yeah, maybe Miami Beach cops did slap him with a DUI two seconds…
At 11.8 percent in December, the Florida unemployment rate is the highest it’s ever been since 1975. That’s up 0.3 percent from November and a whopping 4.2 percent from the same month last year. Miami-Dade’s unemployment rate is still below the state’s, but the numbers shot up in December, climbing to 11.3 percent…
For nearly a decade, Guillermo Socarras has had a dream of constructing the world’s tallest building in Miami. But plans have shifted. Backers, if they were ever really there, have backed out. The local economy, especially the building boom, has flat-lined. And just earlier this month, Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, the…
On the off chance you haven’t heard yet, 2009 was not a very good year for the economy. Which means it wasn’t a very good year for real estate, especially not luxury Miami real estate. In their wrapup of year-end stats, the South Beach Real Estate blog notes prices per square…
