Fort Lauderdale Real Estate | Buying a house or a condo in Fort Lauderdale | Selling your house or condo in Fort Lauderdale FL
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Direct: (954) 529-5505
Office: (954) 396-5900
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2810 E Oakland Park Blvd Ste 200
Fort Lauderdale, FL
(954) 396-5900
Cash-tra-tion (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.
Everyone knows that tomorrow, Tuesday November 2, 2010 is the Mid-Term Elections.
What does voting has to do with real estate? It has lots to do with real estate. There are zillions of laws and regulations affecting real estate: government taxes, municipal taxes, our schools, our parks, our streets, our neighborhoods, our police, mortgages, etc…
Your vote will make a difference and will be part of ”the solution”, a solution or your solution. And, if you think that all candidates are crooks, then, vote for the least crook of them all BUT VOTE!!!. If you don’t vote you are part of ”the problems”. Non-voters are wimps, cowards and lazy but they are the first ones to benefit from the system, bitch at it and demand more from it.
See you at your local voting hall tomorrow bright and early! 
I received in my email today an advertisement promoting to sell homes in a 55+ UN-RETIREMENT community. I took a double read to that but, the heading was correct - it really makes sense.
There was a time when 55+ years old people were “old” but today the lower seniors are health coscious and live much longer healthy and hyper-active lives, way past the national average living expectancy (78 years old for men and 80.5 for women).
The reason for that is attributed to the fact that here in Fort Lauderdale and Southeast Florida, seniors are fueled by the constant sunshine, No more walkers or scooters. They don’t sit around on their laurels all day long waiting for the bus to take them to their doctors’ office.
They begin their days crowding the beach sidewalks for a sunrise health jog; then, they meet friends out for breakfast or at coffee shops; then, they go for swims, golfing, bicycling, work on their house gardens, go out to lunch with another set of friends, go shopping in the afternoons, or go fishing, go out to cocktail hours, dinners, dancing and finally to bed… (I am exhausted already) to start all over the next day.
So, what are you waiting for? Come to Fort Lauderdale to UN-RETIRE. If seniors get bored in Fort Lauderdale, it’s their fault.
John Bourassa, Realtor with RE/MAX Partners selling luxury homes and condos in Fort Lauderdale, FL.
Call my “Sell” phone (954) 529-5505
CNBC reported that The National Asociation of Realtors ® (NAR) revealed this week that “The Realtors® said its Pending Home Sales Index, based on contracts signed in May, fell to a record low 77.6 from 110.9 in April. Economists polled by Reuters had expected a smaller decline of 12.5 percent in May.” a 30% drop.
Meanwhile, in Broward County, Florida, sales of homes and condos combined rose from 1150 Pending Home Sales in April 2010 to 1475 in May 2010 (a 22% increase) and rose agian from May 2010 to 2619 in June 2010 (a 43% increase).
Life is good in Fort Lauderdale, FL and our homes and codos are now affordably cooool!
John Bourassa, Real Estate Agent with RE/MAX Partners in Fort Lauderdale, FL.
Call my “Sell” phone (954) 529-5505
A message from our 2010 FAR President, Wendell Davis:
Dear Florida Realtors®,
If you have not already done so, please take a minute to click on NAR’s Call-for-Action http://takeaction.realtoractioncenter.com/campaign/nhip_rhs_two and urge Congress to renew the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) and the Rural Housing 502 Program. For those who have already taken action, thank you for your leadership.
It is imperative that we have as many Florida Realtors as possible contact Congress!
Thank you for your participation,
Are you a golfer? Then, Fort Lauderdale or Greater Fort Lauderdale is your destination to endulge in golfing year-round. We have dozens of magnificent echo green courses from the affordable to the very private and exclusive retreat. You can live near-by or you can live directly on nost of those beautiful sport landscapes .
Just imagine sitting in your backyard or on your condo balcony and look out to those vast, peaceful and relaxing greenscapes, or…
Call my “Sell” phone for expedient information. (954) 529-5505.
Trying to sell your house in this market, you’ve hired the best Realtor® in your neighborhood and six month later, your house still hasn’t sold.
Oh Shit! What next?
There are several alternatives that many people revert to in hopes that maybe spiritual intervention may help boost the sale of their homes.
When all fails you can always seek a fortune teller, have your tarot cards read, make voo-doo dolls of your neighbors and stick pins in them or just pray to the Allmighty for assistance.
There is, however, a very popular mystical method consisting of burying the ol’ St. Joe (Saint Josep) statue in the yard of the house you are trying to sell and it is supposed to bring you good luck and fast results.
Lately, I have investigated that myth and interviewed a few people who believe in that miracoulous practice but it is uncertain about how it really works: One common denominator in those stories is that every one agrees that the statue must be buried inthe ground but some say the statue needs to be buried head down facing the street; some say the same thing but facing the house or on a strategic corner of the property; some say the head must be sticking out looking at the house (I have only seen some idiot dads bury themselves like that in the sand at the beach, though). But many homeowner swear that it works – only if you are Catholic, of course – if you are a non-Catholic and you have tried that method of desparation and it works, it’s a good owmen and you’d better convert to Catholicism immediately.
The other very popular method is based on the Chinese Spiritual Order Feng Shui. It is believed that everything must have a charismatic spiritual order to bring perfect balance with our lives and with our surroundings. Homes, for instance, arranging furniture a certain way will create harmonyand happiness in that house. Placing flowers and burning incense in strategic areas in a house will bring good luck and ward off negative spirits. And so on…
But, the very best way to sell your home quickly is to price it right to begin with.
John Bourassa, Realtor®-Associate with RE/MAX Partners selling Fort Lauderdale, FL, Fort Lauderdale Beach, The Landings, Imperial Point, Coral Ridge, Poinsettia Heights, Wilton manors, Victoria Park, Las Olas area and Downtown Fort Lauderdale, the Seven Isles and Harbour Beach.
Often times home buyers are excited about purchasing a house, yet, they are also insecure. When they like an area, they explore to study that neighborhood hopefully to see someone out in the front lawn or walking and ask those persons questions.
Ironically, the neighbors you know also know you and when those neighbors are probed by strangers, somehow, neighbors are compelled to tell everything they know about their neighbors.
Two weeks ago, I worked with a middle-aged couple down from Atlanta for a few days scouting to buy a house in Fort Lauderdale. After two days exploring different locales, one house finally flirted with their eyes. Instantly I could see that my buyers felt so happy in that house. I thought for sure we were going right back to my office to write an offer but, instead, the couple said “We’ll think on it overnight”.
As it turned out, the couple went back on their own to invstigate the neighborhood where that beautiful house stood. Three houses down across from the house they saw a younger man washing his car in his driveway with his two pre-teen children playfully helping him. The young man seemed trusting. My buyers stopped, rolled down their car window and began asking questions about the neighborhood but leading toward specific questions on the house they liked.
The young man answered the questions as if he were testifying before a grand jury. That young father apparently was not happy with the neighborhood plus he gave a low-down report on a couple of annoying neighbors. Finally, he disclosed a shcoking truth about the house my buyers were inquiring about – the house has a severe leaking roof problem.
Later that evening, my buyers called me, saddened. They decided against not only buying that house but also not to buy in that neighborhood.
They drove back to Atlanta the next day with a promise they will get back with me soon…
John Bourassa, Realtor® with RE/MAX Partners servicing Fort Lauderdale Beach, Coral Ridge, The Landings, Harbour Beach, The Seven Isles, Victoria Park, Poinsettia Heights, Downtown Fort Lauderdale and Las Olas area, Wilton Manors and vicinity. Call my “Sell” phone (954) 529-5505.
The cellular phone was once an imaginative, surrreal, device fit for fiction novel. Now, it is a taken-for-granted way of life and there is a big war perpetually going on among device manufacturers and service providers because they all out-do each other every month, so it seems.
As a successful Realtor® servicing Fort Lauderdale Beach, FL, a “smart phone” is a smart and indispensable mobile device to behold. It is litterally a small computer that has everything you need to be on the go, out in the filed.
Friday, I just replaced my 18 months old Smasung Instinct Smart Phone with the new and smarter HTC Evo 4G ”smart phone” (the 4 is for the new 4G streaming speed boosting the bandwith capability to download speeds averaging from 3 billion to 6 billion bits per second (Mbps), compared with 3G downloads that typically go no faster than 1.4 Mbps [quoted by Rob Pegorano in today's Washington Post] to but is only available in a very few areas of the country for now). It is supposed to be better than the current crazed Apple’s I-Phone but I can’t say because I have never owned and operated the I-Phone to compare the differences. I chose Sprint’s service over At & T, who is still the exclusive service provider for the I-Phone, because, considering Apples for non-Apples, Sprint offers an equivalent quality service at a less expensive monthly plan.
I am still not familiar with all those wonderous gadgets my new Evo has but the overall use is quite awesome. It is litterally my whole office in the palm of my hand. This apparatus is the third and latest installment of Google’s Android operating system which some say is now surpassing the I-phone technology. Plus, Realtors®, it has a built-in 8 mega-pixel camera with a flash that take gorgeous and precised quality photos, on the fly, and you can sync that puppy with your office computer with a simple USB conncetion or just forward them to anywhere you want. Another nifty and most convenient feature is the included Adobe Acrobat Reader to let you open and read PDF files.
Smart phones are teh thing now but I am sure that in a couple of months my new Evo will be obsolete…
Gov. Charlie Crist signed the Condo Reform Bill SB 1196 last Tuesday.
Among several benefits for Condominium Assocations are:
1) Lenders will have to pay condo associations 12 months of back maintenance dues or 1% of the original mortgage amount, whichever is lesser;
2) Condo Boards can opt out of the terribly expensive fire sprinkler/smoke detecter retrofit;
3) Protection for bulk buyers into a condo unit (many condominium associations do not allow an owner to own more than one unit because that gives a multiple owner more voting pwoer which can overturn a delicate voting issue unjustly – conversely, when there are condominiums who have 15 to 30 + units in distress, having someone who buys many units and will pick up the delinquent maintenance tabs should be welcome);
4) Owners who are delinquent for more that 90 days will lose their right to vote .
To some it may not be much of benefits but, heck, every little bit helps.
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