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Come October 5, 2008 one lucky investor will be able to purchase the remaining 171  condos at The Place at Channelside.  Unfortunately, The Place at Channelside has become another insolvent development due to the overbuilt condo market in the Tampa Bay area.  A Tampa bankruptcy judge has given the order for the auction of the last vacant group of condos to be bought with a minimum reserve price of a little over $17 million dollars.

These are luxury condos built near the Port of Tampa which range in size from 596 square feet for a studio to a huge 3,665 square foot roof top luxury penthouse.  Features include stepped terrace-styled architecture, concrete construction, european touches throughout, all designed by some of the most distinguised…

As one of the nation's top tourist destinations and popular relocation area for seniors, Tampa is home to numerous theme parks, upscale shopping and flea markets, golf courses, resorts and spas, and the famous gulf coast beaches. And, if you visit in the Fall you can experience comfortable weather, less traffic and less crowds.

That's right! The kids are back in school and the summer heat and humidity is backing down, making way for an enjoyable Fall and Winter in the Tampa Bay area. So, a visit to our area now allows active adults to make the most of their time and budget.

While you are here you just might want to think about having the opportunity to come back year after year and stay in your own place. After all, with Tampa real estate prices so low,…

Coming to HGTV on AUGUST 14TH AT 10:00 PM is the Trinity FL episode of "Goodbye Gators" on House Hunters.  This is the first time in many years that the House Hunters team has come to the Tampa Bay area and Trinity, along with the McCollum family, stole their hearts.  We hope you will tune and watch the show!

Joe Gibbons, Realtor with Lipply Real Estate Team, helped the McCollum family of Trinity look for a new home in the Pasco County Trinity subdivision of Fox Wood after selling their current home.  Their home, which sold in 2007, sold in just 33 days at very close to their asking price.  Once the home sold, the McCollum family was in a hurry to find the perfect home.  So the team set out and looked at roughly 20 homes in Fox Wood.  Their search…

Under the "My Safe Florida Home Program" Florida homeowners stand to save some money on their homeowner's insurance premiums.  The My Safe Florida Home program was designed to help Floridian homeowners learn how to harden their homes to better protect themselves and their families from windstorm damage. By registering at the website below you can sign up for a free inspection which is valid only on single-family, site-built homes.  An certified inspector will come out to the home and conduct the windstorm inspection to see if your home qualifies for a rate reduction.  After the inspection, you will get a document via email which you submit to your insurance company.

Wind insurance incentives apply to existing houses, new houses, and rebuilt houses in…

Fractional ownership has been around for some time but it may be a new term to some of us.  Popular in some of the tourist areas, such as Tampa Bay, Fractional ownership simply means "the division of any asset into portions or shares".  If the "asset" is real estate for example, the deed can be legally divided into shares and each purchaser owns a part of the deed.  The assets are taxable, represent equity, and can appreciate or depreciate in value when the property itself changes.

Factionals are not timeshares.  Timeshares are, for the most part ,a privilege to use the property for a period of time.  While timeshares tend to lose their value quickly, Fractionals follow the market trend of appreciation on the property.

Fractionals appeal to internet…

Located in one of the fastest growing counties in the state, Wesley Chapel is a progressive, growing community with an eye on the future and a view of the past. Once home to citrus groves and farms, Wesley Chapel has blossomed into a thriving residential community with a vibrant future. Just off US 75, the small city of about 45,000 people offers easy access to three major cities – Tampa, St. Petersburg and Clearwater. It has seen tremendous growth in the past five years, with population increasing nearly 90% since the year 2000, growing from a sleepy country town to an upscale suburban city in five years.

Most of the burgeoning development in Wesley Chapel is in brand new subdivisions built out from the center of town. The homes are brand new, and so is…

In their monthly "Marketplace Analysis", the Pinellas Realtor Organization released some figures announcing the first signs of a balanced market in one price range.  According the PRO, "there's been a slight shift in reported MSI (Month's Supply of Inventory) as of March 2008.  MSI is the number of months it would take to sell all the homes on the market at a given price range for any given point in time".

They report that for single family homes:

MSI of 9 to 14 is considered a balanced market

MSI of 17 to 20 is considered a buyer's market

MSI above 23 is an extreme buyer's market

Sales figures for March 2008 are showing that single family homes priced below $120,000 and up to $150,000 are within a balanced market.  According to President Ann…

“The Housing Crisis is Over” so says Cyril Moulle-Berteaux, managing partner at Traxis Partners in New York, in his recent May 2008 opinion article in the Wall Street Journal.

Who is he and what can he know about it? Previously, he was a managing director for Morgan Stanley and left to start Traxis in 2003 with Barton Biggs, a long time Wall Street executive, also from Morgan Stanley. With that much credibility, he must know something about this after all.

So, let’s hear him out. He says that the housing market is bottoming out. This is music to the ears of all the real estate agents in the United States. Not just real estate agents mind you but everyone wanting to sell their homes and all the thousands of would be homebuyers currently sitting on the…