From left, new Brown Harris Stevens hires: Charlotte Curan, Elaine Edwards, Gregory Weadock, Mahnaz Whelton and Carla Coser

From the South Florida Web site:
As the real estate market swings up in Palm Beach, leading brokerage firms are looking for and landing top talent.

Brown Harris Stevens of Palm Beach, one of the oldest and largest luxury residential real estate brokerages on the tony island, announced Monday the hiring of five associates. Linda A. Gary Real Estate is looking to hire new agents, and the Corcoran Group, which has brought on a number of agents over the last year, expects to hire agents as the market starts to look up.

At BHS of Palm Beach, Elaine Edwards came on board as a broker associate and Mahnaz Whelton, Gregory Weadock, Carla Coser and Charlotte Curran as sales associates.

“Individually, they’ve been very, very successful,” said Ava Van de Water, executive vice president and broker of BHS of Palm Beach. “Now, we’re pooling their talent together.” [more]

From the South Florida Web site: Buying a condominium in South Florida for $100,000 seems improbable, even impossible. But it’s not. Plenty now languish on the market, despite selling for a song.

The implosion of the overbuilt condo sector in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties has caused a price retreat to 2003 levels.

Indeed, the recently released September condo sales report from the Florida Association of Realtors showed median prices of $78,300 in Broward and $106,700 in Palm Beach counties, respectively. In Miami-Dade County, where prices fell 37 percent from the previous year, the median stood at $132,900.

As prospects wait and condo prices in South Florida keep falling, prices going below $100,000 — a return to pre-boom levels — could bring more buyers off the sidelines.

From the South Florida Web site: The Florida Association of Realtors said September condo sales rose 77 percent statewide from a year ago. It was a 9 percent climb from August, with about 5,000 units changing hands. The median price for the one-year period is down by one-third to $102,500. All but one of the state’s metropolitan areas showed a gain in condo sales, and a majority of those have posted increased sales for 15 consecutive months.