Buyers of foreclosed homes in Sunrise are getting up to $2,000 from the city toward home improvement projects, the Sun-Sentinel reported. The Community Development Office is running the program with city funds and advertising it to local real estate agents. It’s been approved it for up 100 home buyers and city officials are trying to get banks to match the funds.

Though Sunrise sales are picking up, according to brokers who estimated that there are 160 properties in Sunrise eligible for the program, the city wants foreclosed properties off the market even more quickly. [more]

In their search for funds to upkeep homes abandoned during the foreclosure crisis, more South Florida cities are passing the cost to the property owner in the form of a property tax addition, rather than allocating general taxpayer funds.

According to the Sun Sentinel, Hallandale Beach started the trend two years ago, and in recent months West Palm Beach and Palm Beach County have followed suit. Today, it’s up for vote in Sunrise and Hollywood is also considering a change. [more]

Green Now, the developer whose plans to build a recycling facility in Sunrise was rejected by city commissioners in February, has filed a lawsuit in Broward Circuit Court that aims to force the city to reconsider. Sunrise officials had argued that the proposed two-acre recycling center did not meet city code, though Jim Feeley and Paul Baker, Green Now principals, allege that it is allowed. Locals had also protested the project, citing traffic, noise and pollution as reasons. [Sun Sentinel] 

[more]

If you don’t pay your condominium association fees in Broward County, you risk more than the ire of your neighbors: there might be a trip to the lockup in your future. Broward Circuit Court Judge Thomas Lynch ordered sheriff’s deputies to bring condo investor Timothy Mohn to his court to offer a reason why he had not handed over his tenants’ rent to the receiver appointed to oversee the battered finances of the Villas de Venezia complex in Sunrise, where he owns two units. Mohn, who was already in jail for other charges, missed a court date, after which Lynch sent the sheriff to physically bring him to court via a writ of bodily attachment. The condo association’s lawyers said this demonstrates the seriousness with which judges are treating condo developments in receivership in terms of collecting rent and maintenance fees from delinquent owners. Mohn’s case would be the first in which “a foreclosure debtor may be put in jail for a foreclosure-related issue,” said Ben Solomon, an attorney for the Villas. [Miami Herald]

Part two — Developments fail, banks follow, the blood begins flowing.

The trigger to the increasing velocity of recent bulk deals of South Florida real estate assets is the culmination of a chain of events in this historic boom/bust cycle.

Florida’s population is decreasing. Unemployment has more than doubled and continues to increase. According to the Clerk of Courts in Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties, foreclosures have multiplied exponentially to a projected 200,000 filings in 2009.

Pre-construction deposit holders on condominium units are canceling closings on completed units in the thousands. Project scale foreclosures and lawsuits between lenders and developers are accelerating. Buyers seeking refunds of deposits are jamming the court houses and creating a cottage industry for law firms.
[more]

The municipal building at the heart of Sunrise’s government is decaying
and deteriorating, but may get an extensive overhaul rather than a
replacement. City commissioners heard bids from three firms seeking the
contract for the next city hall, with a proposal from Zyskovich
Archictects in Miami getting a close look because it didn’t call for a
completely new building. Architect Bernard Zyscovich said he could save
25 percent from the $40 million budgeted for the project. [more]