Florida real estate prices grew this spring but housing market is getting a wakeup call

Economic challenges are pressuring home sales across the country but 99% of the top 100 markets still sizzled in May, with South Florida climbing the list of most overvalued regions in the nation. Seven areas in Florida made it into the top 25 most overvalued markets, with Fort Myers ranking the highest statewide and sixth place nationally. Homebuyers there paid 60% more in May than they would in a normal market. Lakeland, Tampa, Bradenton-Sarasota, Melbourne, Daytona Beach and Orlando were also in the top 25. [Source: Palm Beach Post]

Florida property insurers file rate reductions with state. But will your premiums fall?

A state program created after a special legislative session on property insurance is supposed to pass on savings to consumers. A state statute required insurers to file their potential savings with the Office of Insurance regulation by June 30. Many companies have filed and there are reductions, but experts believe you might not see it in your premiums. [Source: Click Orlando]

A hurricane destroyed farmworker housing. A nonprofit’s rebuilding something better.

Hurricane Irma made landfall on the southwestern coast of Florida in September 2017, damaging million-dollar homes in beachfront communities from Marco Island to Naples. About 40 miles inland, near Immokalee in Southern Florida’s agriculture belt, the storm devastated tomato fields and citrus orchards, leaving many temporarily without work and income. The hurricane also devastated the stock of aging and weathered manufactured homes in Immokalee — locals call them “trailers” — where many of the Latin American immigrant workers who pick and process the fruits and vegetables live. [Source: Marketplace]

Rules to promote condo safety could create financial nightmares for owners and associations

The Florida legislature’s unanimously approved condominium safety regulations are raising fears that a provision in the law could place too big of an onus on individual unit owners — particularly those in lower or fixed income brackets — who could be forced into foreclosure because they are unable to pay higher fees to meet the new law’s requirements. [Source: Business Observer]

Renters face fiercest competition in Florida and the Northeast

As pandemic restrictions ease and remote work becomes a permanent fixture, Americans continue to seek homes in communities with more relaxed lifestyles — particularly in Florida and the Northeast, home to the country’s most competitive markets for renters, according to a new analysis of real estate data. The rental trend has been fueled in part by stubbornly high house prices and rising mortgage rates, which are pushing would-be buyers into an already overheated rental market. More from the New York Times, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, and Florida Realtors.

› Clearwater home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright protégé lists for $824,900 [Tampa Bay Times] The 3-bedroom 2-bathroom home was built in 1979 and is chock-full of distinctive touches like angled windows, vaulted ceilings, a sunken living room and a hipped roof. The listing agent, Lance Williams said the house is a rare find for the area because it combines elements from several different schools of architecture including prairie-style, Bauhaus and mid-century.

› As home values soar, calls grow to increase Citizens Insurance eligibility cap to $1 million statewide [South Florida Sun-Sentinel] Inflation is making thousands of Florida houses and condos ineligible for coverage by Citizens Property Insurance Corp., the state-owned “insurer of last resort.” Owners of Citizens-insured homes with replacement values in the $500,000 to $600,000 range just a couple years ago have been receiving notices of non-renewal, forcing them to seek far-more expensive coverage in the unregulated surplus lines market.

› History bulldozed as charming Coconut Grove homes replaced by giant concrete cubes [Miami Herald] If the walls of one of Coconut Grove’s oldest houses could still talk, they would tell tales of Miami’s past, of hurricanes, world wars, Prohibition, the Great Depression, Bohemian artists and folk singers, sailors and drug runners, City Hall shenanigans and Hotel Mutiny bacchanals, “Miami Vice” episodes and King Mango Struts. Before the walls holding up the little yellow wood-frame house at 2835 Lincoln Avenue were silenced, they could have foretold its demise, too.

› Naples builder names new local director of operations [Business Observer] Naples-based builder DeAngelis Diamond has promoted Josh Willard from project executive to director of operations — Naples. Willard had been a project executive with the firm since March 2021. Prior to that, he was an operations manager with Manhattan Construction in Naples for 14 years. In his new DeAngelis Diamond role, Willard will oversee operations within the Southwest Florida market, according to a statement.

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For more than a year, preservationists had been making steady headway in an uphill, high-profile battle to save gangster Al Capone’s estate on Miami Beach’s Palm Island from possible demolition. And then the state of Florida stepped in.

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