Today's Real Estate News

Remember when Realtors® used to tell us to "Buy Now" because South Florida was running out of land?

The Daily Business Review now reports:

"Now that residential development has hit the wall, builders and lenders are partners in misery. Developers in the field — from small-scale operators to national home-builders — who aggressively acquired land during the go-go years of the early and mid-2000s, are now stuck with hundreds of acres of land they have no use for and cannot afford to hold."

"Lenders have already taken title to numerous parcels and with a wave of land loans coming due, the worst is yet to come."

"Local experts point out that most overpriced land deals transpired at the peak of the residential market in late 2005 and early 2006, just before home-builders began to realize the sector was about to crater."

"Hundreds of residential parcels in South Florida are for sale. Some have been on the market for more than a year, a few for as long as two years. Most major publicly traded companies like Lennar, Centex Homes and Pacific Standard have dumped tracts for much less than what they paid during the housing boom, and have written off millions of dollars in deposits on land deals they abandoned."