Tampa Real Estate Blog

Read a [tag]home decorating[/tag] magazine or watch a [tag]cable-TV home improvement show[/tag], and you might easily conclude that any upgrade will pay off when you sell. Not so. Even in good times, not all projects have widespread appeal. You’ll earn back virtually your entire investment in a kitchen or deck, but less than 75 cents [...]

Americans have been pouring money into their homes in recent years, adding everything from marble bathrooms to fancy backyard barbecues: Last year alone, spending on improvements like these hit an estimated $155 billion, up 27% from two years earlier. At the same time, the global boom in commodities prices — lumber, copper piping and other [...]

Mini flags of the different [tag]Caribbean island[/tag] nations sat on a table at the front of the room – Antigua, St. Kitts, St. Vincent, Jamaica, Barbados, Haiti, the Bahamas, Trinidad and Tobago. More than 50 people were seated in the meeting room at the Copperstone meeting facility in Land O’Lakes. Among them were mortgage brokers, [...]

My 90-year-old mother-in-law has recently moved permanently into a [tag]nursing home[/tag]. She has a new [tag]reverse mortgage[/tag] on her free-and-clear home to pay her living costs. My husband will inherit her house when she passes on. At that time, we plan to demolish it and build new. What are the financial ramifications of renting the [...]

ForeclosureS(dot)com, a northern California based [tag]real estate investment advisory firm[/tag] and publisher of foreclosure property information, reported today that the rising tide of foreclosure activity in [tag]southeastern housing market[/tag]s was an indication that property flippers who bought at the peak of the price appreciation curve were simply walking away from houses they were unable to [...]

Part of a 1980s plan to spark a retail renaissance in downtown [tag]St. Petersburg[/tag], 100 Central Station may finally be rising to its potential almost 20 years later. A Michigan company, Lutz Real Estate Investments, has paid $15-million for the first two floors of the downtown building, soon to be vacated by Progress Energy. Its [...]

As the real estate market slows, sellers seem willing to try anything to close a deal. “[tag]Incentives[/tag] are all over the place,” says Salli Kirkpatrick, founder of SK Associates, a Sacramento area advertising agency that works with home builders. “No [tag]closing costs[/tag], no payments for six months, $10,000 toward a built-in s[tag]wimming pool[/tag]. Things have [...]

It’s among today’s most popular [tag]retirement-savings[/tag] strategies: Buy the big house, hope the [tag]real-estate boom[/tag] continues and then trade down at retirement, thus freeing up home equity that will pay for years of early-bird specials. Sound appealing? Trouble is, you will fork over a heap of dollars — and you’ll end up with a surprisingly [...]

With the dog days of summer officially upon us — and with [tag]utility costs[/tag] rising at the same pace as our backyard thermometers, the [tag]Alliance to Save Energy[/tag] offers these tips to remain cool during the sweltering heat wave and save a few bucks in the process. Shift energy-intensive tasks, such as laundry and dishwashing, [...]

Hardly a week passes without more revelations of i[tag]llegal flipping[/tag]. Typical of what you see has been the recent situation in Cincinnati where more than three dozen people have been convicted in a $50 million illegal flipping scam. Timothy Husvar, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer, was involved in illegal flipping worth $2.3 million over a [...]