Miami News - February 2006.

International Home Builders Show in Orlando, Florida

More than 100,000 housing professionals met in Orlando, Florida from January 11th to the 14th for the 2006 International Builders’ Show, which is a successful annual gathering in all records of the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB). This four-day exhibition began with Opening Ceremonies headlined by former Secretary of State Colin Powell on January 11th.  The Orange County Convention Center is the place where the “New American Home” was presented along with the most modern products and services designed exclusively for residential and commercial construction businesses. Home builders, professional designers, architects, engineers and Real Estate Brokers were present to learn more about the New American Home mission, which can be easily incorporated into simple or complex homes. New home designs, materials, and construction techniques have been showed to demonstrate that all this new stuff can be used for building a home at any place and price.

Condos and Apartments

President and executive officer of WCI Communities of Bonita Springs - Florida, Jerry Starkey, spoke at the International Builders’ Show on January 12th. He focused his speech on condos and apartments as the main subject of many markets predicting more competition for this year 2006. Records of existing condo units will be bigger. The growing numbers of homebuyers is a reality, but mainly they are fascinated with the condo lifestyle. On the other hand there are people who cannot afford a buying home process and opt for renting apartments. The thing is that many apartments have been transformed into condos especially in hot condo areas such as New York and South Florida (Miami, Hollywood, Hallandale, Fort Lauderdale, etc). Rental apartments have become more complicated since condo developers are ready to pay a large amount for land than rental developers.

Elections in South Florida

Election day in South Miami is February 14th, 2006. The people who are in search of the major seat in South Miami are as follows: current Real Estate investor Mary Scott Russell, builder Bob Welsh and Horace Feliu a bio-medical company owner. Candidates for Commission group 1 are: residential Real Estate agent Brian Beasly, Randy Wiscombe, produce vendor and landscaper Adrian Ellis and Attorney Lew Sellers. Candidates for Commission group 4 are: Levy Kelly, Jay Beckman, Zachary Mann, Clyde Cates, Frank Cuzzocrea and David Walker.

South Miami parks are back to normal

Hurricane Wilma was a nightmare for Floridian residents last October. The storm destroyed playground equipment, fences and trees. However, basketball and tennis courts, football fields and buildings were okay. According to Alan Ricke director of South Miami’s parks and recreation, in early November they were 85% back to normal. He was happy to see adult softball leagues playing around. “Now, we are pretty much functioning as normal”, Ricke said. Parks in South Florida offer residents and occasional visitors an enormous selection of recreational activities. Parks in South Florida also provide the right atmosphere for meditation, reading or just for doing nothing but relaxing from stressful working days.

Creating new housing jobs in South Miami

The Community Redevelopment Agency ( CRA ) was formed at the end of the 90’s to help restart a sector of the city that was dealing with street crime, unemployment people and abandoned houses. Although there was a lot of criticism going around, the agency has done a vast number of good things for the neighbourhood since then. Among all of the accomplishments, the CRA cites that the Murray Park Community and Valencia apartments were successfully built with the help of 18 unemployment residents. Twelve of them were hired to work in construction permanent. The Job Training Program helped 30 residents to learn carpentry. And with the help of Greater Miami neighborhoods two housing units were built in the nearby area of CRA. Anna Price, a board member of CRA said that they have done remarkable things like restoring homes by working hand in hand with Habitat for Humanity and making sure residents have homes that fulfil with home-security needs. Now, the agency is working hard to build up a mixed-use site at Madison Square which is a commercial business place surrounded by an African-American neighborhood. This complex would provide both residential and retail purposes and of course the whole thing will turn into more jobs for unemployment residents.