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Archive for the 'Clearwater' Category

Real estate and Palm Harbor: Is this the best market for buyers ever?

If I were to ask you to describe your income, would you use words like “reliable,” “dependable,” or “steady?”  Do you think there’s a very good chance that your job (or your business) will be around in a year, or two, or five?

If you took out some sort of loan tomorrow, would you worry about your ability to pay it back because of future income issues? Or would you be confident that your job would remain in place over the long term?

Some people have jobs that pay really well, but which probably won’t be around for long periods.  I’ll give you an example: I have a relative who is working right now as an electrical contractor in Iraq. He’s making REALLY good money, but he doesn’t expect (or want) the job to last forever. After a year or so, he’s going to want to shake the sand out of his jeans, come back to the States, and resume a more normal life.

My relative’s big but short-term income puts him in a great position to pay off debt and accumulate cash. However, it does NOT make him a great candidate for a 30-year mortgage or a five-year car loan.

But YOU, on the other hand, might be sitting on a bigger asset than you realize, if you have a steady and dependable job or other source of income.

Why? Because this may be the best time in the past, oh, 75 years or so, to buy a house.

Which brings me to my second question:

Do you know what the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices is? Okay, I’ll tell you – it is a monthly report that measures the residential housing market. It tracks home values in 20 metro markets in the U.S.

And the Case-Shiller report for October, released just this week, shows a couple of things: 1. Home values in October were flat, and 2. in spite of that, home values during 2009 have generally been in slow but steady recovery mode.

Case-Shiller reports that home values have fallen a full 30% since their peak in 2005. That drop has been stunning – nothing like it has been seen since the Depression, and perhaps even earlier than that. For people who need or want a new home, it is an opportunity of stunning proportions.

And there is even more good news; interest rates have dropped, too, If you wanted a 30-year fixed rate mortgage three years ago, it would have likely cost you around 6.4 percent. Apply for that same mortgage today, and you’ll pay more like 5 percent.

What that means is that median home prices are now about where they were in the mid-1990s, a time when just about every agrees was a really great time to buy. What makes the current conditions even more attractive than then, however, is the difference in mortgage rates – something like 5 percent now, more like 9 percent back then.   

The Wall Street JOURNAL recently did some numbers-crunching, and came up with this conclusion: Buy an average home now, finance it with a 5 percent 30-year mortgage, and the cost comes out to be around 19 times today’s average weekly earnings. Conditions haven’t been that favorable for homebuyers since the 1970s, according to the JOURNAL.

Still not good enough for you? Okay, fine – then throw in the $8,000 first time home buyer tax credit, which is scheduled to run through the spring season.

Which brings us back to my original question: How would you characterize your income? Would you describe it as “reliable,” “dependable,” or “steady?”

If it is, and you can feel pretty good about relying on your income over the long term, this is probably the best time to buy a home that has come along during your entire lifetime, and probably your parents’ lifetime, and maybe even your grandparents’ lifetime as well.

The real question is the reliability of your income. These are uncertain economic times, and no one needs additional uncertainty in times like these. Unstable or unreliable income down the road could result in a foreclosure, no matter how attractive the selling price of the home is now.

But if income unreliability is not a major concern, unprecedented real estate opportunities await you.

Tags: pinellas, real estate and clearwater, real estate and palm harbor

Pet cemetery in Clearwater is Bruiser’s final resting place

Bruiser the German Shepherd did not have what you may think of as an auspicious beginning. His first owner got rid of him because he bit somebody.

A dog who bites people would probably not be accepted today as a good police dog candidate.  But back in the early 1970s, things may have been a bit looser. The St. Petersburg Police Department wanted to start a canine unit, and Bruiser was available. So that’s what happened – Bruiser became the city’s very first canine officer in the early 1970s.

Officer Bill Trappman became Bruiser’s handler, partner and friend. Together, they rescued a little girl in what was one of the decade’s biggest local crime stories.

In June of 1972, Trappman and Bruiser were called to a home near Booker Creek. An hysterical woman told Trappman that a man had broken into her home and kidnapped her two-year-old daughter.

Bruiser immediately picked up the trail, even though a recent rain had made tracking very difficult. In just a few minutes, Bruiser led Trappman to nearby Booker Creek, and Trappman’s flashlight beam picked up the sight of a man who was slamming the little girl against a tree trunk.

The man tossed the little girl in the creek and then jumped in himself. Trappman went after the girl, while Bruiser pursued the man. The girl survived the incident, and the man, a former convict who had recently been released from prison, went back to jail.
 
Trappman gave all the credit to Bruiser.

“He was everything,” Trappman said later in the St. Petersburg TIMES about his canine partner. “I was just the dummy on the end of the leash. He was the best partner I ever had and the best cop I ever knew.”

Bruiser was eight years old when all that happened. Four years later, when he was 12, the pain in his legs and hips got so bad that Trappman realized the time had come. He carried Bruiser to the vet’s, and he was put to sleep.

According to Trappman, Bruiser sniffed out more than 14,000 pounds of narcotics during his career, and helped send 127 criminals to prison.

*   *   *

On the day after Christmas, we decided to tour Green Mounds Pet Cemetery, a nearly forgotten pet cemetery behind Fletcher’s Harley-Davidson on US19 in Clearwater. The Fletcher family now owns and cares for the cemetery, having taken title to it when they bought a large tract of land behind their motorcycle dealership.

On the farthest corner of the cemetery, in the shade of a tree, we saw a statue of what looked like a German Shepherd dog. As we approached and then scraped the dirt from the closest grave marker, we saw the name “Bruiser.” Another line said, “St. Pete Canine Police.”

Bruiser’s grave is surrounded by a number of other St. Pete Police canines, perhaps 10 or so. They watch over a peaceful and well-cared-for tract that is the final resting place of several hundreds of pets, mostly dogs and cats but also a pony named Twinkles, who has her own fenced plot.

Tags: canine police, Clearwater, St. Petersburg

Clearwater’s Nicole Stott heads for the Space Station

Astronaut and Clearwater native Nicole Stott

This isn’t exactly a real estate story, but it very definitely is a Clearwater story that should make everyone in this part of the world proud.

At 1:36 a.m. tomorrow morning (that’s Tuesday), the space shuttle Discovery will launch from Florida’s Space Center, headed for the Space Station. On board will be Nicole Stott, a 46-year-old astronaut making her first space flight.

Plans are for her to spend around four months on the Space Station. 

Nicole is a Clearwater native who graduated from Clearwater High School and who attended St. Petersburg College. A lot of her Clearwater High School classmates will be heading over to the Space Center today and tonight to be on hand to witness the beginning of Nicole’s trip.

Nicole learned to fly in this area, and her father’s great love was building and flying experimental aircraft. She credits him with inspiring her astronaut career.

Ifr you are up at that hour, go outside and look to the heavens. We usually get a pretty good view of the space shuttle launches in these parts, especially at night. 

Bon voyage, Nicole!

Tags: Clearwater

Home refinance program expanded

     We’ve written here in the past about tax credits and about government programs aimed at saving homes from foreclosure and making home payments more affordable. Now, it looks as though the Obama Administration wants to expand those programs to make them apply to more borrowers than before.
 

    Until now, those government programs have been available to people whose mortgage amounts are up to 105 percent of a home’s value. This week, the administration announced that it wants to raise that limit to 125 percent of value.
Here are some of the conditions that apply:

• The mortgages in question must be owned or backed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.
• The applicants for new financing must be current on their mortgage payments.

     It is estimated that 30 percent of all mortgages are for amounts that exceed their homes’ values.
     The expansion of this federal home refinance program is an acknowledgement that the original program fell far short of expectations. When it was announced in March, the Obama Administration said it hoped that it would help 4-5 million homeowners who were upside-down on their mortgages. But in the middle of June, the administration admitted that only about 20,000 homeowners had applied to refinance their mortgages under the plan.
One problem has been rising interest rates. Current rates are around 5.5 percent, up from 4.84 percent in April. That rate increase has put a damper on refinances. The government hopes that the new expansion will encourage more homeowners to refinance their homes, and those refinances will make the homeowners less likely to default on their mortgages.
     Got a home in Palm Harbor, Dunedin, Clearwater, or anywhere else in Pinellas County with a mortgage bigger than the home’s value? This expanded program may be for you.

Tags: making home affordable, mortgages, pinellas county, refinance

New data indicates declines in Tampa Bay home values may be slowing

Are we finally starting to see some stabilization in the value of homes in Pinellas County? According to Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller Home Price Index, the answer might be yes.

According to Index data released yesterday, home prices in Tampa Bay fell 0.7 percent from April to May. That works out to an annual rate of 8.4 percent – the lowest rate in quite a while.  Just two months previously, the 30-day decline was 2.7 percent, which translates to an annual rateof decline of 32.4 percent.

The Index said the annual decline of home values from April 2008 to April 2009 was 21.3 percent, the seventh-worse performance among the 20 cities that the index tracks. The worst was Phoenix, which recorded a home value decline of 35.3 percent.

Here is why real estate agents and others are watching these statistics: What we have been seeing for some time now is a steady increase in the number of home sales in Tampa Bay, accompanied by an equally steady decline in sales prices. The increase in sales has contributed to a decline in the home inventory in the Multiple Listing Service, which is good; but home prices have been continually forced down, due in part to foreclosures and distressed sales.

These trends have made us wonder just where the bottom of the market is in terms of home values. These new figures from Case-Shiller may help us find that answer. Of course, it is only one month; and other variables such as higher mortgage interest rates could slow sales and depress home values all over again.

If you would like to see the S&P Case-Shiller Home Price Index data for yourself, go here.

Tags: home valies, Palm Harbor, pinellas county, Tampa Bay

Things are happening in Downtown Clearwater

The Rays' Hummer

There’s a lot more to major league baseball than what goes on on the field.

Take the Tampa Bay Rays, for example.  The Rays are a young team, having been formed just 11 years ago. They made it to the World Series last year, but not before nine seasons of last-place baseball. The product on the field simple wasn’t enough to draw fans to the park, so the Rays spent lots of time and money developing community-based efforts that would, hopefully, spark interest in the team.

I saw an example of that effort not long ago in downtown Clearwater.

There is a regular monthly event in downtown Clearwater called Fourth Friday. On the fourth Friday of every month, late in the day, vendors start setting up on Cleveland Street, which has been roped off for just that purpose. People turn out to walk along Cleveland street, buy food and other items from vendors, and just generally enjoy Clearwater’s much-improved downtown.

On the day I was there, the Tampa Bay Rays had their special Hummer there, along with a stage set up to host the Ray’s pre-game and post-game radio shows on WDAE, the Sports Animal. The Rays were actually playing the Florida Marlins in Miami that night, but the live radio programs that opened and closed the game would be coming live from downtown Clearwater.

As workers set up the stage, young Rays employees were busy handing out white Rays t-shirts and other team goodies.

The Rays are always looking for more fans. And Clearwater is always looking for more people to come downtown and enjoy what is offered there.

Tags: baseball, Clearwater, downtown

Shedding a little light on downtown Clearwater real estate

Lamp post in downtown Clearwater

By now you’ve probably figured out that I have something of a weakness for lamp posts. There’s one up at the top of this blog, providing a little illumination for the Pinellas Newsboy. Also, I’ve done posts showing lamp posts in Dunedin, Tarpon Springs, over at Disney and, now in Clearwater.

It’s not just a personal weakness for lamp posts. I think they are good metaphors for the emerging downtowns that we are seeing in North Pinellas County. These downtowns have lived through some pretty steep declines as downtown areas have been allowed to decay as they have been forgotten in favor of suburban developments. But they are roaring back as we come to appreciate what they have to offer in terms of shopping, dining and living.

Downtowns offer something community-wise that simply can’t be matched. We’re lucky to have these areas re-emerging, and we also are lucky to have had residents, business people and political leaders who have been able to share the vision of reinvigorated downtowns.

By the way, this lamp post is one of many that line Cleveland Street in downtown Clearwater.

Tags: Clearwater, real estate

Post office is choice piece of Clearwater real estate

Clearwater Post Office

With all the talk about the current economic stimulus package, we should note that a very similar effort took place in the 1930s in response to the Great Depression. The Roosevelt Administration gets the credit (or blame) for all of the federal spending that took place back then to try to get the economy moving again, but less well known is that federal stimulus spending took place during the previous Hoover administration, as well.

An example of that was the so-called Elliot bill, which greatly increased the amount of federal spending for local building programs.  Up to that time, much of the federal spending on building construction was focused on buildings constructed inside Washington, DC. The Elliot bill bumped up federal spending for building projects from $315 million to $415 million, and most of that extra  money was aimed at building projects beyond Washington.

One of them turned out to be the new post office building in Clearwater, Florida. In 1931, Clearwater officials received a letter from Washington saying that $150,000 in federal funds had been earmarked for a new Clearwater Post Office.

That was a very big deal at the time. Clearwater’s population had been exploding, and one institution that was really feeling the pinch was the local post office.  The original post office on Cleveland street was really cramped, and when the new Scranton Arcade building was completed the post office was moved into that building. But even that wasn’t adequate — Clearwater was definitely going to need a new post office facility if it was to keep up with the increasing population demands.

So construction got under way right across the street from the Scranton Arcade. A local architect , Theodore Skinner, was hired to design the new building, and a Florida construction company, Walt & Sinclair of Palm Beach, was hired to do the work. The work went swiftly and the new building, made of limestone quarried in the Florida Keys, was dedicated on Oct. 9, 1933.

Then, as now, the federal dollars were meant to stimulate local economic growth. Local architects, designers, builders and materials were specified. The Clearwater Post office is a great exampleof Mediterrean Revival architecture. It was placed on the National Registerof Historic Places in the 1980s.

Tags: architecture, Clearwater, Post Office, real estate

Scranton Arcade was important example of Clearwater real estate

Scranton Arcade

When I posted the last article on Clearwater real estate wall art, I noticed something in the picture that puzzled me a little — a detail in the mural that showed a store front with the words “Scranton Arcade” over the front entranceway. I had never heard of the Scranton Arcade before, so I decided to do a little research.

What I discovered is that the Scranton Arcade building was a very exciting bit of downton Clearwater architecture that was built in the mid-1920s. It covered a whole city block of Clearwater real estate, and it contained everything from Clearwater’s post office (before the current very beautiful Clearwater Post Office was built a few years later) to a bakery to the Clearwater offices of the St. Petersburg TIMES newspaper.

The Clearwater Evening Independent newspaper did a story in 1924 on the construction of the building. It explains quite a bit about the building and the role it was to play in what was then Clearwater’s blossoming downtown:

Clearwater Evening Independent – June 16, 1924

The Scranton Arcade, said to be the largest building of its kind in South Florida, is approaching completion. Blue and buff case tile is now being placed below the large plate glass windows on the Garden Avenue side, and laying of floor tile is to begin this week.

 Construction work on this arcade has been held up, owing to delay in installation of an automatic sprinkler system, with which the entire building is to be furnished, A. M. Perdue, superintendent, said today, but he predicts the arcade will be ready for occupancy within 30 days.
 
The post office is to be located in the extreme southeastern corner of the new building, and everybody is interested in seeing the local postal department in the new quarters, as the present post office, on Cleveland Street, is entirely inadequate for the purpose.

The Scranton Arcade is a beautiful structure, with sidewalls of apricot stucco, ornamented with art stone friezes. It occupies the entire block bounded by Cleveland Street, South Garden Avenue, Park Street and the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad tracks.  This is considered one of the finest business locations in Clearwater.

The construction is entirely of hollow tile ands brick, stuccoed throughout, with elaborate ornamental façade and Spanish tile coping finishing the top of the sidewalls. Wide corridors run through the building north and south and east and west and there is a spacious court under a big rotunda in the center.

Clearwater’s newest business building is divided into very attractive small shops, all of which have large plate glass windows, both on the streets and the arcade. The post office being located in the southeast corner, patrons of the post office will be obliged to pass all of the business places in the building. It is stated that these desirable shops and offices have already been leased.

The main feature of the Scranton Arcade, perhaps, is that its erection opens up a new business district on South Garden Avenue, and is but the forerunner of a number of attractive business buildings.

Other stores in the arcade included the Postal Telegraph Company, the post office, Rellop’s Smoke Shop, Frank J. Booth Insurance, a newspaper office, a beauty shop and the Dutch Kitchen restaurant.

I haven’t been able to find out exactly what happened to the Scranton Arcade building, but the modern Atrium office building now stands at the corner of Cleveland and South Garden.  If you know the fate of the Scranton Arcade, please post something here by clicking on “comment.”

Tags: Add new tag, Clearwater, scranton arcade

Clearwater real estate wall art

If you’ve been reading this blog for the past few weeks, you know I have some interest in wall art and murals. I’ve posted an example or two, and I came across some really nice examples in downtown Clearwater when I visited there a few days ago.

I’ll have to do a post on some of the nice work that has been done in revitalizing downtown Clearwater in the past few years. Not all of it has been all that popular — for example, some people object to the curvy new Cleveland Street roadway, and the enormous black globes that have been placed on the median as decorations. If you miss one of the lefty-righty twists in the road, you could end up up with one of those big globes as a new hood ornament.

Still, downtown Clearwater us much more attractive and appealing than it was just a few years back. There’s some nice new condo housing there, and some nice restaurants and coffee shops, as well. Not to mention some fine examples of wall art that really lends some color and character to what was a very tired and rundown area.

I’ve found wall art in downtown Dunedun, and a couple of examples on the sponge docks in Tarpon Springs. Still, though, I think the local wall art capital is downtown Clearwater. I’ll be posting a few more examples in the coming weeks.

Tags: Clearwater, murals, wall art