Monthly Archives: December 2015

As part of construction of the latest Riverwalk segment, the City of Tampa will begin demolition of the existing sidewalk along Doyle Carlton Drive between Laurel Street and Water Works Park on Monday, January 4, 2016. The sidewalk will be closed to all pedestrian traffic along the river while construction is on-going. Work is expected to be completed by the end of April 2016.

Gov. Rick Scott recently appointed Lake County Building Services Division Manager Shane Gerwig to the Florida Building Commission, a 26-member technical body responsible for the development, maintenance and interpretation of the Florida Building Code through a consensus-building process. Gerwig will fill a previously vacant seat for a term ending Jan. 15, 2019.

Brazil continues to lead all global consumers searching online for South Florida real estate, according to new statistics from the MIAMI Association of REALTORS® (MIAMI), America’s largest local Realtor group The South American nation of 200 million residents finished as the top international country using MIAMI’s search portal

Beginning Monday, Jan. 11, 2016, the new adjusted educational impact fees will be $5,856 for a mobile home, $8,045 for a multi-family dwelling, and $9,324 for a single-family home. Educational impact fees are imposed by local governments and paid by developers to address the increase in school facility infrastructure demands created by new development

Florida’s Department of Financial Services (DFS) Division of Insurance Fraud (DIF) today announced the arrest of Kristine Ann Spahr, 41, after her alleged intentional misappropriation of nearly $400,000 in real estate escrow funds as an effort to gain personal monetary profit while she was illegally operating her Nassau and Duval county-based insurance company, Signature Title and Trust LLC.

The MIAMI Association of REALTORS® (MIAMI) will be promoting South Florida real estate at LPS Shanghai 2015, one of the world’s top luxury real estate expos. More than 5,000 affluent real estate buyers and investors from China and around the globe will be attending the Dec. 11-13 event at the Shanghai Marriott City Centre.

Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that more than 4,000 Florida borrowers are receiving checks this week from SunTrust Mortgage as part of a multistate settlement. Florida’s share of the settlement payments is second in the nation only to Georgia. The 2014 settlement with SunTrust Mortgage Inc. by Attorney General Bondi, 48 other states, the District of Columbia and the Federal government required Suntrust to provide $550 million in various forms of relief to homeowners, including a $40 million fund for payments to certain borrowers who lost their homes to foreclosure.

On Wednesday, December 9th at 11:30 a.m. Mayor Buckhorn will join community leaders to unveil the renovations to the Jackson Heights Community Clubhouse. The property has gone through a $6,000,000 rehabilitation of the 111 units. Southport Development, Inc. used the $54,000 per unit of construction costs to fully modernize each unit, upgrade the common areas, add project amenities, and substantially increasing security measures making the property a gated access community

U.S. Rep. Dennis A. Ross (FL-15), Senior Deputy Majority Whip, released the following statement after voting to pass the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act, which is a five-year surface transportation reauthorization bill. Included in this comprehensive transportation package are important provisions such as language restoring funds previously cut from the Crop Insurance program and H.R. 2997, thePrivate Investment in Housing Act of 2015, which was introduced by Rep. Ross to provide the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) the authority to establish a demonstration program and

U.S. Rep. Dennis A. Ross (FL-15), Senior Deputy Majority Whip, released the following statement after voting to pass the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act, which is a five-year surface transportation reauthorization bill. Included in this comprehensive transportation package are important provisions such as language restoring funds previously cut from the Crop Insurance program and H.R. 2997, the Private Investment in Housing Act of 2015, which was introduced by Rep. Ross to provide the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) the authority to establish a demonstration program and enter into budget-neutral, performance-based agreements that result in the reduction of energy and water costs for multifamily housing.

The Lake County Solid Waste Division is encouraging Lake County residents to dispose of toxic materials in a safe and environmentally sensitive way at an upcoming Household Hazardous Waste Collection event. The county’s Household Hazardous Waste Mobile Unit will be on site from 9 a.m. – noon on Thursday, Dec. 17, at the Walmart parking lot, located at 17030 U.S. Highway 441, in Mount Dora

After numerous stopgap measures used over the past several years to merely keep transportation funding afloat, a bipartisan agreement for the long-stalled transportation and infrastructure bill passed the House and Senate yesterday and is on its way to the President to be signed into law. The Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act will invest $281 billion in local communities across the country over the next five years, boosting Florida’s share of the Federal Highway Funding by more than $890 million.

Mayor Bob Buckhorn, Chair of the U.S. Council of Mayors TPP Task-force, will join CEOs, Senators, Congressmen, and high ranking Administration officials and cabinet members to participate in a discussion on the Trans-Pacific Partnership and U.S. Infrastructure at the White House with President Obama’s Export Council

Miami luxury single-family home sales increased 5.3 percent year-over-year in the third quarter as total inventory for all existing luxury properties rose, according to new data from the MIAMI Association of REALTORS® (MIAMI

The Innovation, Science and Technology Building (IST) at Florida Polytechnic University in Lakeland, Fla., has earned national recognition in the 2015 Innovative Design in Engineering and Architecture with Structural Steel awards program (IDEAS2).

South Florida has long ranked as one of America’s top places for international home buyers because of its world-class amenities, global business center and proximity to Latin America, according to the MIAMI Association of REALTORS® (MIAMI).