Rob Arnold, metro Orlando full service, investor friendly & foreclosure Realtor

I remember growing up in Orlando with Church Street Station as a local hotspot. In the 1970's the skywriting planes would fly out every weekend and write "Rosies" in the sky (for Rosie O'Grady's club) to invite everyone down to the establishment.

In the 1980's the Church Street Market opened up with lots of restaurants, stores, and attractions. Horse carriage rides were common throughout downtown Orlando. You could see the beacon lights shining up in the clouds from Church Street all over town. I remember in high school going down to Church Street many times on weekends. Downtown Orlando even became a cruising spot to drive around on Saturday nights. The place became a real destination for both locals and tourists.

In the 1990's they had carnival style street shows, valet parking for their clubs, and the Terror on Church Street haunted attraction. Downtown Orlando really had a great night life to it. You can read a whole chronology on Wikipedia.

Then sometime in the early 2000's the whole thing kind of imploded and shut down. Lou Pearlman creator of boy bands like N'Sync and the Backstreet Boys took over the thing and sort of ran it into the ground. Mr. Pearlman is now in bankruptcy court and headed for a long prison term for fraud.

Last year Orlando super-developer Cameron Kuhn bought the place at the bankruptcy auction. The city of Orlando promised lots of big incentives for the re-development. Some good things have happened at Church Street since then. But now this week, Mr. Kuhn announces that he is basically broke and drowning in his properties. This puts Church Street Station back into limbo again even though Mr. Kuhn says he is still focusing on the project.

I have a lot of fond memories of the whole Church Street complex and sure hope that somebody can bring its status back to its glory days.

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(Copyright © 2008. Sand Dollar Realty Group, Inc. All rights reserved.)

Rob Arnold, ABR, CPL, CRB, GRI, Managing real estate broker, Licensed mortgage broker, Notary Public

407-389-7318 / 1-877-389-7318 www.SDRhouses.com/ www.WeBuyHousesFlorida.com/

Your full service and investor friendly Realtor in Orlando. Learn to invest in Central Florida real estate and Orlando real estate. Investor mentoring and counseling available. I also provide flat fee MLS listings, For Sale By Owner, and menu-based services in most parts of Central & South Florida, the Space Coast, and the Treasure Coast including Orlando, Tampa, Sarasota, Bradenton, Miami-Dade, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, Port Saint Lucie, Ocala, Gainesville, Volusia, and Brevard.

We buy houses cash, sell properties, and list properties in Central Florida including Orlando, Winter Park, Maitland, College Park, Ocoee, Winter Garden, Apopka, Pine Hills, Altamonte Springs, Casselberry, Longwood, Winter Springs, Oviedo, Lake Mary, Sanford, Deltona, Debary, Deland, Daytona Beach, Melbourne, Mount Dora, Eustis, Leesburg, Clermont, Kissimmee, Saint Cloud, Davenport, Winter Haven, Lakeland, and more.

The City of Belle Isle, Florida recently passed a new rental licensing ordinance as of 3/3/08. The actual ordinance can be found online at this link.

The new ordinance # is 08-03. It is not nearly as painful as the one passed by Mount Dora recently, but it is still cumbersome. Basically what it requires is an annual $50 licensing fee. The property owner is required to make application with the city and provide information about the lease term, the tenants, contact info, and sign a statement acknowledging certain code requirements and fines to keep in compliance.

The idea is to protect the citizens from slumlords, unruly tenants, vacation rentals, etc. What the regulations and fees also do is raise the cost and burden of rental housing for landlords and indirectly their tenants. The people that get hit the hardest are of course the poorest of the population, the tenants.

I found out about this resolution on the afternoon of the hearing (last Monday) and the board of Realtors found out about it on the Wednesday after it passed. You should have heard some of the comments made in the committee meetings I attended. (One of the Belle Isle city commissioners was a member in the meeting and also a Realtor - lots of verbal tomatoes being thrown by colleagues at this person.)

As you can see, laws like this are happening more and more often in local cities and communities. This makes our jobs as Realtors and investors just that much more work.

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(Copyright © 2008. Sand Dollar Realty Group, Inc. All rights reserved.)

Rob Arnold, ABR, CPL, CRB, GRI, Managing real estate broker, Licensed mortgage broker, Notary Public

407-389-7318 / 1-877-389-7318 www.SDRhouses.com/ www.WeBuyHousesFlorida.com/

Your full service and investor friendly Realtor in Orlando. Learn to invest in Central Florida real estate and Orlando real estate. Investor mentoring and counseling available. I also provide flat fee MLS listings, For Sale By Owner, and menu-based services in most parts of Central & South Florida, the Space Coast, and the Treasure Coast including Orlando, Tampa, Miami-Dade, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, Ocala, Volusia, and Brevard.

We buy houses cash, sell properties, and list properties in Central Florida including Orlando, Winter Park, Maitland, College Park, Ocoee, Winter Garden, Apopka, Pine Hills, Altamonte Springs, Casselberry, Longwood, Winter Springs, Oviedo, Lake Mary, Sanford, Deltona, Debary, Deland, Daytona Beach, Melbourne, Mount Dora, Eustis, Leesburg, Clermont, Kissimmee, Saint Cloud, Davenport, Winter Haven, Lakeland, and more.

The local governments are at it again. Trying to sneak around the property tax cuts with new fees and assessments. This time we turn the spotlight to the City of Winter Springs, Florida.

The city has proposed a new fire assessment fee. The average fee to homeowners would be between $216 and $256 per year. The real killer is for multi-family properties that would be assessed on a per unit basis. Imagine $216 times 100 units. Ouch! And tenants are typically the poorest people in the community.

Here are some articles from the Orlando Sentinel and the Seminole Chronicle about this new fee. The next city hearing about this proposal will be next Monday, March 10, 2008.

These local governments just don't get it. The reason the people of Florida voted for tax cuts is so that property owners can give less money to the government, not so the local governments can find new ways to fund their out of control spending sprees.

Every time the government adds a new fee onto your property, the cost of owning it goes higher and higher. Is it any wonder that so many people can't afford to buy a home?

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(Copyright © 2008. Sand Dollar Realty Group, Inc. All rights reserved.)

Rob Arnold, ABR, CPL, CRB, GRI, Managing real estate broker, Licensed mortgage broker, Notary Public

407-389-7318 / 1-877-389-7318 www.SDRhouses.com/ www.WeBuyHousesFlorida.com/

Your full service and investor friendly Realtor in Orlando. Learn to invest in Central Florida real estate and Orlando real estate. Investor mentoring and counseling available. I also provide flat fee MLS listings, For Sale By Owner, and menu-based services in most parts of Central & South Florida, the Space Coast, and the Treasure Coast including Orlando, Tampa, Miami-Dade, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, Ocala, Volusia, and Brevard.

We buy houses cash, sell properties, and list properties in Central Florida including Orlando, Winter Park, Maitland, College Park, Ocoee, Winter Garden, Apopka, Pine Hills, Altamonte Springs, Casselberry, Longwood, Winter Springs, Oviedo, Lake Mary, Sanford, Deltona, Debary, Deland, Daytona Beach, Melbourne, Mount Dora, Eustis, Leesburg, Clermont, Kissimmee, Saint Cloud, Davenport, Winter Haven, Lakeland, and more.

The City of Mount Dora recently passed an ordinance requiring all owners of rental property to obtain "Rental Licenses". This new license requires the property owner to have city inspections once every 3 years and every time a new tenant moves in. It also requires the property owner to pay annual licensing fees. You can read more on this on the City of Mount Dora's website and in the Orlando Sentinel.

The intent of this ordinance besides to generate more revenue to the city is to keep slumlords in line. I do not know if an ordinance like this will do that though. The problem is not just with the slumlords, but also with the tenants that they rent to. Even nasty people have to live somewhere. It does not take into consideration that some landlords do a fine job of maintaining their rentals and some owner occupant homeowners allow their home to fall into disrepair. Some of the nastiest run down homes I have seen are owner occupied properties. At least a landlord has some financial incentive to keep the tenants from tearing up his property. Remember the Seminole County "Junk Man", he was an owner occupant.

The big issue is how to enforce this ordinance. How does the city know when a tenant turnover occurs? Considering that in most cities about 20-30% of all properties are non-owner occupied rentals or businesses, the city will have to police thousands of rental properties in order to enforce this ordinance.

The Lake County Association of Realtors and many local landlords fought this ordinance's approval, but it was passed and is now in effect. This is a major negative blow to real estate investors and Realtors in Mount Dora because of the increased fees and regulations that this will cause.

Similar ordinances have already been passed in the cities of Deltona and Cocoa during 2007. The cities of Orlando and Winter Park have rejected similar proposals because the policing of them would be to burdensome. It will be interesting to see how this will play out, but it definitely is not a good thing from a real estate investment point of view.

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(Copyright © 2008. Sand Dollar Realty Group, Inc. All rights reserved.)

Rob Arnold, ABR, CPL, CRB, GRI, Managing real estate broker, Licensed mortgage broker, Notary Public

407-389-7318 / 1-877-389-7318 www.SDRhouses.com/ www.WeBuyHousesFlorida.com/

Your full service and investor friendly Realtor in Orlando. Learn to invest in Central Florida real estate and Orlando real estate. Investor mentoring and counseling available. I also provide flat fee MLS listings, For Sale By Owner, and menu-based services in most parts of Central & South Florida, the Space Coast, and the Treasure Coast including Orlando, Tampa, Miami-Dade, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, Ocala, Volusia, and Brevard.

We buy houses cash, sell properties, and list properties in Central Florida including Orlando, Winter Park, Maitland, College Park, Ocoee, Winter Garden, Apopka, Pine Hills, Altamonte Springs, Casselberry, Longwood, Winter Springs, Oviedo, Lake Mary, Sanford, Deltona, Debary, Deland, Daytona Beach, Melbourne, Mount Dora, Eustis, Leesburg, Clermont, Kissimmee, Saint Cloud, Davenport, Winter Haven, Lakeland, and more.

FEMA, you've got to love them. When you say that word, I think most people envision New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina. Well ... FEMA recently revised the flood maps in Seminole County, Florida, and the new maps have put houses and subdivisions into flood zones where nobody has ever seen a flood. Even subdivisions that withstood 3 back-to-back hurricanes in 2004 without even one sandbag are showing up in flood zones. I remember selling some ranchland back in 2005 that was about 25% underwater after the hurricanes, yet not in a flood zone. Ridiculous isn't it, but that's your tax dollars at work ... and that's another story altogether.

So what's the big deal you ask? The big deal is that if you have an institutional loan on your property, then by law your lender is required to make you get flood insurance. And that insurance will cost you anywhere from a few hundred per year to a few thousand per year depending on what flood zone type (X, A, AE, etc.) and what your property's elevation is. In addition, you have to pay a surveyor to provide an elevation certificate to your insurance company, so that they can determine how much your insurance will cost. OUCH! Don't you just love your federal government?

You can go onto FEMA's website and do a search by address to see where your house lies on the flood maps. I did a quick check of mine and found out that my street is in a flood zone, but my house is not. Weird, huh?

I do have a great tip for you though, so get out your pencils. About 7 years ago the flood maps in Orange County were revised and one of my rental properties had the whole subdivision re-zoned into a flood zone. I was forced to buy some flood insurance on this property. My father (a very clever guy) and I owned this property together. He contacted a surveyor friend for the elevation certificate and the surveyor told him that he had been successful in the past at getting the flood maps amended to exclude certain properties. It took about 6 months and cost us around $500 for his work, but we were able to get the flood map amended to exclude our lot from the flood zone even though every other lot in the subdivision was still part of the flood zone. It was well worth the investment because flood insurance cost us about $500 per year anyway, and now we had a premium lot. My father used the same surveyor to do this on his personal home.

Revisions to other counties in Central Florida are in the works too according to the Orlando Sentinel. So remember my advice above, if the flood maps get revised for your property. Until then ... stay dry.

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(Copyright © 2008. Sand Dollar Realty Group, Inc. All rights reserved.)

Rob Arnold, ABR, CPL, CRB, GRI, Managing real estate broker, Licensed mortgage broker, Notary Public

407-389-7318 / 1-877-389-7318 www.SDRhouses.com www.WeBuyHousesFlorida.com

Your full service and investor friendly Realtor in Orlando. Learn to invest in Central Florida real estate and Orlando real estate. Investor mentoring and counseling available. I also provide flat fee MLS listings, For Sale By Owner, and menu-based services in most parts of Central & South Florida, the Space Coast, and the Treasure Coast including Orlando, Tampa, Miami-Dade, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, Ocala, Volusia, and Brevard.

We buy houses cash, sell properties, and list properties in Central Florida including Orlando, Winter Park, Maitland, College Park, Ocoee, Winter Garden, Apopka, Pine Hills, Altamonte Springs, Casselberry, Longwood, Winter Springs, Oviedo, Lake Mary, Sanford, Deltona, Debary, Deland, Daytona Beach, Melbourne, Mount Dora, Eustis, Leesburg, Clermont, Kissimmee, Saint Cloud, Davenport, Winter Haven, Lakeland, and more.