Darhlene Zeanwick

My take on what happened in our last legislative session ...

A serious budget crunch and seemingly clueless reps led to an uneventful legislative session for Florida lawmakers last week. Nonetheless they manage to squeeze out some dribble for both their constituents and Florida property owners. Here are some highlights from this year's bull pen.

Fraud Against Distressed Homeowners. Homeowners beware. Anyone who asks you to pay up front, including lawyers, are mortal demons. Let those courting your financial failure prove that they can help. With HB 643 (Rep. Clay Ford, R-Pensacola) anyone offering you foreclosure assistance is now required to enter into a written contract and these contracts must spell out services provided. So what are you going to do next time anyone asks you for money before they provide you with service?

Affordable Housing. An approval of this bill will allow lawmakers to dip into a $250 million housing trust fund reserve to make up for shortfalls in the state budget. Careful with your Hancock, Mr. Crist! Floridians want and need affordable housing but it needs to provide affordable homes for your human constituents, not developers.

Credit Crisis Mortgage Fraud. Last year, 70-80 percent of the almost 300,000 foreclosures in Florida involved mortgage fraud, and just this week...read more...

What are your thoughts?

POINCIANA (PHN) | In March 2008 there were 70,578 people who called Poinciana home and 18,918 homes. The least expensive of these sells today for $48 per square foot, an increase of $6/SF from February 2008. While price per square foot increased, list prices fell again from a minimum of over $87,000 to a new low of $69,900, which represents the least expensive single family home in Poinciana. A total of 77 homes have been sold in Poinciana through March 31st.

While for most of 2007, homes sold at about one per day, in January and February, the daily average had dropped to about one sale every two days. March showed improvement with an average once again of one home per day. (Normal is about four homes sold per day.)

Previous reports on absorption rates reflected rates throughout Osceola County, a method that has been improved to focus on the Poinciana area only. Absorption rate for Poinciana as of April 9 was 3.24%.

During the first two months of 2008, inventory numbers appeared to have stabilized at slightly above the 1,000-home mark for Poinciana-proper; however March-April numbers are showing a renewed increase in inventory of existing family homes for sale READ MORE>>

As of yesterday, Darhlene Zeanwick became one of the only-3,100 realtors in the entire U.S. with Green Leadership certification from the National Association of Realtors (NAR) and Poinciana's first "Green Realtor." The research is voluminous. Green really affects every aspect of life and lifestyle. For example, do you have any idea how much carbon dioxide your home puts out into the air each year?

Try about 13,500 pounds for a 3,000-square-foot home. Most of Poinciana's homes are not quite that large but still: If you have a 1,000-square-foot home, that property is putting out more or less 4,500 pounds of carbon dioxide every year and, let's see, each person lives how many years?

With the mug-me levels of heat in Florida, especially in August, it's not that unusual to hear of cooling bills as high as $400 in one month! And we're not talking in-door marijuana grow houses either. These are real people with who like it cold. Frosty!

POINCIANA (PHN) | After a delay caused by federal funding being redirected to Hurricane Katrina victims, Poinciana is finally seeing the first stages of its soon to be upgraded post office. The new, 7,270-square-foot post office will be located behind the Publix supermarket on Cypress Parkway in the area known as the Promenade Shopping Center. The groundbreaking ceremony will be held on Tuesday, March 25 at 10 a.m. will be attended by U.S. Rep. Adam Putnam, R-Bartow, for the 12th district, which covers Poinciana. The ceremony will be held at 4774 San Remo Road in Poinciana.

Although postal services without the frustration of long lines will be one benefit of the project, a non-discussed side effect would be to make Poinciana more attractive to those who work in Orlando. Coupled with other future projects, such as the hospital and connections to both I-4 and the Florida Turnpike, Poinciana is destined to become the community envisioned by early leaders of the area.

While the new, larger post office has been in the making for years, this much-sought project was released for initiating after federal funds were recently released to make it possible. Poinciana is community of about 70,000 residents that spans Osceola and Polk counties. The target date for complet ... read more ...