If you've been wondering where I've been, your wait is over. For those of you new to this blog, I'm a bit of a cell phone junkie, so it should come as no surprise that I decided to pick up one of those iThingies. I've been patiently waiting for June 29th to arrive, and had to deal with endless debates about why I NEED this phone, and why I'm willing to sleep outside to get one. Once the nay-sayers see or touch my new iphone, it usually ends the debate.

This is an Orlando real estate blog, so there's no room for an iphone review, but I will say it's amazing. I'm in the process of working on an iPhone version of this blog, and it will detect whether you are using an iphone or not to access the blog, and send you to the appropriate version.

If you're interested, I was first in line at the Waterford Lakes AT&T store in east Orlando, and my total wait in line was 32 hours. I was interviewed by 4 people, was able to work my way through 275 old real estate emails, and spoke with tons of people interested in the Orlando real estate market (it became a pretty hot topic).

I'm back to work now, and will be updating the blog regularly. Sorry for the brief absence.

Here's the link to one of my interviews: Lines Forming at AT&T in Orlando

Tags: orlando, iphone

It's often said, "A Picture's worth a thousand words." When photographing a home to list on the MLS, this couldn't be more true. We've been involved in photography for years, and recently made the choice to offer our professional photography services to all our listing clients. We launched our photography site about a week ago, and yesterday we made the decision to add a feature called, "Bad MLS Pic of the Day."

Basically, it's a blog that shows bad pictures agents are using on the MLS to market their clients' homes, and let's you rate their "badness". This topic has been gaining popularity over the past few weeks, and it only made sense that we dedicate a full page of our new site to showcase it.

We launched the feature early yesterday morning with NO fanfare. The only thing we did to announce the launch was submit the site to Digg. We had no idea this was going to take off like it did. The site received 97 hits yesterday, and already has over 50 for today.

Feel free to join in the fun by visiting Bad MLS Pic of the Day!

Tags: photos, mls

We decided to start featuring a few zip codes from the metro Orlando area each week. It will show basic stats from around town. If you like this feature, let us know in the comments section. If you don't, let us know that too.

This weeks zip codes: 32746, 32750, and 32701

Houses

Residential activity May 6 to June 6

How many listings: 965
How many sold: 71
Average days on market: 102
Median sales price: $317,000
Median percent difference in listing/sold price: -2.4%
Average sales price: $402,235
Average percent difference in listing/sold prices: -5.0%

Features of Properties Sold

1 or 2 bedrooms: 3
3 bedrooms: 30
4 or more bedrooms: 38
Fireplaces: 35
Pools: 29

The most expensive house listed for $1,995,000. It sold for $1.8 million after 22 days on the market. It was a 5 bedroom, 4.5 bath house, built in 2003, and has 6,083 square feet.

The least expensive house listed for $192,000. It sold for $170,000 after 112 days on the market. This was a 2 bedroom, 2.5 baths town house, built in 2002, and has 1,184 square feet.

Source: The Orlando Sentinel

Tags: orlando, by zip

The eleven day special session deciding the fate on the future of Florida's property tax came to end after only three days. For those of you that watched the videos showing Governor Crist praising the plans to eliminate our property taxes on our site, you'll no doubt be surprised disappointed with the plan that was chosen to be taken to vote.

The new plan mentions nothing about rolling back values to 2003, and nothing about eliminating property taxes and supplementing them with a higher sales tax. Instead, we're left with a plan that gives you a choice: slightly reduce your property taxes, or stay with the 3% yearly increase cap of the current 'Save Our Homes' plan (insert thunderous applause here).

Will this new plan win the vote on January 29th? There's guaranteed to be a toe-to-toe battle leading up to the decision. The new plan will leave schools with approximately $3.5 billion loss of property tax collection, leaving it up to the Florida Government to adequately fund education, and we all know how well that's been going. The proposed constitutional amendment to create a new, super-sized homestead exemption for primary homeowners needs support from 60 percent of voters.

The new plan would save taxpayers only about $8 billion over five years, analysts said, and is expected to save the average homeowner 7 percent on tax bills this fall. But the $174 average first-year savings would climb to at least several hundred dollars per year for many homeowners if the expanded homestead exemption gains approval. Needing no voter approval, a $15.6 billion rollback of city and county property-tax collections also was approved by lawmakers Thursday.

Want to know YOUR estimated 1st year savings? Head over to the tax calculator on the Orlando Sentinel


Haven't had enough? Here are a few more articles for your reading pleasure:

Tax Cut; New Fight Looms - Orlando Sentinel
Legislature Passes Tax-Cutting Plan - Orlando WESH TV2
Florida Lawmakers Approve Tax Cut Bill - MyFOX Orlando

Tags: property taxes, orlando, Crist, government, florida

If you were anywhere in downtown Orlando on Tuesday, you may have noticed people flocking to Church Street. Why, you ask? Because there was a bankruptcy auction of former music mogul Lou Perlman's estate.

There seemed to be only three types of people at the auction: the type that were there to grab memorabilia from their favorite musical acts such as Backstreet Boys, and 'N Sync, the type looking to make a few bucks reselling the items on sites like eBay, and the type that was there to get even with Perlman who claim they lost huge sums of money to him before he disappeared in January.

We were there, and were able to grab two desks, two filing cabinets, a few gold records, all of Perlman's business licenses, and the contents of Aaron Carter's office. The desks and filing cabinets will look nice in our new office, and the records and licenses will be nice conversation pieces. Aaron Carter's office contents? We're still sorting through them to figure out what we ended up with.

Here are a few items that sold:

• Pearlman's personal desk and credenza: $7,500
  
• Contents of Perlman's Desk: $400
  
• Backstreet Boys platinum record, 'Everybody':$4,500
  
• Desktop-size Chihuly glass artwork: $18,000
  
• Key to the city of Orlando: $1,400 - side note - We really wanted this item, but spoke with the winning bidder as we were picking up our items, and the key was stolen. No word if it has been recovered.

Here are a few terrible pictures taken from the auction with my cell phone. I apologize for the quality, but security was very tight, so it's all I had:


Near Registration Booth


3rd Floor Trans Continental Building (the old Orlando Exchange)


Auctioneer selling memorabilia


Offices on day of pick-up


Aaron Carter's Office


Perlman's secretary's office


I was told this morning that Perlman was found and arrested. I haven't seen this news, but I'll post an update when I find it. In the mean time, here are a few links about the auction:

Orlando Sentinel - Lou Perlman auction draws crowd
Orlando's WESH TV2 - Auction
Orlando's WFTV Channel 9 - Crowded Auction Sells Off Boy Band Memorabilia

Tags: lou perlman, orlando

We do our best to be different. With so many Realtors in Orlando, it's easy to be overlooked. You can call us trendy, you can call us odd, but don't ever call us ordinary! I was reading a few Orlando real estate blogs and became frustrated with the lack of unique content. Most posts were news reports copied and pasted into the blog. If you want the news, you'll go to a news site. You read blogs for a more personal look at an area, or interesting commentary on the situations facing the community. We fight daily with the struggle of finding a "different" way to approach real estate, and I found this video on YouTube of an Apple ad that explains our feelings perfectly.

Tags: orlando real estate, orlando realtor

Straight out of Orlando, the Orlando real estate lolcats talk property taxes as only they can.

Tags: orlando, property taxes, lolcats, funny

Whether you're a fan of reality TV or not, there's no doubt you've seen one of the thousands of "reality" shows airing daily. So how "real" is this so-called "reality?" If you're Sam Leccima, one of the stars of A&E's Flip This House, you probably already know the answer to this question. For the rest of you, you might be surprised by the answer.

Flip This House is a show on A&E that gives a backstage look at real estate investors that purchase homes to flip, and their struggles to improve the house to its maximum potential for resale. It's a very popular show, and I'll admit, I'm a fan. Orlando was a major player for investors during the boom, and many of the investors were looking for a quick flip, so the show felt very close to home for me - until now!

About two weeks ago, Fox News' Senior I-Team reporter Dale Russell found one Atlanta developer on the show, Sam Leccima, wasn't telling the truth about his renovations. Lecimma is accused of faking the home renovations, and claiming to have sold houses he never owned.

"This is, indeed, a con artist," said Sonya McGee, an Atlanta pharmaceutical representative who says Leccima took $4,000 from her in an investment scheme.

Many are saying the flips shown on the show were just elaborate hoaxes. He's accused of using his friends and family as potential homebuyers and putting "sold" signs in front of unsold houses. Apparently, the home repairs, which are obviously the draw to the show, were nothing more than quick, temporary patch jobs used to make the house look good on camera.

Here's the I-Team report in all its glory. You be the judge: Was Leccima scamming us, or was it all just for entertainment.



Still not enough for you? Here are a few links for your reading pleasure. This is Reality Blogging (did I just coin that?) about Reality TV. Namaste!

MyFOX Atlanta - News Report
'Flip This House' star accused of fraud - Yahoo! Report
Flip This Lawsuit - Blog related to this issue
Sam Leccima of "Flip This House" Arrested for Fraud - Gambling911 Blog (Has a few false accusations)

Tags: Investing, flipping, Media, TV, scandal