Aventura Dreams Real Estate / Your Personal Aventura or Miami-Dade County Specialist

Whether you are looking to buy or sell a home or condo in Aventura or Miami-Dade County and South Florida, you deserve local real estate agent that is a licensed Realtor who is a member of the local multiple listing system (MLS), providing you with the best service and results in the industry. I believe the key to a successful real estate transaction is the strength and quality of the real estate agent. I provide my customers with the most up-to-date real estate related information available to help you make the right decisions. I will "guide you" every step of the way! I will provide you with information on: * Real Estate in South Florida * Homes in South Florida * Condos in South Florida * South Florida Schools I can provide all the information into the hottest neighborhoods and condos in South Florida . Just let me know what you are looking for and I'll take care of everything else.

The Point Aventura

Thursday, August 19, 2010

Flurry of High End Sales in Miami

Posted in Real Estate on June 14, 2010 by Kevin Brass

While headlines focus on the towers of empty condos, Miami has been posting some big-dollar sales.

Last week a “German businessman” paid $16 million for a new 17,200-square-foot, 10-bedroom house in Miami Beach. The developer built the house as a spec property in 2008, which was, to say the least, unfortunate timing.

The waterfront house, which includes two docks and a five-car garage, originally hit the market at $25 million, according to the Miami Herald.

The $16 million is believed to be the biggest luxury sale of the year, so far, and the priciest since Shaquille O’Neal sold his Star Island property for $16 million (after originally listing it for $32 million). The second biggest sale this year was a Coral Gables house, which sold in March for $14.1 million, local luxury specialist Kevin Tomlinson notes.
 

Marquis Residences
Meanwhile, a 7,800-square-foot penthouse in the 67-story Marquis Residences recently sold for $4.2 million, which the developers are touting as “the most expensive condo ever sold in downtown Miami’s Biscayne Corridor.” The four-story condo includes the “highest terrace and hot tub in Florida,” they say.

The sale may not have hit the gaudy numbers of yesteryear, but any condo sale not related to a lender repossession is good news for the market, providing evidence that buyers are ready to pull the trigger.

Latest Miami sales numbers showed an eight percent jump the median sales price for single family homes, the first increase in three years, according to the Realtor Association of Greater Miami and the Beaches and the Southeast Florida Multiple Listing Service (SEFMLS). The median price for condos was down a “negligible” three percent in April, suggesting the market may at least be stabilizing.

The number of sales in Miami has been steadily increasing for the last 21 months, RAMB notes. In April, the number of condos sold was 33 percent higher than a year earlier, a 111.4 percent jump from the dark days of 2008.

Posted via email from AventuraRealtor's posterous

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

7 Tips for Staging Your Home

7 Tips for Staging Your Home

Make your home warm and inviting to boost your home’s value and speed up the sale process.

The first step to getting buyers to make an offer on your home is to impress them with its appearance so they begin to envision themselves living there. Here are seven tips for making your home look bigger, brighter, and more desirable.

1. Start with a clean slate

Before you can worry about where to place furniture and which wall hanging should go where, each room in your home must be spotless. Do a thorough cleaning right down to the nitpicky details like wiping down light switch covers. Deep clean and deodorize carpets and window coverings.

2. Stow away your clutter

It’s harder for buyers to picture themselves in your home when they’re looking at your family photos, collectibles, and knickknacks. Pack up all your personal decorations. However, don’t make spaces like mantles and coffee and end tables barren. Leave three items of varying heights on each surface, suggests Barb Schwarz of www.StagedHomes.com in Concord, Pa. For example, place a lamp, a small plant, and a book on an end table.

3. Scale back on your furniture

When a room is packed with furniture, it looks smaller, which will make buyers think your home is less valuable than it is. Make sure buyers appreciate the size of each room by removing one or two pieces of furniture. If you have an eat-in dining area, using a small table and chair set makes the area seem bigger.

4. Rethink your furniture placement

Highlight the flow of your rooms by arranging the furniture to guide buyers from one room to another. In each room, create a focal point on the farthest wall from the doorway and arrange the other pieces of furniture in a triangle around the focal point, advises Schwarz. In the bedroom, the bed should be the focal point. In the living room, it may be the fireplace, and your couch and sofa can form the triangle in front of it.

5. Add color to brighten your rooms

Brush on a fresh coat of warm, neutral-color paint in each room. Ask your real estate agent for help choosing the right shade. Then accessorize. Adding a vibrant afghan, throw, or accent pillows for the couch will jazz up a muted living room, as will a healthy plant or a bright vase on your mantle. High-wattage bulbs in your light fixtures will also brighten up rooms and basements.

6. Set the scene

Lay logs in the fireplace, and set your dining room table with dishes and a centerpiece of fresh fruit or flowers. Create other vignettes throughout the home—such as a chess game in progress—to help buyers envision living there. Replace heavy curtains with sheer ones that let in more light.

Make your bathrooms feel luxurious by adding a new shower curtain, towels, and fancy guest soaps (after you put all your personal toiletry items are out of sight). Judiciously add subtle potpourri, scented candles, or boil water with a bit of vanilla mixed in. If you have pets, clean bedding frequently and spray an odor remover before each showing.

7. Make the entrance grand

Mow your lawn and trim your hedges, and turn on the sprinklers for 30 minutes before showings to make your lawn sparkle. If flowers or plants don’t surround your home’s entrance, add a pot of bright flowers. Top it all off by buying a new doormat and adding a seasonal wreath to your front door.


Read more: http://buyandsell.houselogic.com/articles/7-tips-staging-your-home/##ixzz0x1FK8rGT

Posted via email from AventuraRealtor's posterous

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Aventura Realtor featured in Miami Herald article - Vivian Toppe

Real estate agents: Aventura condo prices still falling

  By Jared Goyette

cityofaventurablog.com 

There has been an injection of some much-needed good news in the otherwise gloomy South Florida real estate market in the last 24 hours, but what's the outlook for Aventura?

We reached out to local real estate agents to get their take, and while they pointed to a few signs that the city is recovering, they also indicated that sales in the last month have been slow, and that prices are falling. From what they said, the Aventura real estate market isn't out of the woods yet, nor will it be any time soon. 

First, the good news.

On Tuesday the Herald reported:

-- South Florida home prices improved in May, according to Standard & Poor's Case-Shiller 20-city housing index.

-- The downtown Miami condo market is on an upswing.  Sales of downtown Miami condos accelerated during the first half of this year, the inventory of empty new condos on the market is declining, and prices are on the rise, all according to a study released by the Miami Downtown Development Authority.

The three real estate agents who were quick to respond to emails sent last night -- Ines Hegedus-GarciaVivian Toppe, and Jonathan Lief -- all agreed that the market in Aventura can be difficult to assess because most of the residences are condos, and the trends can be different from building to building. Similarly, Hegedus-Garcia made the point that the Standard & Poor index isn't a good guide, because it lumps together large metro areas while there are drastic differences from neighborhood to neighborhood. When it comes to Aventura, here's what these three agents had to say:

Ines Hegedus-Garcia:

I can tell you that Aventura is lagging a bit behind when it comes to a recuperating market. If you take a look at the monthly real estate market reports I do for the Aventura area, you will see that there is still quite a large percentage of distressed sales (meaning short sales and foreclosures) listed for sale - making up about 25% of the sales inventory.

In the last few months, the amount of distressed inventory has remained the same, but we can expect this number to start decreasing in the next 4-6 months if it follows some of Miami's "recuperating" areas.  Also note that of the currently pending contracts, or condos under contract, about 65% of those are distressed sales (that number has also remained steady in the last few months).

Jonathan Lief:

Single family homes in Aventura, for which there is an extremely small supply have gone up significantly in price, however the condo market in Aventura still has tremendous downward pressure on it due to short sales, foreclosures and auctions. In fact, if not for the Banks bidding against investors in order to protect their high mortgages, prices would come down even further. The end of the first time home buyers tax incentive has definitely slowed down the market this month. In conclusion, a remark by a potential buyer from Brazil typifies the market when he said, "Everyone in Brazil knows that Miami is for sale. Why is this condo priced so high?"

Vivian Toppe:

For condominium sales in Aventura, the price per square foot is rising but at a slow pace. We had the best month of the year in April of 2010 at an average price per square foot at $225, but since the tax credit from the government for first time home buyers ceased, prices and sales in the following months had a downward trend, which you can see the graph below. The month of June closed off with an average price per square foot of $195. The overall trend shows a slight rise since the beginning of the year which started in January 2010 with an average price per square foot of $182.

 

 

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/07/28/1750135/real-estate-agents-aventura-condo.html?story_link=email_msg#ixzz0uzw0FHyk

 

 

 

Posted via email from AventuraRealtor's posterous

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Visit houselogic.com for more articles like this.

Copyright 2010 NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS®

Pending sale - 323 Navarre Ave #104, Coral Gables FL