SARASOTA, FLORIDA, April, 26, 2013 – It would be advisable for prospective home buyers to exercise closer due diligence on purchase options in residential developments which may have CDD fees, Sarasota Bay Real Estate reports. Based on a recent media report, the full service realty firm noted that CDD defaults have emerged as a serious concern in some Florida residential properties.
One logical move, Sarasota Bay Real Estate advised, is to focus home searches on communities developed already with existing infrastructures, such as water, roads, and sewer, set up prior by the local government, and therefore charge no CDD fees. Sarasota Bay Real Estate said that notwithstanding the sharply lower inventories of existing homes particularly in the Sarasota-Manatee area, there are still a good number of residential choices in developments which don’t charge any CDD.
A CDD fee, the company explained, is a community development district assessment in many of Florida’s planned communities. The developers of these neighborhoods added this fee to cover infrastructure and maintenance costs which were then put in CDD bonds sold in the market. The CDD charged to homeowners is typically proportionate to individual home sites. This practice became a norm with the conventional thinking that it is unfair to have an entire city to share in the development cost of a specific community.
The problem now is that many CDD bonds issued across Florida are in default. A securities adviser, Richard Lehmann, quoted in the media report estimated that 183 Floridian CDDs “are currently in default on $5.5 billion in debt.” One of the problems hounding the developers who issued the bond was reportedly the high debt service on the bond issued, coupled with the slack home sales in their projects. The residents of developments with CDD problems eventually suffer in having to continue paying the fee without deriving the expected benefits in terms of community infrastructure and maintenance.
One of the non-CDD communities to consider, Sarasota Bay Real Estate said, is the Rye Wilderness development in Bradenton of national homebuilder D.R. Horton. Charging a low homeowners’ association fee, this is a popular community with currently three sales pending in the listings of Bradenton–Sarasota homes for sale. There are two four-bedroom, new Rye Wilderness listings with floor areas of 3,100-plus square feet and price tags in the $400s. There are also offerings in the $300s having three bedrooms and floor areas as spacious as 2,700 square feet.
In Sarasota, D.R. Horton has a non-CDD community in the University Groves Estates which is composed of 40 new, move-in ready single family homes. The residential features here include tile roof and paver brick driveways. Lawn care is provided in this neighborhood which is cradled by a quiet woodland environment only minutes away from the Sarasota downtown and its various venues for shopping, dining, and entertainment.
Available homes in University Groves are attractively priced with the base price of a three-bedroom, 1,800-square-foot home set at the high $200s. Larger home models having floor areas of close to 2,440 square feet designed with four bedrooms are priced in the low $300s.
SARASOTA, FLORIDA, October 7, 2019 – Property values of communities in the Sarasota-Manatee region now face lesser threat from neighborhood eyesores brought about by abandoned, foreclosed homes. Known in the real estate trade as zombie foreclosures, these properties have shrunk significantly in the region. According to an August report of ATTOM Data Solutions, abandoned […] more>>