BOSWAL

SOHO.......Cool

SOBE.........Also Cool


SOWAL ????? = South walton... South Walton Florida or South Walton Georgia ?


BOSWAL ...... Yeah ,....Beaches of South walton, that's my baby..... start looking for your free stickers soon.......

Where is this exotic locale ?

Somewhere in the South Pacific ?

It's the view from our ground floor terrace in Blue Mt. Beach looking West.


Photo Copyright © 2006 Teresa O'Neal, All Rights Reserved.

Learn to manage and develop property

learn to develop

A Man's home is his castle

Castle listings

EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY

I'm looking for a good assistant to help me keep turning all the Irons in my fires.

If any of you know someone who is dependable, hard working with good computer and web search/research/investigative skills please encourage them to send their resume to me at:

All submittals kept in strict confidence.

Must be able to pass a background check.

Excellent pay and benefits.

Gulfoasis@earthlink.net

Let's Travel to....

http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifExotic MAUI

REAL ESTATE METRICS

WASHINGTON -- April 26, 2006 -- Sales of new U.S. homes rose higher than many economists expected in March -- 13.8 percent -- the biggest one-month gain since April 1993, according to the U.S. Commerce Department.



The pace of new home sales rose to a seasonally adjusted 1.213 million unit annual rate from a downwardly revised 1.066 million-unit rate in February, the report said. The March sales pace was down 7.2 percent from the March 2005 rate.

Interview with the agent

Talked to a 20 year veteran and long time Walton County agent today about this market.
We both agreed on the obvious part.... That things are real quite.

However there are some other things to consider.

What about the thinning ranks of real estate agents who have ZERO income?

What about the so-called hot-shots of the last five years ?
A drunk monkey could have sold real estate around here until recently.

When the going gets tough the tough get going....
Sometimes they go far away in search of greener pastures.

And.... Most people are not tough... so they go shopping! and hope things will get better next month.

Blog On Garth !

We are the Blog: Resistance is Futile
The Technorati site, which watches Web log activity, is tracking 36.2 million blogs, "and the blogosphere we track continues to double about every 6 months," according to a posting at the site's blog.
The blogosphere is over 60 times larger than it was 3 years ago, according to the blog post, "State of the Blogosphere, April 2006."
A new blog is created about every second, Technorati also reported, and 55 percent of bloggers are still posting three months after launching their blogs.
About 11 percent of all blogs update at least on a weekly basis, while about 9 percent of new blogs are spam.
The daily posting volume on blogs tracked by Technorati is about 1.2 million posts per day, or about 50,000 posts per hour (that represents 833.3 posts per minute and 13.9 posts per second).
–Glenn Roberts Jr., Inman News

Blog On Garth !

We are the Blog: Resistance is Futile
The Technorati site, which watches Web log activity, is tracking 36.2 million blogs, "and the blogosphere we track continues to double about every 6 months," according to a posting at the site's blog.
The blogosphere is over 60 times larger than it was 3 years ago, according to the blog post, "State of the Blogosphere, April 2006."
A new blog is created about every second, Technorati also reported, and 55 percent of bloggers are still posting three months after launching their blogs.
About 11 percent of all blogs update at least on a weekly basis, while about 9 percent of new blogs are spam.
The daily posting volume on blogs tracked by Technorati is about 1.2 million posts per day, or about 50,000 posts per hour (that represents 833.3 posts per minute and 13.9 posts per second).
–Glenn Roberts Jr., Inman News

EARTH DAY

The founder of Earth Day former U.S. Sen. Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, died this last July. Saturday was the 37th annual observance of Earth day and the first celebrated without Gaylord Nelson.

EARTH DAY is the case of the classic "why didn't I think of that?"

This was a great step for mankind in the late 20th century to celebrate the Earth that supports us all while at the same time the return of an ancient truth ...

festival Road

Wine festival

Boat show

Jazz fest

taste of 30A

Man this is one happening area.....

And that is good for the Real estate market.

Attention Blood Thirsty Investors

A seasoned 5 year veteran investor in this market told me today....

Keep your powder dry and your cash ready....

The Blood is about to start running in the streets around here.....

many people just can't wait any longer for this market to get better.....

Some lots are sellin for less than the buyer paid just a year ago.......

There are going to be some VERY good bargains out there....

Property may soon require new disclosure

Florida may soon require disclosure to buyers of property in beach front associations that have certain types of beach armoring such as Geo-Tubes due to the fact that such systems require constant upkeep and have fines and/or property liens which can be imposed by state and federal agencies if the tubes are left uncovered during Turtle nesting season.

A performance lien may even be placed on the entire sub-division

things are starting to sell....

High end property if it is truly unique, a one of a kind property

Cheap $$$$ property if it is a real bargain

Value buys... A lot for the money either in size and or features.....

TOAST OF THE COAST

For about 9.8 Million this approx 5000 sq. Ft. Beachfront belle can be all yours...

2006 hurricane forecast

2006 forecast

2600 flavors.....

of DIRT.

Between Sandestin on the west and Pt. Washington on the East, including the area of 30A
there are 2600 lots listed on the MLS for sale.
That does not include for Sale by Owner lots.......

I bring you Haute Blog

Check out this Guest blog of the week people....

Haute baby

My big Fat Listings

A lot of you agents out there are telling me you cannot digest one more listing....
The ads, the handholding the extra showings blah, blah, blah,
Then you need a bigger ad to list/show them all, blah blah,

Listing Constipation.....Blah............ Blah....................Blah

That part time job at the dry cleaners is starting to look attractive...


Snap out of it people..... Get a grip.....
It's a Cycle....

Faith means that you know not to panic...




YOU CAN DO IT !

Happy Easter People

Easter feast of famine ???

What would really worry me.....About this market

1. They discovered another Florida.....

2. Private property on the Beach is outlawed

3. People stop retiring....

Inman Real Estate news feed

Inman Blog What is the scoop?
We have heard the following about the housing market: 1. Florida is off 50 percent, year over year 2. California is off 25 percent (except the Silicon Valley) 3. San Diego is really hurting 4. Boston is sucking wind. What is happening in your market. No sugar coating..


-Scare the herd.... so Big money can scoop up some good deals

Bottom feeders

some agents that need to pay some bills are out there scaring the hell out of the sellers to get them to lower their prices to get a deal done.

So...... Seller Beware.....

Where the Millionaires are...

May 2006
Source-Kiplinger's Personal Finance

Imagine where the nation's millionaires reside, and you may first think of fast-paced New York City, glamorous Los Angeles, or innovative San Francisco. But while these areas boast some of the largest numbers of wealthy residents, you actually have a greater chance of meeting a millionaire in less obvious locales -- say, Los Alamos, N.M. or Sarasota, Fla.

It comes down to simple arithmetic. The Big Apple, for example, has by far the most millionaire households -- 700,195. But with more than 6.8 million households in the New York metropolitan area, only one in ten boast a net worth of $1 million or more. On the other hand, in Los Alamos, N.M., you double your chance of meeting a millionaire. The town may have fewer than 8,000 households, but one in five are worth at least a million bucks. The reason: The main industry in town is the famed Los Alamos National Laboratory, a magnet for well-paid government scientists.

To find the places with the highest concentrations of millionaire households, Kiplinger.com turned to market research firm TNS Financial Services, which tracks afluent households in hundreds of cities nationwide. Our city-by-city slideshow reveals the results.

We weren't interested in places where residents may be house-rich and cash-poor, so we looked only at households with a net worth of $1 million dollars or more, excluding the value of their primary residence. And we looked for the percentage of a city's total households that contain millionaires, rather than the sheer number, because the places with the most millionaires obviously housed the highest general population too, diluting the millionaire mix. We wanted to know where in the U.S. you have the greatest chance of passing a millionaire on the street -- or even of having one live next door. As a whole, about 8% of the nation's households are millionaires. The cities featured in our slide show easily top that statistic.

We also learned what draws millionaires to these areas. The top cities tend to fall in one of three categories:

1.

They are popular with wealthy retirees.
2.

They are home to innovators and gifted talent pools.
3.

They have a high concentration of corporations and highly paid executives.

The wealthy also seem to gather near the country's coasts. Nine of the top ten cities on our list are on the Atlantic, Pacific, or Gulf coasts. And Florida seems to be one of the most popular states among millionaires -- three of the places with the highest concentration of uber-wealthy are in the Sunshine State.

We include a wealth snapshot for each of the cities in our slideshow. We provide median family income from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. These numbers illustrate that you don't have to make a lot of money to have a high net worth. In fact, families in half of the places on our list make less than $65,000 a year. Only one of the areas had a six-figure median family income. (For inspiration on how you could become a millionaire, see the May issue of Kiplinger's Personal Finance.)

Although TNS's numbers exclude the value of the primary residence, we show you the median home price in the area to give an idea of how much it costs to buy in one of these millionaire towns. The numbers came from the National Association of Realtors and from data compiled by Sperling's Best Places, which also provided us with cost-of-living data. The national average for the cost of living index is 100. A number greater than 100 means the city is more expensive to live in than the rest of the nation on average. The index takes into account a variety of factors, including the cost of food, housing, utilities and healthcare.

Find it, Fix it, Flip it

By Robert J. Bruss
Inman News

"Find it, Fix it, Flip it," by Michael Corbett (Plume Books-Penguin Group, New York), 2006, $15, 323 pages; available in stock or by special order at local bookstores, public libraries, and www.Amazon.com.

Many real estate books recommend buying run-down houses, fixing them up, and selling for "fast-flip" profits. But "Find It, Fix It, Flip It!" by Michael Corbett uses a different strategy by adding profitable improvements, which change the lifestyle atmosphere of the home while also upgrading the residence.


"Flipping is an art," says Corbett, host of the television "Extra" program, "Mansions and Millionaires." Perhaps that is how the author created his technique of changing a home's lifestyle from dull routine to upscale but without high renovation costs.

The book starts with a basic "profit calculator chart," so a beginning investor can easily see how the profit will be earned by purchasing a house "with the right things wrong," and correcting those problems by adding lifestyle value.

Then, the author suggests either immediately "flipping" for fast resale profit or living in the home for at least 24 months to claim up to $250,000 tax-free principal residence sale profits (up to $500,000 for a qualified married couple).

What sets this book apart from the other quick-flip books is the author's approach to fixing up a run-down house by not only adding market value, but also improving the lifestyle of the buyer. He says, "The downright ugly house is beautiful to you." Of course, he insists it be located in a decent safe neighborhood, which shows signs of improving.

The book includes many before and after photos of Corbett's fix-up houses. The changes are often dramatic. Not only are the ordinary houses improved, but they also appeal to an upscale buyer who will pay top dollar after renovation.

Corbett says there are six levels of home improvements. The "fix-it level" includes serious but fixable problems, system upgrades, and fix-it essentials. But the "profit level" includes lifestyle upgrades, designed-to-flip techniques, and dressed-to-sell essentials.

Many of the author's profitable improvements are inexpensive. For example, he suggests landscaping with more mature plants rather than the cheapest plants available. Also, he recommends installing inexpensive low-voltage outdoor lighting, which dramatically improves the after-dark appeal of a house.

Even if you don't plan to quick-flip a house for fast profits, Corbett provides superb advice that any home buyer should look for when buying a house with profit potential.

For example, among his list of 10 questions home sellers don't want to hear, he includes, "Why are you selling?" "What did you pay and how long have you owned the house?" "What is your deadline to sell?" and, "What's the one thing you won't miss about this house?"

In the chapter about negotiating, Corbett is at his best.

"Never stop negotiating," he advises. He explains how smart home buyers use their professional home inspection report to negotiate repair credits to reopen the sales price negotiations. I would hate to be a home seller negotiating with the author.

Chapter topics include: "Flipping Success"; "Flipping Economics 101"; "Your Flipping Dream Team"; "Find the House with the Right Things Wrong"; "The Financial Model for Success": "The Profit Calculator; Become a Flipping Sleuth"; "Write a Winning Offer"; "How to Survive Escrow and Come Out a Winner"; "The Fix-It Improvement Levels"; "The Profit Improvement Levels"; "Your Fix-It Hit List: Costs and Budgets"; "Starting the Work and Getting It Done"; "Flipping the House You Live In"; and "Dressed to Sell."

As today's home buyers change their attitude from buying a place to live to purchasing a residence with future profit potential, this new book shows what to look for in a profitable home purchase, whether for personal use or quick profits. Corbett's approach of changing a house's lifestyle to improve its market value is unique. On my scale of one to 10, this superb new book, which cannot be recommended too highly, rates an off-the-chart 12.

Excuse me, Have you seen the bottom...

of this market yet???

Low priced lot$ in hi-priced developments

From west to east along C-30A

1. Cypress Dunes $240k

2. Draper Lake $499k

3. Forest lakes $279k

4. Lakeside at Blue Mt. $335k

5. The Preserve $299k

6. WaterColor $385k

7. WaterSound $490k

8. Seacrest Beach $319k

9. Rosemary Beach $595k

* numbers rounded up to nearest thousand.

Have you heard?

Uranus has a Blue ring around it

?

This changes everything.

The Irishman speaks...

No amount of formal education can turn a prick into a Man.

-Shawn

Second Homes Rule !

SECOND HOMES

Vacation- and investment-home sales both set records in 2005, NAR
says, with the combined total of second home sales accounting for four
out of 10 residential transactions. The market share of second homes
rose from 36 percent of transactions in 2004 to 39.9 percent in 2005.

Original Saying

Life is a Bitch. So enjoy it while you're on top.
Because sooner or later, the Bitch is on top.

- Shawn O'Neal

Silver Lining in 2006 Storm Forecast

Silver Lining

H U R R I C A N E activity

U.S. Hurricane Activity Rates Increases Losses by 40% in Florida and Gulf Coast
Elevated Storm Frequency and Intensity Expected To Persist For At Least Five
Years

NEWARK, Calif., March 23 /PRNewswire/ -- Risk Management Solutions (RMS)
today announced that increases to hurricane landfall frequencies in the
company's U.S. hurricane model will increase modeled annualized insurance
losses by 40% on average across the Gulf Coast, Florida and the Southeast, and
by 25-30% in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast coastal regions, relative to those
derived using long-term 1900-2005 historical average hurricane frequencies.
This new view of risk is driven by an increase of more than 30% in the
modeled frequency of major (Saffir-Simpson Category 3-5) hurricanes making
landfall in the U.S. to account for current elevated levels of hurricane
activity in the Atlantic basin that are expected to persist for at least the
next five years. When compared with a pre-2004 historical baseline, as has
been previously employed for quantifying insurance risk, the increases in
modeled annualized losses are closer to 50% in the Gulf, Florida, and the
Southeast.
The increased frequency and intensity of hurricane activity in the
Atlantic Ocean Basin, as observed since 1995, are driven by higher sea surface
temperatures in the tropical North Atlantic and by associated changes in
atmospheric circulation. These warmer temperatures are expected to translate
into a continuation of high activity in the basin, leading to a greater
potential for hurricanes to make landfall at higher intensities over the next
five years.
To address this period of elevated frequency and intensity of storms, RMS
consulted with representatives from all segments of the insurance industry and
updated its U.S. and Caribbean hurricane models to provide a 'medium-term'
(five-year) forward-looking view of risk for estimating potential catastrophe
losses. To date, catastrophe model results have been based on a long-term
historical average baseline.

Expert Panel Convened
The RMS medium-term view of hurricane activity was developed in
cooperation with a panel of leading experts in hurricane climatology convened
by RMS in October 2005, which included: Dr. Jim Elsner, Professor in the
Department of Geography, Florida State University; Dr. Kerry Emanuel,
Professor in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Tom Knutson, Research Meteorologist,
Geophysical Fluids Dynamic Laboratory, Princeton University; and Dr. Mark
Saunders, Professor of Climate Prediction, Department of Space and Climate
Physics, University College London.
Based on the five-year perspective of this expert panel, RMS developed a
methodology to update activity rates in its proprietary models based on storm
intensity, storm track, and landfall region. This methodology indicates that
increases in hurricane frequencies should be expected across the entire U.S.
coast, but will be highest in the Gulf, Florida, and the Southeast, while
lower in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast.
"Considerable scientific debate on the reasons for the high state of
current hurricane activity continues among leading climatologists, between
those who view natural, multi-decadal variability as the principal cause and
those who also see a significant influence of global warming," said Dr. Robert
Muir-Wood, chief research officer at RMS. "While the experts convened by RMS
hold different climatological perspectives on the underlying causes of
elevated hurricane activity, they agreed unanimously that a forward-looking
view of risk should reflect a higher probability of land-falling hurricanes
than is represented by long-term historical averages."
This new outlook regarding heightened hurricane intensity and landfall
frequency will be incorporated in the updated RMS(R) U.S. and Caribbean
Hurricane Models, part of the May 2006 release of the RiskLink(R) and
RiskBrowser(R) 6.0 catastrophe modeling platforms. The models will also
contain changes in the modeling of vulnerabilities and post-event loss
amplification effects based on detailed RMS analysis of claims data from the
2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons. RMS will continue to monitor, publish, and
apply the five-year forward-looking view of activity rates, in conjunction
with convening an annual expert elicitation of leading hurricane
climatologists.
"Coming off back-to-back, extraordinarily active hurricane seasons, the
market is looking for leadership. At RMS, we are taking a clear, unambiguous
position that our clients should manage their risks in a manner consistent
with elevated levels of hurricane activity and severity," stated Hemant Shah,
president and CEO of RMS. "We live in a dynamic world, and there is now a
critical mass of data and science that point to this being the prudent course
of action."

About RMS
Risk Management Solutions is the world's leading provider of products and
services for catastrophe risk management. More than 400 leading insurers,
reinsurers, trading companies, and other financial institutions rely on RMS
models to quantify, manage, and transfer risk. Founded at Stanford University
in 1988, RMS serves clients today from offices in the U.S., Europe, and Japan.
For more information, visit our web site at http://www.rms.com .

RMS is a registered trademark, and the RMS logo is a trademark of Risk
Management Solutions, Inc. All other trademarks are property of their
respective owners.

Mark Prindle
TorranceCo, New York
1-212-691-5860
mprindle@torranceco.com

Shannon McKay
RMS, California
1-510-402-3391
shannon.mckay@rms.com

SOURCE Risk Management Solutions
Web Site: http://www.rms.com

The Cult of Personality?

Author Mike davis slams Duany as "cult Leader" of New Urbanism
Full Article here: New Urbo

The New Urbanism Meets the Old South

Into this fraught and sinister situation now blunders the circus-like spectacle of the Congress of New Urbanism (CNU): the architectural cult founded by Miami designers Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk.

Twenty years ago, when Duany was first barnstorming the nation's architectural schools and preservation societies, the New Urbanism seemed to offer an attractive model for building socially diverse and environmentally sustainable communities based on a systematization of older 'city beautiful' principles such as pedestrian scale, traditional street grids, an abundance of open space, and a mixture of land uses, income groups and building forms.

In practice, however, this diversity has never been achieved. Duany and Plater-Zyberk's Seaside--the Florida suburb so brilliantly caricatured in the 1998 film "The Truman Show"--was an early warning that kitsch would usually triumph over democracy in New Urbanist designs.

Despite the populist language of the CNU manifesto, moreover, Duany has always courted corporate imaginers, mega-developers and politicians. In the mid-1990s, HUD under Secretary Henry Cisneros incorporated New Urbanist ideas into many of its HOPE VI projects.

Originally conceived as replacement housing for the poor, HOPE VI quickly morphed into a new strategy for replacing the poor themselves. Strategically-sited public-housing projects like New Orleans St. Thomas homes were demolished to make way for neo-traditionalist townhouses and stores (in the St. Thomas case, a giant Wal-Mart) in the New Urbanist spirit.

These "mixed-use, mixed-income" developments were typically advertised as little utopias of diversity, but--as in the St. Thomas case--the real dynamic was exclusionary rather than inclusionary, with only a few project residents being rehoused on site. Nationally, HOPE VI led to a net loss of more than 50,000 units of desperately needed low-income housing.

Smart developers accordingly have been quick to put New Urbanist halos over their otherwise rampant landgrabs and neighborhood demolitions. Likewise, shrewd conservatives like Paul Weyrich have come to recognize the obvious congruence between political traditionalism and architectural nostalgia.

Weyrich, the founding president of the Heritage Foundation, recently wrote that the "new urbanism needs to be part of the next conservatism," a conservatism that remakes cities by purging their criminal underclasses. (After Katrina, Weyrich castigated New Orleans for "its welfare state and entitlement mentality… a prototype for Liberals" and questioned whether it should be rebuilt at all.)

Weyrich was the spiritual bridesmaid during the recent nuptials between the CNU's Andreas Duany and Harley Barbour, the sleazy former tobacco lobbyist and Republican chair, who became governor of Mississippi by wrapping himself in the Confederate battle flag.

Barbour, long King of K Street, is nobody's fool, and he is trying to extract as much long-term political and economic advantage from Katrina as possible. One of his declared priorities, for example, is bringing the casinos ashore into larger, more Las Vegas-like settings; another is to rapidly restore shoreline property values and squelch any debate about resettling the population on defensible higher ground (north of I-10, for example).

It was thus a rather brilliant stroke for Barbour to invite the CNU to help Mississippi rebuild its Gulf Coast "the right way." The first phase was the so-called "mega-charrette', 11-18 October, that brought 120 New Urbanists together with local officials and business groups to brainstorm strategies for the physical reconstruction of their communities.

Duany, as usual, whipped up a revivalistic fervor that must have been pleasing to Barbour and other descendants of the slave masters: "The architectural heritage of Mississippi is fabulous … really, really marvelous."

With Gone with the Wind as their apparent script, the CNU teams spent a frenzied week trying to show the locals how they could replace their dismal strip malls with glorious Greek Revival casinos and townhouses that would rival any of those that once existed on MGM's backlot. The entire exercise stayed firmly within the parameters of a gambling-driven 'heritage' economy with casinos "woven into the community fabric" and McMansions rebuilt on the beach.

In the end, however, what was important was not the actual content of the charrette, nor the genuine idealism of many participants, but simply the legitimacy and publicity that CNU gave to Barbour's agenda. Duany, who never misses an opportunity to push his panaceas to those in power, has foolishly made himself an accomplice to the Republicans' evil social experiment on the Gulf Coast.

Reprint queries can be directed to FeatureWell@featurewell.com.

Mike Davis is the author of, among other books, Monster at the Door: the Global Threat of Avian Influenza.