Modern Naval Architecture (OT)

An interesting event happened at the Fort Lauderdale harbor this morning - unfortunately I missed it because I did not see the arrival times in the Miami Herald yesterday (the Sun-Sentinel didn't even bother to publish it): the world’s largest cruise ship, the Oasis of the Seas, pulled into Port Everglades around 8 am today (photo: on sea trial in Europe, 28 Sep 2009, ©Royal Caribbean) 

It passed by the Point of Americas, a tall condo right at the harbour entrance, which you can see in these videos from CBS (unedited and without sound, probably to post them quicker.) The first few minutes are a bit odd - zooming back and fourth - but then they show the ship pulling in, filmed from a park to the the south. You can see how it completely obstructs the condos at the harbour entrance:

http://cbs4.com/video/?id=86555@wfor.dayport.com
and
http://cbs4.com/video/?id=86556@wfor.dayport.com

The ship's itinerary for now, according to Royal Caribbean :
Nov. 13-18: Ship will be inspected by the U.S. Coast Guard and the U.S. Public Health Service to make sure it meets international safety and sanitary standards. The ship must pass the inspections to operate from a U.S. port.
Nov. 14: A towering special-purpose crane will install tropical plants in Central Park. This first-ever "park at sea" features 12,175 plants, 62 vines and 56 trees.
Nov. 19: A one-night cruise departs from Port Everglades with top Royal Caribbean executives, the media team from ABC's Good Morning America and other VIP passengers. Pop star Rihanna will perform a special concert that night from the AquaTheater stage.
Nov. 20: Good Morning America will broadcast live from Oasis from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m., offering an exclusive first look at the ship.
Nov. 20 and 22: Two two-night cruises to nowhere will preview the ship for company officials, media, travel agents and invited guests.
Nov. 29: One-night preview cruise and fundraiser supporting the local chapters of the United Way and American Red Cross. Royal Caribbean donated more than 1,000 cabins to the organizations to sell to the public.
Nov. 30: One-night preview cruise and fundraiser supporting the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Royal Caribbean donated 1,300 cabins to the organization to sell to the public. Highlights include the official christening and naming ceremony.
Dec. 1: First full-revenue voyage, a four-night trip to Labadee, Haiti.
Dec. 5: Inaugural departure on a regular seven-night itinerary, this one to the Eastern Caribbean, stopping at St. Thomas, St. Martin and Nassau, Bahamas.

So where is the real estate connection in this post? 

Easy: see the three tall condominiums on the north side of the harbour entrance in the videos? Especially the eastern-most, the Point of Americas, is a wonderful building. Its unique location, in my opinion the best condo location in Fort Lauderdale, offers an incredible vantage point from which you can view ships going out and coming in all day long. When I showed a SE corner condo in that building, I envisioned placing my desk overlooking the harbor entrance... and not getting any work done, ever. If you are interested, let me know.
 

Enjoy and happy Friday the 13th!

President Obama approves Extension + Expansion of Homebuyer Credit

On Friday, President Barack Obama signed the bill that includes the extension and expansion of the homebuyer tax credit. The credit will thus not expire on November 30, 2009, but continue in its extended form until 30 April 2010, with the following stipulations:

• $8,000 tax credit to first time homebuyers (Definition of a first-time homebuyer according to the IRS: you did not own a home in the past 3 years).
• The tax credit will actually be 10 percent of the home purchase price, up to $8,000.
• New: tax credit of up to $6,500 for existing homeowners looking to purchase a different primary residence. Conditions: primary residence “swap”, buyers must have owned their home for five consecutive of the previous eight years.
• New: income limits raised to $125,000 for single filers and $225,000 for joint filers (read: if you don’t file a US tax return, you don’t qualify – my apologies to my Canadian, South-American and European friends)
• Purchase agreements have to be signed by April 30, 2010 and closed by June 30, 2010.
• Purchase price of home must not exceed $800,000.

I consider the measure a necessary evil. It will certainly help the housing market, which is far from being healthy yet, especially in those areas that bubbled and burst, like Southern Florida.

Senate approves Homebuyers Credit Extension and Expansion

Last night, with a vote of 98-0, the United States Senate approved extending and expanding the homebuyer tax credit.

CONTENTS:

As previously mentioned:

• $8,000 tax credit to first time homebuyers (Definition of a first-time homebuyer according to the IRS: you did not own a home in the past 3 years).
• The tax credit will actually be 10 percent of the home purchase price, up to $8,000.
• New: tax credit of up to $6,500 for existing homeowners looking to purchase a different primary residence. Conditions: primary residence “swap”, buyers must have owned their home for five consecutive of the previous eight years.
• New: income limits raised to $125,000 for single filers and $225,000 for joint filers (read: if you don’t file a US tax return, you don’t qualify – my apologies to my Canadian, South-American and European friends)
• Purchase agreements have to be signed by April 30, 2010 and closed by June 30, 2010.
• Purchase price of home must not exceed $800,000.

NEXT STEP:

The United States House of Representatives will have to approve the language later this week, as early as today. If there are no further modifications made by the House, President Obama could see this bill on his desk by Friday.

Please do contact me if I can help you in any way or if you have further questions.

$8k Homebuyers Credit extension? Probable.

A major role in the improved US housing numbers - for resales, which are the major part of the housing market, as well as new construction - has been accredited to the $8,000 First Time Homebuyer Tax Credit. This credit was set to expire on Nov 30, 2009. Realtors supported the buying public strongly by lobbying hard for an extension of the credit, arguing that it helped stabilize the housing market, which in turn is a major economic factor.

Status: Last week, a major hurdle was taken when the Senate came to a - bipartisan! - agreement to extend the measure.

Content of the extension proposal: (1) to qualify, purchase agreements for first-time home-buyers have to be signed by April 30, 2010 and closed by June 30, 2010. Definition of a first-time homebuyer according to the IRS: you did not own a home in the past 3 years.
(2) The tax credit will be 10 percent of the home purchase price, up to $8,000.
(3) New: existing homeowners looking to purchase a different primary residence could be eligible for a tax credit of up to $6,500. Conditions: primary residence “swap”, buyers must have owned their home for five consecutive of the previous eight years, max. purchase price $800,000.
(4) New: qualifying income limits may be increased from $75,000 to $125,000 for singles, and from $150,000 to $225,000 for joint tax filers

Next step: The extension Bill must be reconciled between the House and Senate, and then voted on for final approval.

Next step for prospective homebuyers: Don’t snooze. Mortgage rates could rise, selection will fall. In all local market segments I observe, inventory is being gobbled up (nice segue to Thanksgiving?) from the low end of that segment. The longer you wait, the less selection you will have. And that includes not only condos and the “average” house, but also midcentury and contemporary modern homes.

OT: The Wiesn (aka Oktoberfest)

(OT means Off Topic: Being from Bavaria, I can't resist the subject. Of course no relation to modern architecture or South Florida real estate... this is where the "Plus" in the blog-title "Modern Plus" comes into play.)

In Bavaria, the Munich Oktoberfest is referred to as "Die Wiesn" (the meadows), after a large meadow of sorts it takes place on, the Theresienwiese. Watching over all the cavorting is the statue of...? You guessed right, Princess Theresa, who married Crown-Prince Ludwig I here in 1810.

Confused? But wait, there's more!

It doesn't start in October, but runs through the last two weeks in September and the first week of October. Which happens to be one of the nicest times of the year in Bavaria; a Bavarian Indian Summer of sorts.

To limit the confusion somewhat, the Munich newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, sz for short, published two very helpful guides. One is in English – The Wiesn-Alphabet, from Anbandeln (flirting) to Zelt (tent) – the other one (even better in my opinion) is in German: an interactive map of the beer-tents, explaining the characteristics of each tent and what's going on there - once you make it in, that is.

Find the glossary here: http://www.sueddeutsche.de/,tt6m1/muenchen/215/311138/text/ and the interactive map here: http://www.sueddeutsche.de/app/muenchen/oktoberfest/wiesn2008/wiesnplan/

Prost.

The Need to De-Renovate

As I also mentioned on http://www.modernsouthflorida.com, a lot of local mid-century modern homes are messed up and in need of de-renovation. They suffer from what could also be called a cob-job: like kernels on a cob, everybody subtracts, changes or adds piece by piece, without concept or longterm vision.

Botched renovations with wrong colors, wrong materials, wrong shapes, wrong dimensions... the list for possibilities to go astray is long. And people invent new ones all the time.

A typical example is this midcentury-modernist 2/2 in Pompano Beach:




Do you see the problem I have with the front door?

Another good example is a listing in the Victoria Park section of Fort Lauderdale, a 2/1 design by John Crowell on a corner lot with room to expand. It has good details, including clerestory windows and a real coral wall, but did someone ever ruin the appearance of that house! It used to be pale yellow, not quite convincing but not totally offensive either, if you overlooked the front door. But at some point during the long and fruitless listing period with several Realtors over several years, someone decided that dark-brown would be a much better color to match that red front door with the fake lead-glass insert. And so they painted away. Now it looks like a sorry pile of... of... I don’t know.

It needs a buyer with a vision. Or someone with enough taste to buy it and hire someone with a vision, so it can be brought back to modernist life.

Any takers?

Modern Architecture in North Carolina

My wife and I returned from a long weekend in North Carolina, and we are impressed.

There is an incredible trove of modern architecture in NC's Triangle region (see article below), which I was completely unaware about. Plus great BBQ, people so friendly it made my wife and I wonder why they are the way they are, nice vineyards (we bought RayLen again; expecially the 2006 Cab exceeded our expecations) and great roads for motorcycle riding. I suppose I'm just so easy to please.

Staying in Winston-Salem with close friends who are also relatives, we twice drove 1.5h over to Raleigh. One day we had the good fortune to speak with two extremely hospitable and friendly realtor colleagues, Anne Hughes and Roger Kenny of Re/Max Integrity in Cary, who gave us great insights into the Cary/Raleigh housing market.

Another day we attended a workshop on preservation easements, under the perspective how they could be used to preserve modern architecture. Afterwards we had lunch with the organiser of the event, George Smart, the founder of Triangle Modernist Houses. TMH is a non-profit organisation which aims to protect and promote modern homes in the Triangle region of North Carolina, an area formed by the cities Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill (the mystical city "Raleigh-Durham" seems to be the airport's fault, which is called RDU or Raleigh-Durham). A nice piece in the NYT on the area: http://travel.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/travel/14hours.html

George Smart and TMH leave me amazed and speechless. These folks - George, the board, the advisory council and the volunteers at TMH - have their act together, big time. They research, they find, they photograph, they list, they run the website, they do house tours and now field trips. Incredible. In comparison, I feel rather lonely in SE Florida with my passion, sometimes wondering if there are any other like-minded modernist fools like me bumbling about.

So, bumbling fools, please speak up!