Chance Encounters with Modern Architecture: Red Reef pavilion, Boca Raton, FL

"Chance Encounters with Modern Architecture" is a series of unexpected finds of modern architecture – or perhaps art – which caught my eye. It's about sharing delicious little morsels that pop up while on your merry way to get a snack or stock up at, say, Seaboard Wines.

Today: Red Reef park pavilion, Boca Raton, FL

On the west side of the Red Reef golf club – actually behind the west parking lot – I discovered this neatly designed pavilion (?) gazebo (?) right on the Intracoastal Waterway.

A single massive steel column supports the roof structure made of T-beams and tubes, which carries sheathing looking like corrugated pvc.

 

Note the two roof parts facing east, while the west-facing roof is "fractured", probably to ease the wind load. Neat, no?

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photos ©tckaiser

4 FL Supermarkets to offer rebates for "modern healthy eating"

In an inspired move to make the connection (any connection?) between modern life and healthy lifestyle - aka regular exercise and healthy eating – the non-profit South Florida Society for the Promotion of Modernist Architecture (SFSPMA) has teamed up with four supermarket chains to offer food discounts to its members.

Fresh Market, Whole Foods, Winn Dixie and the new Florida-entry Trader Joe's are onboard a deal offering SFPPMA members a 13 percent discount on storewide purchases.

Seal the deal: Trader Joe's Joe Saussenheimer, SMFAPPF's Bettyann Hepplethorpewithe, Whole Food's Santiago Manchego, Winn Dixie's Christina Carbonara and Fresh Market's junior CEO Jim-Bob Fresh (counterclockwise from left).

The trial phase will run from today through May 31st. After that, results will be tallied, and managers from the four chains as well as from SPSFAM will decide if to continue the cooperation on a permanent basis.

Noticeably absent from the discount offer are Publix Supermarkets, which lately has been under flak from consumers for their non-organic high price-policy aiming at their organic-food competitors Fresh Market and Whole Foods.

SMASPSF's trial voucher; see below for link to printable version

SFMASPF offers a limited amount of vouchers on a first-come-first-serve basis to non-members, supposedly to generate interest in the Society's work. To print a trial discount voucher, click here.

Please let me know if the voucher worked for you, and I will post the success rate during the trial run.

It Caught My Eye: Old and Young in Starnberg/Bavaria

Starnberg/Bavaria, county seat ca. 15mi/25km south of Munich, pop. ca. 22,500:

Embedded between the old church, houses nearly as old as the church itself and some nasty road construction, I caught a glimpse of a little white gem shining through.

No further detail is available, due to Germany's famously strict privacy laws. But it seems to have nice views over the lake... Have you been there?

The Current Housing Market in Southeast Florida

Time for an update for all you statistics-fans who are riveted by real estate minutiae (yes, all two of you).

I am not quite sure when, but I believe in July or August I got the first hunch that the market for single family homes was loosing steam.

Back then, a prospective seller had waited forever to list her house with me, to a point where she and I did not agree on a list price anymore. Another seller, a couple, was very realistic when a price pre-determined in May had to be corrected downward – with the result that their house sold within four days of becoming available and appraised properly. Which confirms again what I learned in a seminar a few years ago: once a house enters the proper selling price corridor, it should sell within approx. 45 days.

More on that in another post. Today's subject is market data.

As available inventory started to creep up in fall – the low point for the Tri-County area was April with 12,513 single family homes for sale – asking prices did not react until two months later, when the first noticeable drop came (median $408,150 to $401,650).

But the interesting part: selling prices increased until Christmas.

They rose from $255,333 in April to $265,000 in December, and only dropped again in January, to $250,917.

Psychologically perhaps to be explained by a lower "Disconnect" ratio – what sellers want and what buyers are willing to pay – heading from 166% in April down to 141% in December, back up to 151% in January.

So the Seller-Buyer-Disconnect, which I have been calculating since five years, again mirrors the overall market and proves to be a good trend indicator.

Judging from the current trend, it seems like at least for the first quarter, there is no upswing in prices – niche products and super-trendy areas like the Miami Bay perhaps excluded.

Consequences for sellers and buyers? I will talk about that next time. In the meantime, please do contact me with any questions you may have.

SE Florida single family homes market last three years: Inventory, Median asking prices and Median selling prices, Dec 2010 - Jan 2014. Break indicates end 2012. Source: Kaiser Assoc.

Loans for Modern Homes Are Possible

When you are working with modern architecture, one of the big problems can be the appraisal (and the loan) for a modernist home. 

To quote my friend George Smart from the non-profit North Carolina Modernist Homes:

Just mention a Modernist-house loan, and most bankers give a deer-in-the-headlights look that usually ends in time-consuming disappointment. 

The loan process can take many months, if it happens at all, and getting comped against non-Modernist neighborhood houses can yield unrealistically low appraisals.  

Home buyers in the North Carolina Triangle region, an area chock full of modern architecture (though not quite as many documented as in Southeast Florida counting over 2,400 mod residences) got a break: 

They now have a lender (Harrington Bank) that seems to have at least some understanding of the uniqueness of modern houses. Utilising the extensive architecture archives of NCMH, the bank states: 

Rather than restricting [three comparables] to just a few miles away, if there are no Modernist homes found nearby we’ll use two additional specifically Modernist homes up to 20 miles from the subject property. That means we can comp against previous Modernist homes almost anywhere in the Triangle. 

I count myself lucky enough to have recently worked with three (!) different Southeast Florida appraisers who know and appreciate modern architecture. Not one but three - that is a miracle in itself.

But if you are a South Florida lender – or know of one – who understands and works with modern architecture, and is willing to go the extra mile (or 20), please do drop me a note! Many thanks.

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*Raleigh - Durham - Chapel Hill. Full disclosure: no consideration of any type has been received in exchange for this blog post.

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Thank you to all of our clients and friends, and a blessed, abundant and prosperous 2014 to you!

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