A PEEK AT FALL HERE IN BREVARD

Photo taken about three miles inland last year.

HURRICANE ISAAC HEADING WEST

NEIL ARMSTRONG DIES AT 82

 

 

Died of heart failure.

 

 

For one spellbinding week 43 summers ago, Neil Armstrong did something that once seemed unimaginable. Since then, he lived his life in a way that now seems improbable

 

 

 

COULD BE OUR FIRST HURRICANE

Emergency managers are urging residents to prepare for what could be the first hurricane to impact Brevard in nearly seven years.

GET OUT AND VOTE !!!

REAL ESTATE NEWS YOU CAN USE . . .

If you can pull it off, buy a house

Townhomes are good investments

NEW YORK – Investment opinions are like, um, noses: Everyone has one. Buy stocks, sell bonds? Go long steel and short copper? Buy sheep, sell deer?

It’s pretty easy to see both sides of an investment argument. But it’s hard to argue against buying a house now, assuming you can get a loan.

The housing cycle is a long one, in part because buying a house moves at a glacial pace, at least compared with the time it takes to buy a stock or bond. If you’re not pre-approved for a mortgage, you have to submit to a credit check, which, these days, is only slightly less intrusive than a CIA background check. You have to get the home inspected. You have to figure out the various fees your bank charges, including the one marked “Just because we can.”

How long is a housing cycle? Pretty long. A relatively modest housing bubble, by today’s standards, occurred in Boston in the late 1980s. Average home prices, adjusted for inflation, hit $310,000 in October 1987. Home prices didn’t hit that level again until May of 2000. Someone who bought at the high had a long wait to get even – particularly in light of the broker’s commission.

Home prices bottomed, however, in March 1993 – roughly six years after the top. History doesn’t repeat itself precisely, but it’s interesting to note that the top of the last housing bubble was six years ago, in 2006.

Why be bullish on housing?

Prices. You can always buy low and watch prices go lower. But by many measures, home prices are still cheap. The median single-family home price – half higher, half lower – hit its nadir in January, dropping to $154,600, the lowest since October 2001, according to the National Association of Realtors. That’s down from a high of $230,900 in July 2006.

Existing-home prices rose in June to a median $190,100, up 8 percent from June 2011. Those are still 2003 levels.

Supply. The good news is that the enormous supply on the market is shrinking. It takes a wearisome amount of time for supply to shrink, in part because there are people who have wanted to sell their homes for many years, but haven’t been able to get the price they want. As prices rise, more homes come on the market.

Nevertheless, Ned Davis Research, a respected institutional research firm, estimates that excess supply of houses on the market should be eliminated by the end of 2013. When excess supply dries up, people start building more new houses, which has the virtuous effect of reducing the unemployment rate and increasing the economy generally.

Mortgage rates. The average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage rate is 3.59 percent, according to mortgage giant Freddie Mac. That’s above the all-time low of 3.49 percent the week of July 26, but close enough. It’s conceivable that at some point in the next 30 years, your interest rate would be less than the rate of inflation.

Assuming you financed 80 percent of the median single-family home, or $152,080, your mortgage payment would be about $691, excluding taxes and other irritations. About $5,589 of your first year’s payments would be tax-deductible mortgage interest.

Thanks mainly to low home prices and interest rates, the NAR’s housing affordability index rose to its highest level on record. (The higher the index, the more affordable the average home. The index also takes into account average family income, which has been falling since 2008.)

What could go wrong? All sorts of things. You may not be able get a loan. Bankers are insisting on checking things that seemed far too troublesome during the housing bubble, like whether you have a decent credit rating, a down payment, or a job.

The other problem is that houses are leveraged investments – that is, you borrow money to buy them. Let’s consider the example above, where someone buys a $190,100 house and finances $152,080.

Your investment is $38,020. Let’s say that the worst happens: Home prices fall, and you have to sell the house for $175,000.

Unfortunately, the bank won’t split the loss with you. You’ll get back $22,920 from the sale, and wave goodbye to $15,100 of your downpayment. That’s a 40 percent loss, even though your house has fallen 8 percent in value.

There are other risks with homeownership, ranging from termites to ghosts in the hall closet. But if you’re planning to live in your home for a long time, you have the money, and you can get financing, it’s a fine time to buy.

MORE DANCING GIRLS ON THE BEACH?

The Site is a Natural for Commercial Real Estate

COCOA BEACH — Henry Minneboo fears that another Cheaters Gentlemen’s Club could open near the State Road A1A split — directly across the street from the $35 million Magnolia Bay Condominiums.

Minneboo chairs Brevard County’s Planning & Zoning Board, which has debated the fate of a 1.4-acre vacant lot twice this month. The land is located between Chevron and Extra Space Storage, bordering 20th Street South in an unincorporated area just south of Cocoa Beach.

Grass and scattered palm trees dot the lot, which is divided into four parcels. Back in February 2005, during the real estate boom, the group of landowners secured a “binding development plan” limiting construction to 13 luxury townhomes.

But the housing market collapse has “hogtied” their options, landowner Carl Uvaro said. Only commercial-minded buyers have expressed interest the past two years, and the owners want to drop their binding plan and pursue commercial construction.

However, the Planning & Zoning Board — which is an advisory committee — recommended denying the move by a 4-3 vote. The Brevard County Commission will make a final decision Aug. 2.

Al Dolenshek is vice president of the Magnolia Bay Condominium Association. He expressed concern about zoning changes to the board.

“(Our residents) all have been told that it was planned for a townhouse project, and it was one of the reasons that they bought in. They bought expensive products. Our products range from $400,000 up to $800,000,” Dolenshek said.

Les Petrie, a Magnolia Bay resident, concurred that commercial zoning is too vague. “It could mean anything. It could mean anything from a strip joint to a real high-end restaurant, which wouldn’t be all bad. It could also mean something of multi-levels, which we’re also very concerned about,” Petrie said.

After that July 9 meeting, Uvaro and his partners met with Magnolia Bay residents and struck a compromise: The landowners would pursue a less-intensive “neighborhood retail” commercial-zoning designation that would omit some options, such as large gas stations. But last week, the board still recommended denial.

Uvaro said his group has no set plan for the land — they simply want to sell the land to a developer. He said the Planning & Zoning Board is trying to exert too much heavy-handed control over the property. He also took exception to Minneboo’s comment about Cheaters, saying Brevard officials would never allow strip-club construction at that location.

The property carried a conditional-use permit for a miniature golf course from September 1974 through October 2002, zoning records show.

Contact Neale at 321-242-3638
or rneale@floridatoday.com.

RIDE SALLY RIDE

First American Woman in Space Dies at 61

By Victor M Adamus

She was family to us on the Space Coast.  I remember her first launch with tee shirts sold out saying Ride Sally Ride from the popular song.  Celebrities from all over came to see America’s first women astronaut launch into space, the unknown known.  Our celebrations lasted three days on the beach.  It was, for us, another epic adventure.  Sally Ride – 1951-2012.

RIP Sally Ride

LOS ANGELES—Space used to be a man's world. Then came Sally Ride, who blazed a cosmic trail for U.S. women into orbit. With a pitch perfect name out of a pop song refrain, she joined the select club of American space heroes the public knew by heart: Shepard, Glenn, Armstrong and Aldrin.

Ride, the first American woman in orbit, died Monday at her home in the San Diego community of La Jolla at age 61. The cause was pancreatic cancer, an illness she had for 17 months, according to her company, Sally Ride Science.

Ride rode into space on the space shuttle Challenger on June 18, 1983, when she was 32. Since then, 42 other American women flew in space.

"Sally was a national hero and a powerful role model. She inspired generations of young girls to reach for the stars," President Barack Obama said in a statement.

When shuttles started flying frequently with crews of six or seven, astronauts became plentiful and anonymous. Not Ride.

"People around the world still recognize her name as the first American woman in space, and she took that title seriously even after departing NASA," Eileen Collins, the first female space shuttle commander, said in a statement. "She never sought media attention for herself, but rather focused on doing her normally outstanding job."

When Ride first launched into space, feminist icons such as Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda were at Kennedy Space Center and many wore T-shirts alluding to the pop song with the refrain of the same name: "Ride, Sally Ride."

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, a former astronaut, said Ride "broke barriers with grace and professionalism -- and literally changed the face of America's space program."

"The nation has lost one of its finest leaders, teachers and explorers," he said in a statement.

Ride was a physicist, writer of five science books for children and president of her own company, which motivates youngsters to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and math. She had also been a professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego.

In 1978, NASA included women in the astronaut corps, selecting Ride and five other women to join the club, which had been dominated by male military test pilots. Ride beat out fellow astronaut candidates to be the first American female in space. Her first flight came two decades after the Soviets sent a woman into space. A second Soviet woman flew in space in 1982.

"On launch day, there was so much excitement and so much happening around us in crew quarters, even on the way to the launch pad," Ride recalled in a NASA interview for the 25th anniversary of her flight in 2008. "I didn't really think about it that much at the time -- but I came to appreciate what an honor it was to be selected to be the first to get a chance to go into space."

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NEWS YOU CAN USE

Sad for all age groups but Seniors
are the least likely to bounce back

WASHINGTON (AP)  More than 1.5 million older Americans already have lost their homes, with millions more at risk as the national housing crisis takes its toll on those who are among the worst positioned to weather the storm, a new AARP report says.

Older African Americans and Hispanics are the hardest hit.

“The Great Recession has been brutal for many older Americans,” said Debra Whitman, AARP’s policy chief. “This shows that homeownership doesn’t guarantee financial security later in life.”

Even working two jobs hasn’t been enough to allow Jewel Lewis-Hall, 57, to make her monthly mortgage payments on time. Her husband has made little money since being laid off from his job at a farmer’s market, and Lewis-Hall said her salary as a school cook falls short of what she needs to make the payments on her home in Washington.

Lewis-Hall and her husband have been making their payments late for about a year, but panic didn’t set in until recently, when the word “foreclosure” showed up in a letter from the bank.

“You’re used to living a certain way, but one thing leads to another,” Lewis-Hall said. “It’s not like I have a new car or anything. I’m driving one from 1991.”

According to AARP:

• About 600,000 people who are 50 years or older are in foreclosure.

• About 625,000 in the same age group are at least three months behind on their mortgages.

• About 3.5 million – 16 percent of older homeowners – are underwater, meaning their home values have gone down and they now owe more than their homes are worth.

AARP said that over the past five years, the proportion of loans held by older Americans that are seriously delinquent jumped by more than 450 percent.

Homeowners younger than 50 have a higher rate of serious delinquency than their older counterparts. But the rate is increasing at a faster pace for older Americans than for younger ones, according to AARP’s analysis of more than 17 million mortgages.

Americans who are 50 or older are hard-pressed to recover from the collapse of the housing market that started in 2006 and was compounded by the recession that started in 2007. Eight in 10 of them own homes, but many live on fixed incomes, have little savings or have already burned through much of their retirement savings. They also have fewer working years left to build back what they may have lost.

NAR/AP