Hey Now, Who’s Your All-Star?

Baseball has done it, and now Real Estate Florida is doing it, too. Now’s your chance to nominate the state’s Commercial Broker All-Stars.

In our August/September issue, we will spotlight some of the Sunshine State’s leading brokers. If you have someone in mind who has outperformed in sales or leasing over the past year, you can nominate that person through our simple and convenient online form. (You can even nominate yourself; it’s been done before.)

Not Taking Summer Off

Two executives with Colliers Abood Wood-Fay in Miami are giving back to the community. John Crotty hosts a basketball camp, while Steve Wasserman takes a group of youngsters to the nation’s capital.

Crotty, senior vice president and partner of Colliers Abood Wood-Fay who spent 11 years playing in the NBA, hosts his annual basketball camp in Coral Gables where children learn the fundamentals of the game. A standout at the University of Virginia, Crotty stays involved in hoops as an analyst on Miami Heat radio broadcasts.

A Few Notes Before the Fourth

Before I take off for a three-day Fourth of July weekend of fireworks, barbecue and guitar-pickin’, please allow me to clean off my desk a bit:

• Florida’s hotels always find a way to fill up for special occasions, no matter how bad the economy gets. A report from the Miami Herald shows few rooms remain available heading into this weekend, and those will likely be taken up by locals at the last minute.

If you had any hopes against crowded beaches and theme parks because of the recession, forget about it. People still find a way to dig into their savings for family fun, allowing personal sanity to overrule finances. And people still love Florida, but they love discounted pricing on rooms even more.

Waiting for the Next Big Deal

While getting ready for the long Independence Day weekend, I got caught up on a little industry-related reading and saw this article from Gulf Coast Business Review that says commercial real estate sales volume between Tampa and Naples has fallen 82% from last year. Now, before you say “no kidding, Chester” or any variation thereof (which I admit was my initial reaction), it’s important to note why deal velocity has fallen off so much.

Turns out it has little to do with the continued frozen capital (really, in this heat?) and more to do with the continuing bid-ask gap between eager buyers and reluctant sellers. Kyle Burd with Orlando-based Eola Capital even remarked that a deal got spiked over as little as a 2% difference. Somebody at the table would have covered that out of pocket back in the crazy money days.

Digging Deep to Park Downtown

Florida’s largest office markets may not have the most expensive parking in the US, but it sure seems that way sometimes. A new report by Colliers International puts the daily median rate here at $15 and up, except Jacksonville where it’s just under $9.

There are more variables in the monthly rates, which range from $53 in Fort Lauderdale (third least-expensive market nationwide) to $133 in Tampa. Colliers measured the monthly median in Miami at $134.12, though some office landlords question that figure.

Are Condo Sales Finally Bouncing?

After months of falling prices, residential condominium sales appear to have headed back up in May. The Orlando-based Florida Association of Realtors reports that statewide prices for existing condos increased 6.4% last month, averaging $113,400, while the number of units sold jumped 21% over the year to 4,839.

It isn’t time to start popping corks and setting off fireworks just yet. Condo prices are still down 38% from last May, when the state average was $181,700. But they are finally headed back upward, and that’s something in a market where anything will do.

Now It’s Called Amendment 4

Gov. Charlie Crist’s hesitant decision to sign Senate Bill 360 into law may have inadvertently put the Florida Hometown Democracy proposal on a fast track toward passage next year. The Florida Supreme Court last week certified the longtime movement’s efforts to garner the required number of signatures to put it on the 2010 general election ballot, and now Secretary of State Kurt Browning has given it a new name: Amendment 4.

Now the fight is really on after three previous failed attempts to put Hometown Democracy on the ballot in 2004, ’06 and ’08. Opponents of the measure, also nicknamed “Vote on Everything,” range from Naiop to the Florida Chamber of Commerce.

Waiting for 10%? We’re There

It hurts to report news like this, but the Florida Agency for Workforce Innovation released its latest unemployment stats Friday and, as was expected soon enough, we have topped the 10% mark. That’s 943,000 of our neighbors out of work by last month’s count.

Palm Coast had the state’s highest metropolitan jobless rate in May at 14.4%. Among major metros, Tampa-St. Petersburg reached 10.6%, Orlando matched the statewide average at 10.2%, Jacksonville hit 9.7% and Miami-Fort Lauderdale was 9.4%. More details can be found at the FAWI Web site.

(Related: Robert Knakal’s StreetWise blog)

New Solution to Golf Course Sales

With the US Open on golfers’ minds this week, it seems a good time to talk about how difficult it is to sell golf courses. Marcus & Millichap thinks it has a pretty good solution.

Steven Ekovich, director of the firm’s National Golf Group based in Tampa, says he wants to bring efficiencies to an inefficient market, bringing a new underwriting standard to golf course brokerage and valuation. Marketing packages run between 40-50 pages, versus the usual two or three, and include information such as course financials, pro forma predictions, area demographics and comparables of other courses for sale.

Too Many Rooms at the Inn?

There’s no question that fewer people are coming to Florida for vacations and holidays this summer. Yet new hotels are still unlocking rooms—and there are more to come.

At least five hotels are scheduled to open in Jacksonville between now and Labor Day, even though hotel occupancy is down 13% so far this year, according to a report in the Jacksonville Business Journal. One developer there says the concept of “build it and they will come” no longer works.