Older Buildings @ Brickell? (Atlantis: for sale, foreclosures, rentals)

[MelanieGermany]

Can anybody recommend renting or buying in the older Buildings in Brickell ( South ) like Atlantis and Condos near to? There are less foreclosures and short sales, does it mean this older buildings are more "healthy"?

Why are the building health indexes @ condoreports locked since a few months? Where can i get informations about Condos prior my arrival in the US that i can already start choosing what could be interessting for us or not?

Anybody living there?

Melanie

[r_k]

Hi Melanie,

I don't live in Brickell/Atlantis so can't give you first-hand information. I just wanted to comment on the rest of your message. Condoreports.com has locked some areas of their site because they want people to pay something and subscribe. Current rates seem to be $10 for a day, $25 for a week, or $39 for a month. Now I believe you can get all the information there yourself by other means, and the "building health index" is very arbitrary anyway, but depending on your interest and time you may consider it worthwhile to pay the $10 or $25.

Here are a few sites you'll find useful when looking for information:

http://gisims2.miamidade.gov/myhome/propmap.asp

Dade County assessor's page: a goldmine of information about ownership, past sales, taxes,size, assessed value, etc. You can get the information either for a specific unit, or every unit in a building. You can even get a picture of how many residents are owners vs renters.

http://www2.miami-dadeclerk.com/Public-Records/

Dade county clerk records search: Very useful to search by owner or building name. You can find a lot about pending and recent foreclosures, other lawsuits, liens, property records etc.

http://www.miamidade.gov/proptax/

Property tax records for Dade county.

In addition, look up realtor sites that let you search by building name and other criteria, so you can see what percentage of units are for sale (more percent for sale may mean something wrong), how long listed, etc. You can also get a good feel for HOA fees, pet and rental restrictions etc. A couple of good sites:

http://www.realtor.com/
http://www.zillow.com/
http://www.trulia.com/
http://www.miamicitydiggs.com/search...-condos-homes/

I like the following because you can see what has sold in the last month, or any recent month:

http://www.buybeach.com/recent_sales/

To see sales for past months, modify the following example which is for Mar 2010:

http://www.buybeach.com/recent_sales/data/con0310.htm

(so change con0310 to con1110 to see Nov. 2010)

I like the following blog for information on downtown/Brickell esp. There is a lot of useful info plus if you read any of the blog entries there is a lot of useful discussion (and some not useful) in the comments.

http://www.miamicondoinvestments.com/

Finally, you can find the oddest information by simply using Bing or Google and entering the address you're considering.

So if you take the time you can get all the information that islocked by condoreports.com yourself, and learn a lot more besides. However, if your time is short then paying the modest fee at condoreports.com may be worth it.

Good luck.

Edit: If buying, get a good lawyer. There are too many pitfalls otherwise.