Odds and Ends... (This is outdated material)
Prince Resort at Cherry Grove Pier is soon to be entering Phase 2, which will be ocean-view condos across the street from the towers. For those who found the oceanfront towers a little too pricey, this will be your opportunity to purchase one for a bit less.
Contact David O'Connell at 843-455-5500 for more information, or visit the NEW website for Myrtle Beach Preconstruction .
There are still a few units available at Bayview Resort in downtown Myrtle Beach, and a handful of the beautiful Ocean Winds development that will be located in Windy Hill, North Myrtle Beach. This area is so beautiful...it will make quite a wonderful vacation retreat.
The guys at Ocean Front Real Estate are soon going to be offering condos in the Virgin Islands! Stay tuned for more information on that, or call Steve McIntosh at 843-663-1101 for more information.
The condos for the shaggers in Ocean Drive, known as "H's" sold like wild fire. They are soon to break ground, but may have some re-sells available. Contact Jack Springs at Condo-World if interested in the latest news there.
There seems to be NO slowdown in the new preconstruction going on everywhere. Investors are still snapping them up, and builders are still building. I've heard that different condos are going up as much as $100,000 from first reservations to 2nd phase. It certainly appears to be an almost fool-proof investment.
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
Sunday, March 20, 2005
The fine art of enjoying 'new' Myrtle Beach
By BILL HENDRICK-COX NEWS SERVICE
The Palm Beach Post
We headed east, thinking the worst.
We expected kitsch — the same kind of tawdry, tacky, neon-flashing gaudiness that over the years has earned Myrtle Beach a reputation as a Wal-Mart Riviera, a mecca for hopeful teens on the make.
Well, that Myrtle still exists. But city fathers and business leaders have spent hundreds of millions of dollars over the past decade to rejuvenate the place. Turns out, there was more than we could possibly do in three days --- way, way more.
Of course, you can relax on the fine-sand white beaches, where the ocean splashes up to within 40 yards of an endless row of new or renovated high-rise hotels. But the fun has only begun when you tire of the sun.
Sure, there are still rickety roller coasters, sticky-floored honky-tonks, barking carnies, throngs of students and beached denizens distinguishable from pilot whales only by sunglasses.
But now there's more — even fine art — and in a town where art once meant T-shirts emblazoned with images of naked women.
Townies tipped us to the Collectors Cafe & Gallery, just a few miles north of the cheesy Pavilion amusement park, a European-style eatery full of huge paintings ranging in style from realism to impressionism to surrealism. And for the even more serious-minded, there's the Franklin G. Burroughs-Simeon B. Chapin Art Museum.
Not that we're saying Myrtle Beach is about to contend with New York as a cultural mecca, or with resorts like Hilton Head for panache. But that if you shortchange the town, you're only shortchanging your potential fun.
After checking into our beachfront hotel, the Four Points Sheraton Resort a couple miles south of the Pavilion, we gazed at the azure, roiling sea a few moments and set out to find the new Myrtle.
It didn't take long. About a mile west of the Pavilion we found a new 350-acre complex called Broadway at the Beach, made up of more than 100 upscale specialty shops, paddle boats plying a huge man-made lake, all kinds of restaurants and nightclubs, and amazing amusements.
We stopped first at the 26-acre NASCAR SpeedPark. It has seven racetracks where kids, and as many adults, zip around challenging courses in everything from go-carts to mini-cars.
I then spotted a rock-climbing wall, where the musclebound operator all but dared me to give it a try. I did, reluctantly, even though my arms look more like Olive Oyl's.
I more or less conquered my Everest, climbing nearly to the top before jumping off — hoping all the while that he wasn't fibbing about the safety harness. "That was fun," I lied, huffing and puffing.
Next: the $40 million Ripley's Aquarium, also located at Broadway. Welcome to what's billed as the world's largest underwater tunnel, with 4-inch acrylic glass holding back 6 million pounds of water. It contains all manner of colorful fish, eels, piranhas, sea horses and the largest display of sharks on the East Coast, some 9 feet long. The glass looks paper thin, and you can stare into the cold black eyes of the sharks from only a few inches away.
The designers were smart enough to install a moving 330-foot gliding sidewalk to keep kids and adults moving at a steady pace, oohing and aahing along the way.
We hadn't even left Broadway at the Beach, and I was already beginning to see what Chamber of Commerce spokesman Stephen Greene meant when he boasted, "Myrtle Beach now is more like an a la carte buffet."
That buffet includes heaping helpings of golf (111 full-size and 47 miniature courses) and country music (11 giant theaters).
Last year, the real Myrtle Beach golf courses tallied half a million tee times. Still, most are nicely kept up, with well-clipped greens and fairways. That was certainly the case at the Augusta National-like Granddaddy Pine Lakes International Country Club, which offers — for those who like stylin' and profilin' on the links — yellow Rolls-Royce golf carts.
Golf's about the only thing that attracts Atlantans, Greene laments, because, "We just can't convince people down there that we've changed."
Alas, some things haven't changed.
There's bumper-to-bumper traffic from about 11 a.m. to after midnight on Ocean Boulevard, the main drag. Near the Pavilion, and another carnival-like park called Family Kingdom, college students and teens in packed cars keep alive the Myrtle Beach tradition of cruising at about 4 mph.
Aggravation soon sets in, but when your goal is to see as much as possible, there's little time to chill. About the only time we spent on our oceanfront deck was when we opened the sliding glass door at night so we could hear the pounding waves.
Pounding waves? Oh, did we forget to mention the beach? That may be because we managed to spend only 45 minutes in three days with our toes touching sand.
Instead, we were exploring spots such as Brookgreen Gardens, 16 miles south, because after a day of hustling, we needed to catch our breath and literally smell the roses.
It's a gorgeous, 9,170-acre green space full of giant Spanish moss-draped oaks. Much more than a park, Brookgreen is loaded with sculpture, boasting 811 stunning bronzes, all by American artists, including Daniel Chester French and Frederic Remington.
On the prowl for more amusements, we passed Coastal Federal Field, home of the Myrtle Beach Pelicans, the Atlanta Braves' Class A farm team. Now, who can resist seeing future Braves who are still wet behind the ears? The cheery new $20 million, 5,300-seat stadium is attractive, intimate and exciting.
From a baseball club to a nightclub — our next stop, Crocodile Rock's Dueling Pianos, was right across the street at Broadway at the Beach. Here, in front of a packed house, two piano men faced each other and pounded out oldies (between jokes that had the giddy audience rolling).
Our encore was a stop at Froggy Bottomz nearby, for a little blues and booze. The place was full of aging boomers, as well as college kids, so for the first time in a while we didn't feel as ancient as a Giganotosaurus, the species of giant meat-eating dinosaur headed next month to the Fernbank Museum of Natural History.
We also made it by the House of Blues at Barefoot Landing, sort of a downscale version of Broadway at the Beach, where Fiona Apple recently packed 'em in.
Country music's not our thing, but we could hardly avoid it here: Myrtle is developing a reputation as the Branson, Mo., of the East. Some of the ornate palaces occasionally feature big names, and others, like the Carolina Opry, put on spiffy variety shows.
If you loved Lawrence Welk and "Hee-Haw," you might like the Carolina. Its revue includes a mixture of Broadway show tunes, bluegrass music, patriotic anthems and gags that, well, just might make you gag.
On paper, it wouldn't seem to go together at all. But in ever-changing Myrtle Beach, it worked just dandy — beauty in the mix of a little bit of everything.
The Palm Beach Post
We headed east, thinking the worst.
We expected kitsch — the same kind of tawdry, tacky, neon-flashing gaudiness that over the years has earned Myrtle Beach a reputation as a Wal-Mart Riviera, a mecca for hopeful teens on the make.
Well, that Myrtle still exists. But city fathers and business leaders have spent hundreds of millions of dollars over the past decade to rejuvenate the place. Turns out, there was more than we could possibly do in three days --- way, way more.
Of course, you can relax on the fine-sand white beaches, where the ocean splashes up to within 40 yards of an endless row of new or renovated high-rise hotels. But the fun has only begun when you tire of the sun.
Sure, there are still rickety roller coasters, sticky-floored honky-tonks, barking carnies, throngs of students and beached denizens distinguishable from pilot whales only by sunglasses.
But now there's more — even fine art — and in a town where art once meant T-shirts emblazoned with images of naked women.
Townies tipped us to the Collectors Cafe & Gallery, just a few miles north of the cheesy Pavilion amusement park, a European-style eatery full of huge paintings ranging in style from realism to impressionism to surrealism. And for the even more serious-minded, there's the Franklin G. Burroughs-Simeon B. Chapin Art Museum.
Not that we're saying Myrtle Beach is about to contend with New York as a cultural mecca, or with resorts like Hilton Head for panache. But that if you shortchange the town, you're only shortchanging your potential fun.
After checking into our beachfront hotel, the Four Points Sheraton Resort a couple miles south of the Pavilion, we gazed at the azure, roiling sea a few moments and set out to find the new Myrtle.
It didn't take long. About a mile west of the Pavilion we found a new 350-acre complex called Broadway at the Beach, made up of more than 100 upscale specialty shops, paddle boats plying a huge man-made lake, all kinds of restaurants and nightclubs, and amazing amusements.
We stopped first at the 26-acre NASCAR SpeedPark. It has seven racetracks where kids, and as many adults, zip around challenging courses in everything from go-carts to mini-cars.
I then spotted a rock-climbing wall, where the musclebound operator all but dared me to give it a try. I did, reluctantly, even though my arms look more like Olive Oyl's.
I more or less conquered my Everest, climbing nearly to the top before jumping off — hoping all the while that he wasn't fibbing about the safety harness. "That was fun," I lied, huffing and puffing.
Next: the $40 million Ripley's Aquarium, also located at Broadway. Welcome to what's billed as the world's largest underwater tunnel, with 4-inch acrylic glass holding back 6 million pounds of water. It contains all manner of colorful fish, eels, piranhas, sea horses and the largest display of sharks on the East Coast, some 9 feet long. The glass looks paper thin, and you can stare into the cold black eyes of the sharks from only a few inches away.
The designers were smart enough to install a moving 330-foot gliding sidewalk to keep kids and adults moving at a steady pace, oohing and aahing along the way.
We hadn't even left Broadway at the Beach, and I was already beginning to see what Chamber of Commerce spokesman Stephen Greene meant when he boasted, "Myrtle Beach now is more like an a la carte buffet."
That buffet includes heaping helpings of golf (111 full-size and 47 miniature courses) and country music (11 giant theaters).
Last year, the real Myrtle Beach golf courses tallied half a million tee times. Still, most are nicely kept up, with well-clipped greens and fairways. That was certainly the case at the Augusta National-like Granddaddy Pine Lakes International Country Club, which offers — for those who like stylin' and profilin' on the links — yellow Rolls-Royce golf carts.
Golf's about the only thing that attracts Atlantans, Greene laments, because, "We just can't convince people down there that we've changed."
Alas, some things haven't changed.
There's bumper-to-bumper traffic from about 11 a.m. to after midnight on Ocean Boulevard, the main drag. Near the Pavilion, and another carnival-like park called Family Kingdom, college students and teens in packed cars keep alive the Myrtle Beach tradition of cruising at about 4 mph.
Aggravation soon sets in, but when your goal is to see as much as possible, there's little time to chill. About the only time we spent on our oceanfront deck was when we opened the sliding glass door at night so we could hear the pounding waves.
Pounding waves? Oh, did we forget to mention the beach? That may be because we managed to spend only 45 minutes in three days with our toes touching sand.
Instead, we were exploring spots such as Brookgreen Gardens, 16 miles south, because after a day of hustling, we needed to catch our breath and literally smell the roses.
It's a gorgeous, 9,170-acre green space full of giant Spanish moss-draped oaks. Much more than a park, Brookgreen is loaded with sculpture, boasting 811 stunning bronzes, all by American artists, including Daniel Chester French and Frederic Remington.
On the prowl for more amusements, we passed Coastal Federal Field, home of the Myrtle Beach Pelicans, the Atlanta Braves' Class A farm team. Now, who can resist seeing future Braves who are still wet behind the ears? The cheery new $20 million, 5,300-seat stadium is attractive, intimate and exciting.
From a baseball club to a nightclub — our next stop, Crocodile Rock's Dueling Pianos, was right across the street at Broadway at the Beach. Here, in front of a packed house, two piano men faced each other and pounded out oldies (between jokes that had the giddy audience rolling).
Our encore was a stop at Froggy Bottomz nearby, for a little blues and booze. The place was full of aging boomers, as well as college kids, so for the first time in a while we didn't feel as ancient as a Giganotosaurus, the species of giant meat-eating dinosaur headed next month to the Fernbank Museum of Natural History.
We also made it by the House of Blues at Barefoot Landing, sort of a downscale version of Broadway at the Beach, where Fiona Apple recently packed 'em in.
Country music's not our thing, but we could hardly avoid it here: Myrtle is developing a reputation as the Branson, Mo., of the East. Some of the ornate palaces occasionally feature big names, and others, like the Carolina Opry, put on spiffy variety shows.
If you loved Lawrence Welk and "Hee-Haw," you might like the Carolina. Its revue includes a mixture of Broadway show tunes, bluegrass music, patriotic anthems and gags that, well, just might make you gag.
On paper, it wouldn't seem to go together at all. But in ever-changing Myrtle Beach, it worked just dandy — beauty in the mix of a little bit of everything.
Friday, March 4, 2005
Preconstruction vs. Resale, which Second Home Option Fits Your Needs? by Marcus Truett
Thu Mar 3, 7:00 AM ET
Why some people buy preconstruction, and reap the benefits, and why others prefer their second homes with an already cultivated rental stream.
(PRWEB) March 3, 2005 -- Most investors realize that the best time to buy is when the prices are low, and sell when high, and for this reason, first release preconstruction pricing is the "holy grail" of second home investors. With builders in the Disney area typically increasing their prices by $5,000 every ten homes, the lucky few who use buyer"s agents, such as http://www.mbthomes.com , to lock in the first one or two releases, ensure an almost forced equity rise during the construction of their property. For example: Emerald Island, a resort community a short distance from Disney World, releases their four bedroom house May 2003, at $226,900. The same property was selling for $378,900, in October 2004. This property showed a 39% increase on the total value of the property. If you assume the buyers had put 10% down, they would have leveraged $25,000, for a net gain of $152,000. This sort of return, although not typical, shows the potential for equity growth inherent with preconstruction pricing, so the obvious question is: Why doesn"t everyone buy preconstruction?
To answer this I will need you to imagine buying a product for $350,000, but I cannot show you a picture of it. I cannot guarantee you will make money with it, and I can"t guarantee it will sell immediately if you do not want it anymore. Sounds like a great deal doesn"t it? This is just an example of the obstacles to marketing preconstruction. Although there are many examples of success stories in the Orlando area with preconstruction, people still like to see the "bricks and mortar". Many still have images of the swamp land sales in the middle of the last century, and Florida real estate will always live with that stigma.
Even if the trust issue is not a factor, most buyers will rent out their property to vacationers visiting area attractions, and depending on the build out of the community, your house could have construction vehicles in close proximity, making your rental home less desirable for the first few months after closing. This coupled with the ability to buy an existing furnished home and keep any future bookings that the property owner has, allows buyers to essentially buy a turn-key second home replete with income source, which they can fly down and see before closing.
If all the buyers wanted preconstruction, who would they sell their homes to, and make the profit they seek? If all the buyers wanted completed houses, how would the builders generate income to build the houses? Thank goodness there is still a good mix of the two, and as long as people visit Disney, there will be a booming second home market in Kissimmee & Orlando.
For more information on either re-sales or preconstruction please visit http://www.mbthomes.com .
# # #
RONALD P BRESSAN REAL ESTATE Marcus Truett 407-922-4161
Why some people buy preconstruction, and reap the benefits, and why others prefer their second homes with an already cultivated rental stream.
(PRWEB) March 3, 2005 -- Most investors realize that the best time to buy is when the prices are low, and sell when high, and for this reason, first release preconstruction pricing is the "holy grail" of second home investors. With builders in the Disney area typically increasing their prices by $5,000 every ten homes, the lucky few who use buyer"s agents, such as http://www.mbthomes.com , to lock in the first one or two releases, ensure an almost forced equity rise during the construction of their property. For example: Emerald Island, a resort community a short distance from Disney World, releases their four bedroom house May 2003, at $226,900. The same property was selling for $378,900, in October 2004. This property showed a 39% increase on the total value of the property. If you assume the buyers had put 10% down, they would have leveraged $25,000, for a net gain of $152,000. This sort of return, although not typical, shows the potential for equity growth inherent with preconstruction pricing, so the obvious question is: Why doesn"t everyone buy preconstruction?
To answer this I will need you to imagine buying a product for $350,000, but I cannot show you a picture of it. I cannot guarantee you will make money with it, and I can"t guarantee it will sell immediately if you do not want it anymore. Sounds like a great deal doesn"t it? This is just an example of the obstacles to marketing preconstruction. Although there are many examples of success stories in the Orlando area with preconstruction, people still like to see the "bricks and mortar". Many still have images of the swamp land sales in the middle of the last century, and Florida real estate will always live with that stigma.
Even if the trust issue is not a factor, most buyers will rent out their property to vacationers visiting area attractions, and depending on the build out of the community, your house could have construction vehicles in close proximity, making your rental home less desirable for the first few months after closing. This coupled with the ability to buy an existing furnished home and keep any future bookings that the property owner has, allows buyers to essentially buy a turn-key second home replete with income source, which they can fly down and see before closing.
If all the buyers wanted preconstruction, who would they sell their homes to, and make the profit they seek? If all the buyers wanted completed houses, how would the builders generate income to build the houses? Thank goodness there is still a good mix of the two, and as long as people visit Disney, there will be a booming second home market in Kissimmee & Orlando.
For more information on either re-sales or preconstruction please visit http://www.mbthomes.com .
# # #
RONALD P BRESSAN REAL ESTATE Marcus Truett 407-922-4161
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