Sotheby’s International Realty Affiliates LLC announced the launch of SIR Mobile, a free Sotheby’s International Realty mobile application that works on standard cell phones and smart phones across all mobile carriers, allowing consumers to view luxury homes for sale in a given market. The app is available via all carriers on standard cell phones and smart phones including BlackBerry, iPhone, Android and the Palm webOS.
The app uses GPS, when available, to locate the user and display luxury home listings in the immediate geographic area. Users can also search by a U.S. address, city or zip code to see property details including price, square footage, estimated mortgage, taxes, features, maps and pictures for all homes for sale in a specified area. Within the next few weeks, SIR Mobile users will be able to search for all homes represented by the brand’s network outside the United States as well.
“With the launch of this app, consumers will have instant access right at their fingertips to detailed information on the fine properties represented by our global network and within the local market, providing our affiliates a powerful tool in each of their areas,” said Wendy Purvey, chief marketing officer, Sotheby’s International Realty Affiliates LLC.
Interesting features include a Refine Search capability that allows users to narrow their search by selecting a price range, property type and number of bedrooms and bathrooms. If a user has questions or wants a tour of the property, the Call feature connects them to a Sotheby’s International Realty representative.
Click here for more on Sotheby’s International Realty Affiliates Mobile Real Estate App.
Scott Lutgert
In every community, there are go-to people who are able to make things happen.
They are powerful, often beyond their companies and positions, because they help shape the community. Some are out front, such as politicians. But most are not. They may be well-known or they may be behind-the-scenes movers. Many get involved with non-profits and use their influence in that realm.
Most of the people on this list have used their power largely to improve the community, either philanthropically, or by boosting the economy or public policy.
There is no universal criteria to create such a list. It’s part art, part knowledge, part experience and a lot of interviews with know people of influence to find out who they seek out to get something done.
The powerful know who are the most powerful.
Click here for more on Top 50 Most Powerful People on the Gulf Coast
After big snow and ice events in the Southeast, Plains, and Midwest this week, 49 out of the 50 states currently have snow on the ground – yes, even Hawaii, where snow falls in Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea all winter.
The only state that has avoided this icy blast is Florida. Does that make you want to go on a nice, warm vacation to the Sunshine State? You’re not alone.
Put another way, that means snow is present in 69.4 percent of the lower 48, which is more than double than December. This is extremely unusual, though it’s hard to put a date on when this last happened because records aren’t kept on this kind of event.
The National Operational Hydrologic Remote Sensing Center combines ground reports and images from satellites in space to determine how much of the country is covered in snow. That’s what you see in the image above. The images tell how deep and widespread the snow is, and that’s important not only for images like this one, but also for computer weather models, which use the data to generate accurate forecasts. Such forecasts were very useful in predicting this week’s winter storms.
Earlier this week, two storms began to churn: one in the northern Plains and Midwest, and one in Texas. The southern winter storm took a track across the Gulf Coast, pulling warm, moist air over an extreme arctic blast that set up over the eastern half of the United States late last week. This provided fuel for the storm to carve a path of snow, sleet, and freezing rain from Texas to the Carolinas.
Here in Atlanta, we’re still coated in snow and ice and probably will be for the next couple of days. No one in the Southeast escaped the wrath except, of course, Florida.
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As 2010 ticked away, two of the year’s top 10 residential sales in Collier County closed less than a week apart – on the same street in Port Royal.
Port Royal – the posh neighborhood that sits between the Gulf of Mexico and Naples Bay – saw more interest from buyers last year. Waterfront and other high-end sales picked up.
“The demand is definitely out there,” said Judy Green, president and CEO of Premier Sotheby’s International Realty Inc.
On Dec. 14, a Gulf-front lot at 4540 Gordon Drive sold for $14.2 million in Port Royal. Six days later, a waterfront estate at 4228 Gordon Drive went for $14.55 million. They were both purchased by trusts.
The asking price for the estate, which was listed in the Naples area multiple listing service, or MLS, was $23 million.
The lot down the street was marketed privately for sale, which means it never appeared in the MLS.
“There, in fact, was a dwelling, however, it was uninhabitable. It is a tear-down. It adds no value to the property and the price was simply on the lot,” Green said.
Michael Lawler, a luxury Realtor for Premier, found the buyer for the lot, which has 160 feet of frontage on the Gulf of Mexico.
Lawler declined to comment about his sale, but Green said he had an “outstanding year” of sales in 2010, using his many contacts in real estate to find “hip pocket listings,” or listings that weren’t widely advertised.
Jim Gorman, a Realtor with Downing-Frye Realty in Naples, said the asking price for the lot was $14.9 million. He said the buyer of the lot also made an offer on the mansion at 4228 Gordon Drive, but was beat out by others who were willing to pay more. Gorman was the listing agent for that home, which he said will be remodeled.
“They want their dream and their dream is not somebody else’s dream,” he said. “There is no such thing as the perfect home for everyone.”
With the inventory of waterfront homes and lots shrinking, Gorman said some Realtors are knocking on doors and calling owners who don’t have their properties on the market to determine if they would be willing to sell.
“The prices are not declining on the beachfront anymore,” he said. “It’s a sellers’ market on the beachfront right now because there is no inventory.”
The home at 4228 Gordon Drive got four offers in 60 days before the best one was accepted, Gorman said.
“When people start to see their options diminish, they act,” he said. “The options on the beachfront are definitely diminished now.”
After crunching the numbers, Philip Collins, a broker associate with Premier Sotheby’s, found that single-family home and lot sales in Port Royal and the surrounding beachfront area topped $353 million in 2010 – up from about $251 million in 2009. There were 59 sales made last year, up from 49 in 2009, he said.
“2010 was a very busy year for us,” Collins said.
He has a new beachfront estate in the area listed for $22.9 million, furnished. Located at 45 32nd Ave. S., it was built in 2010. On a 1.24-acre lot, the two-story mansion has six bedrooms and six bathrooms. It spans 8,226 square feet.
“It has been on the market several months,” Collins said. “The average time on the market down there is 260 days.”
In the Port Royal area, he said there was only one sale directly on the beach in 2008 and there were two in 2009. Last year, there were 10.
Click here for more on this article Courtesy of Naplesnews.com
