BRAVO

BRAVO!

Read in the Sarasota Herald Tribune - September 23, 2009

Sarasota County opposes drilling

Sarasota County commissioners voted unanimously to make stopping a proposed offshore drilling bill a legislative priority in 2010. Pristine beaches should trump oil exploration, Sarasota County leaders said Tuesday in opposing any oil exploration in Florida waters. Oil drilling promises to be a major issue in the upcoming state legislative session. Top legislators -- most from inland counties -- are pushing a plan to allow oil exploration within 10 miles of the shore. The County Commission voted unanimously to make stopping the oil bill a legislative priority in 2010. Commissioners even changed the language of the resolution to remove any ambiguity. It now reads: "Do not pursue offshore drilling in Florida waters." "I would support that," said Commissioner Nora Patterson. "Pretty straight," added Commissioner Shannon Staub. Instead of oil, the county's legislative agenda calls on state leaders to support alternative energy options like solar energy and to "build a green economy through aggressive energy policies." The Legislature did not pass a major renewable energy bill proposed by Gov Charlie Crist last year. Crist's proposal -- known as a renewable portfolio standard -- would force power companies to generate a percentage of their electricity from renewable sources such as solar energy.

I agree. Leave our beaches alone. Our oceans and water are already enough polluted. And our agonizing coral reefs are desperately asking for a break.

Henry B. Nathan is a Florida Realtor at United Realty Group Inc.
Visit my website: http://www.condo-southflorida.com
where you can search for Aventura Condos, Florida Condos, Sunny Isles Condos,

Books and Readings

At the dawn of a new presidential term, and with no intentions of venting out my political preferences, I find it important to spread around interesting ideas which can help explain what has gone wrong in our country and our economy and what new directions are being suggested to rebuild our nation’s wealth and success and regain our position as world leaders.

A provocative book that have drawn my attention is:

The Predator State:

How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too.

By James K. Galbraith.

Without endorsing its contents ( I am far from being an economist) I found some answers to the agonizing questions of how to save capitalism and a free society after the cataclysmic events that threatens to throw us back to depression-like poverty and hardship.

Here is a synopsis of The Predator State:

The cult of the free market has dominated economic policy-talk since the Reagan revolution of nearly thirty years ago. Tax cuts and small government, monetarism, balanced budgets, deregulation, and free trade are the core elements of this dogma, a dogma so successful that even many liberals accept it. But a funny thing happened on the bridge to the twenty-first century. While liberals continue to bow before the free-market altar, conservatives in the style of George W. Bush have abandoned it altogether. That is why principled conservatives -- the Reagan true believers -- long ago abandoned Bush.

Enter James K. Galbraith, the iconoclastic economist. In this riveting book, Galbraith first dissects the stale remains of Reaganism and shows how Bush and company had no choice except to dump them into the trash. He then explores the true nature of the Bush regime: a "corporate republic," bringing the methods and mentality of big business to public life; a coalition of lobbies, doing the bidding of clients in the oil, mining, military, pharmaceutical, agribusiness, insurance, and media industries; and a predator state, intent not on reducing government but rather on diverting public cash into private hands. In plain English, the Republican Party has been hijacked by political leaders who long since stopped caring if reality conformed to their message.

Galbraith follows with an impertinent question: if conservatives no longer take free markets seriously, why should liberals? Why keep liberal thought in the straitjacket of pay-as-you-go, of assigning inflation control to the Federal Reserve, of attempting to "make markets work"? Why not build a new economic policy based on what is really happening in this country?

The real economy is not a free-market economy. It is a complex combination of private and public institutions, including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, higher education, the housing finance system, and a vast federal research establishment. The real problems and challenges -- inequality, climate change, the infrastructure deficit, the subprime crisis, and the future of the dollar -- are problems that cannot be solved by incantations about the market. They will be solved only with planning, with standards and other policies that transcend and even transform markets.

A timely, provocative work whose message will endure beyond this election season, The Predator State will appeal to the broad audience of thoughtful Americans who wish to understand the forces at work in our economy and culture and who seek to live in a nation that is both prosperous and progressive.

The cult of the free market has dominated economic policy-talk since the Reagan revolution of nearly thirty years ago. Tax cuts and small government, monetarism, balanced budgets, deregulation, and free trade are the core elements of this dogma, a dogma so successful that even many liberals accept it. But a funny thing happened on the bridge to the twenty-first century. While liberals continue to bow before the free-market altar, conservatives in the style of George W. Bush have abandoned it altogether. That is why principled conservatives -- the Reagan true believers -- long ago abandoned Bush.

Enter James K. Galbraith, the iconoclastic economist. In this riveting book, Galbraith first dissects the stale remains of Reaganism and shows how Bush and company had no choice except to dump them into the trash. He then explores the true nature of the Bush regime: a "corporate republic," bringing the methods and mentality of big business to public life; a coalition of lobbies, doing the bidding of clients in the oil, mining, military, pharmaceutical, agribusiness, insurance, and media industries; and a predator state, intent not on reducing government but rather on diverting public cash into private hands. In plain English, the Republican Party has been hijacked by political leaders who long since stopped caring if reality conformed to their message.

Galbraith follows with an impertinent question: if conservatives no longer take free markets seriously, why should liberals? Why keep liberal thought in the straitjacket of pay-as-you-go, of assigning inflation control to the Federal Reserve, of attempting to "make markets work"? Why not build a new economic policy based on what is really happening in this country?

The real economy is not a free-market economy. It is a complex combination of private and public institutions, including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, higher education, the housing finance system, and a vast federal research establishment. The real problems and challenges -- inequality, climate change, the infrastructure deficit, the subprime crisis, and the future of the dollar -- are problems that cannot be solved by incantations about the market. They will be solved only with planning, with standards and other policies that transcend and even transform markets.

A timely, provocative work whose message will endure beyond this election season, The Predator State will appeal to the broad audience of thoughtful Americans who wish to understand the forces at work in our economy and culture and who seek to live in a nation that is both prosperous and progressive.

Henry B. Nathan is a Florida Realtor at United Realty Group Inc.
Visit my website: http://www.condo-southflorida.com/
where you can search for Aventura Condos, Florida Condos
Hallandale Condos, Sunny Isles Condos

New Tax Reform Proposal - March 17, 2008

The Taxation and Budget Reform Commission has approved a proposed amendment on March 17, 2008. It would go on the November 2008 ballot.

Basically, it would reduce property taxes by 25% in 2011, eliminating the $9.6 billion that school districts must collect in order to qualify for state aid. This reduction would benefit resident and non resident owners as well.

The loss of revenue would be substituted by a 1 percent additional sales tax and/or levying sales tax on products and services that are not presently taxed, as well as a package of spending cuts.

Raising 1% the present sales tax would yield a maximum of $ 3.9 billion. How will a new sales taxes on some services be implemented, has not been determined. However the proposal excludes levying a sales tax on the presently exempted food, medicine, health care and electricity. The general opinion is that new taxes on services such as legal and real estate work, dry cleaning, pet care, and similar, would probably have to apply.

Against the proposition is the Associated Industries of Florida, a business lobbying group.

Since the proposal mandates keeping school funding at the current levels, lawmakers would have no choice except to trim the state budget to offset the loss of property tax revenue.

Some of the possible targets:

- Reducing state-covered health coverage to thousands of low-income children and pregnant women

- Eliminating a Medicaid program for 125,000 seniors and disabled residents, or reducing nursing home and hospital payments,

- Axing the state's medically-needed program which helps thousands of transplant and gravely ill patients.

Of course this has raised serious objections. The general opinion is that a heavier sales tax disproportionately hits the poor.

Now let's analyze this remedy as opposed to previous attempts.

Everybody seems to have forgotten the general sentiment that cities and counties, which have been unduly favored by the unusual raise in property values, as well as thousands of new homes built since 2000, should adjust their budgets. Nobody is mentioning raising this anymore. We just try to reduce the property tax burden by reducing state services to the needy, and hitting the common citizen with heavier sales taxes. That is the bottom line.

Do I agree with the new proposal? As a realtor, I should be happy, since it might somehow reignite the business by attracting out of state real estate buyers and investors, due to lower property taxes. As a citizen, I might have an issue.

Henry B. Nathan is a Florida Realtor at United Realty Group Inc.
Visit my website: http://www.condo-southflorida.com
where you can search for Aventura Condos, Florida Condos, Sunny Isles Condos.

Condo Litigation

From Daily Business Review – November 5th, 2007

New Yorkers sue Related Group, seeking to bail out of contracts

A group of New York residents who hope to break free of their contracts to
buy Related Group condos in Miami-Dade County claim the developer broke New
York, Florida and federal real estate laws.

In proposed class action complaints filed in Miami-Dade Circuit Court,
buyers at 50 Biscayne and Harbour House claim representatives of the
Miami-based developer promised them a return on their investment in
violation of New York law. Most of the plaintiffs are originally from the
former Soviet Union and reside in New York.

Contract holders also allege Related violated federal law by not legally
recording a condominium declaration before putting units up for sale and
violated Florida law by spending deposits on salaries and commissions.

The complaints were filed today for each building by Aventura solo
practitioner Robert Cooper, who has other suits pending on behalf of Related
contract holders.

"These people did not get what they were bargaining for, and now the
developers are using it as an excuse to get away with giving them less than
what they deserve and less than what they paid for," Cooper said. "They
should have never been promoting these as investments, which is what they
were doing."

Another claim by Harbour House plaintiffs cites the quality of kitchens,
following an August lawsuit against Related by Dellacasa.

Dellacasa, the luxury Italian kitchen designer and installer, claims the
developer, the nation's largest luxury condo builder, and its contractors
conspired to steal signature kitchen designs and break a contract with
Dellacasa to cut project costs in a sinking condo market.

Related representatives gave presentations about the properties at Russian
dinner clubs in New York and at South Florida lunches two years ago, the
plaintiffs say.

Contacted on his cell phone, Related CEO Matt Allen dismissed the claims as
a sign of the times in the bearish South Florida condo market.

"We have lawsuits that are driven by speculators who are trying to profit
and don't respect their contracts," he said. "We have to let the justice
system weed these guys out and [get them] to respect their contracts."

The plaintiffs allege Related's promotional dinners in New York violated the
Martin Act, a New York state law governing the sale of securities and
cooperative real estate including condos. Under the law, a real estate agent
can't sell or advertise units in New York unless an offering plan has been
filed with the New York attorney general.

"Any offering of a new condominium unit to a New York state resident must be
registered with the New York state attorney general," said Vincent
DiLorenzo, a professor who teaches real estate law at St. John's University.
"As long as it's being offered to a New York resident, registration is
required."

Irina Herman, one of the plaintiffs in the Harbour House suit, said she
first heard about the dinners through Russian-language AM radio pitches. The
native of Kiev, Ukraine, has lived in New York for 20 years.

A Russian speaker working for Sunny Isles Beach-based M.A.K. Realty handled
sales for the developments and told a restaurant full of people about condo
investment opportunities in South Florida, Herman said.

Without looking at the unit, Herman and her husband put down a $127,000
deposit on a Harbour House unit and signed a contract for $635,000 on Nov.
2, 2006.

She said she thought she was buying an oceanfront unit. But when she came to
Bal Harbour to look at the condo, "I was shocked to see where my unit was
going to be."

The noisy second-floor unit had a view of the Collins Avenue Bridge, Herman
said. The kitchen wasn't the quality she was promised, and the square
footage was smaller, she said.

A certified public accountant with two children, Herman said she's "going to
fight. It's money going down the drain. It's the same thing as killing
yourself."

After moving from place to place in communist Ukraine, Rita Dobrer emigrated
to the U.S. 28 years ago, got married, gave birth to two daughters and got a
divorce. She worked as a housekeeper in Brooklyn making up to $30,000
annually.

After suffering a debilitating car accident, she won a $650,000 verdict
against her insurance company in 2005 and was looking for a way to invest
the money.

While on vacation, an acquaintance introduced her to M.A.K. Realty's
managing director, Tatiana Rybak, who took Dobrer out to lunch at an Italian
restaurant in Bal Harbour and persuaded her to buy two studio units at 50
Biscayne for $276,000 each, Dobrer said.

She said she paid deposits totaling $110,000 on the assurance she would
never have to close on the properties because M.A.K. could resell them if
she couldn't find a way to flip them before construction was done.

Two months later, Dobrer also put down 20 percent deposits on a studio and
three one-bedroom units at Harbour House selling at a total of $2.3 million.
She put one unit in the name of her 18-year-old daughter.

All told, she had committed herself and members of her immediate family to
more than $2.8 million in condos and had paid more than $500,000 in
deposits.

When resale programs started at the condo towers the following year, Dobrer
said she was told her property was too expensive to move. She was shocked
when she realized she was expected to pay the mortgages.

"If they did not promise a resale, how could an 18-year-old get a mortgage
for half a million dollars?" she asked. "No one ever said we'd need to
close."

M.A.K. Realty is not named in the two complains, and M.A.K. Realty owner
Tatiana Rybak declined comment on the condo sales.

For Cooper, the primary culprit is Related, which "should never have been
targeting someone to buy these units, who are inappropriate to buy them," he
said.

Before the condo boom, he said developers carefully vetted the financial
background of their buyers.

"These developers basically decided not to do that and put themselves in
this situation."

Related's Allen said, "I have confidence in our judicial system to do what's
right."

The plaintiffs hope the courts will allow them to escape from financial
burdens they took on in hopes of living the American dream.

"We are the victims," Dobrer said. "Hopefully we'll become survivors

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Florida Property Tax Reform is Dead?

In the news this week:
In the news this week:

A Judge has annulled January, 2008 referendum vote on Property Tax Reform.

A lawsuit, personally filed by Weston's mayor, Eric Hersh, and a court ruling all but killed the property tax reform project. The issue is that the proposed ballot language is flawed and confusing. At the same time, the ruling upheld Florida legislature's right to limit local governments' spending.

A simple fix would be to clarify the ballot summary. Make it transparent that whoever chooses the 'supersized' exemption would be dropping his right to the 'Save Our Homes' benefits and, perhaps, on the long run, suffer the effects of an uneducated vote, in exchange for short term relief.

Hersh suggests a possible intent to deceive voters on such an important issue, and that it could have long term effects on homeowners' pockets.

Fixing the ballot language shouldn't be a difficult task but legislators apparently prefer to take the matter to appeal court, where their odds of loosing are very high. That would avoid them the embarrassment of voters' rejection. Rumors are that this is a possible outcome since recent polls showed voters' approval dropping below 50%, while 60% is the minimum needed to pass the tax reform.

One evident blunder in the ballot summary is the promise of a minimum homestead exemption of $ 50,000 for all homeowners. This wouldn't be true for homeowners who opt to stay with their 'save our homes' exemption and their present $ 25,000 homestead exemption, dropping the new $ 50,000 'supersized' exemption.

Another evident flaw is that the ballot summary does not make it at all clear that the reform would eliminate the 'Save Our Homes' protection for whoever takes the bait and opts for the immediate 'supersized' tax relief. Additionally, it fails to clearly mention that the final objective is to definitely phase out 'Save Our Homes': the ultimate salvation of many Florida residents. Save Our Homes was instituted in 1992 and essentially keeps a cap of 3% maximum increase of the assessed value of full time residents homes.

'Save our Homes' is apparently a thorn in the side of our government. Removing it seems to be the main agenda of this tax ballot. Once phased out, our cities will very easily find their way to routinely raise their taxes according to their growing needs without any limit.

What better evidence than the steps that some cities are taking to bypass the tax rollbacks recently mandated by the legislators. Apparently, they have done it either by having it voted off by a large majority of their commissioners or through the not-so-subtle recourse of lowering the taxes on one hand and on the other hand increase their fees for many services or charging for services that were previously free.

The 'save our homes' 3% limit has been in fact a reasonable and fair way to keep tax increases within what has been the inflation index during the last 15 years.

However, while 'Save Our Homes' has protected residents from the government's taxmen, it has established a two-tier system that puts a much heavier burden on new buyers, rental properties owners, vacation home buyers, real estate investors and commercial property owners.



Suggestions?

- Keep the 'save our homes'exemption at its present status for homestead homeowners.

- Keep the supersized homestead exemption as it was structured in the failed proposal, i.e. 75% on the first $ 200,000 of assessed value, then 15% on the next $300,000. However, this supersized exemption would not be applicable to the present 'save our homes'beneficiaries who have bought their present home before 2001 (they have already been protected from the wild home value increases during the recent 'boom').

- Extend this protection to all residential properties, vacation homes, rental properties, and commercial real estate by putting a cap on assessed value increases indexed on US inflation.

- Allow the 'portability' of their'save our homes'benefits to homeowners who are presently enjoying this protection. They are presently 'trapped'and unable to downsize after retirement age.

Of course, these reforms would not solve the immediate troubles of vacation homeowners and investors who have seen their tax bills balloon during the last 4 or 5 years. May we suggest a temporary rollback or reduction of their taxable values in 10% during the next 2 or 3 years.

Not a perfect solution, but it would give us all at least some confidence in the future.

If the 3% 'save hour homes' cap had been applied to all types of properties, regardless of their homestead status, perhaps our cities and counties would have found some restraint in their uncontrollable appetite and their growing bureaucracies and budgets; The huge increase of their 'tax base'produced by the mushrooming development should have been more than sufficient. However the automatic 'bonanza' brought over by the wildly rising property values was not compensated by a reduction of the tax rate. The new money just found its way in the local governments' budgets.

The present system is not really based on the government's needs or the citizens ability to pay. It is based on the local government's authority to tax us as much as they can. The 'save our homes' protection is the only exception.

My last suggestion: Frugality. If we all want to keep our taxes low, we have to mandate our local governments a prudent and thrifty approach. Citizens must also be prepared to limit the extent of the services received, as well as require cutbacks in unnecessary bureaucracy and duplicated services.

It is evident that the property tax system needs an overhaul. A rushed and uninformed referendum, with hidden implications and unaddressed issues, is not the solution. We are sure that this is not the way our legislature prefer and that their message will not be: 'that's all we are giving you, taking or leave it'.

Not all hopes are lost. Weston's mayor has mentioned that there are other means to put a new and better proposal on January's ballot. Florida Taxation and Budget Reform Commission could eventually place tax amendment proposals directly on the ballot.

Let's hope that something will be done in time.


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