Drive Down Brickell Avenue and Biscayne Boulevard – Video
March 1, 2009 by Lucas Lechuga
Here are a couple of videos that I shot Friday night while driving down Brickell Avenue and Biscayne Boulevard. (It may take a while to load if you're using a slow Internet connection). You'll notice Icon Brickell, Epic and One Miami in the video below:
In the following video, you can see Marina Blue, 900 Biscayne Bay, Ten Museum Park and Opera Tower, as well as the American Airlines Arena:
and the Oscar for cinematography and original score goes to…..
anyway, these moving videos of Miami should be shot from an open top (convertible) so that we get to see the buildings and not cars on the road. Nevertheless a good quality video.
I guess Lucas got a HD cam as gift for his birthday (or Christmas) and he is going berserk with it! I like it. Get us some daytime shots of Park West and Pace Park please. Moving or stationary, does not matter. Also can you go on top of say Four seasons and pan your cam around and tag the Brickell buildings like you did in this video? Usually the Brickell buildings are confusing to be pin pointed in a pic or map as they are not located in a linear fashion.
As you were driving past Bayside Marketplace I was reminded how they are owned by General Growth Properties (GGP) and how GGP will need to refinance $3 billion (in a miserable economy) or file for bankruptcy.
Other malls GGP owns in S. Florida:
* Village of Merrick Park, Coral Gables
* Pembroke Lakes Mall, Pembroke Pines
* Mizner Park, Boca Raton
* Kendall Town Center, Miami
Who is prepared to buy these properties in the current market if GGP tanks? If Bayside does goes dark how does that effect the neighborhood?
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122875588694888349.html
By the way Lucas, you are truly a brave man to exhibit videos of Miami drivers to potential buyers. I would think that would frighten them away.
You have to read this article in today’s Miami Herald:
Miami condo king Jorge Pérez battles to survive real estate slump
BY MATTHEW HAGGMAN
mhaggman@MiamiHerald.com
AJ,
You’re partially right. I’ve actually had a nice HDV camcorder for at least a year and a half. However, I rarely used it because it’s so impractical to carry around with me everywhere I go. This past week I purchased an HD Mino. It’s slightly smaller than an iPod and easily fits into my pocket. It amazes me that something so small can output video with relatively good quality and also be so affordable (slightly over $200). You also have to keep in mind that the videos above were shot at night. Daytime videos with a lot of light will be much better. The videos above aren’t anything special but they do demonstrate the potential for video. I like your idea of creating a video from the Four Seasons.
Visionary,
That was a great article!
ditto on article
turns out my source from related was spot on.
the way the story was told to me was that perez put the bank reps in a room and said take it back now or let me work it out. considering the banks’ options in this market, i’d go with perez. 2 billion in debt…the monthly carry on that has to be at least $15m. huge layout for a company that isn’t generating big sums of cash from closings.
an aside, it’s amazing how mediocre the herald is. it took them over a month to report this story. i heard about this over two weeks ago; other (non-related) folks knew about it the day it happened.
Liked the video — and the music. Car trips are my thing.
jcrimes,
That is the way I heard it (the hotel conference) as well.
You asked: “an aside, it’s amazing how mediocre the herald is. it took them over a month to report this story. i heard about this over two weeks ago; other (non-related) folks knew about it the day it happened.”
Let me take a stab at it: The Herald is addicted to Related’s advertising dollars, even though they have scaled back, and Big Gorge’s rumblings about buying the paper for the land.
City of Miami has agreed to let strapped Bayside Marketplace pay only half of unpaid rent.
Pathetic.
I needed a HD cam for my biz and been wondering for long what I should buy. This settles it. I needed a good small cam for low light/night conditions and in an environment in constant motion. Looks like HD Mino fits the bill perfectly. It’s selling for $190 now.
Lucas, thanks for inadvertently providing a solution to my problem.
Is it compatible with both Mac and Windows?
Visionary, where is the link to the article? You only gave the e-mail link to the journo.
Some guys will have their nickers twisted in a bunch on reading this. But I like it. If the bank is disorganized and careless, they should pay:
Homeowners’ rallying cry: Produce the note
if you cant produce the note, you have no right to force somebody out of their home. very simple concept. if you can produce the note, have at the property any way you see fit. contracts need to be honored. but not having the note implies no contract as far as i am concerned. as you say, AJ, sloppiness should not be rewarded.
does anybody have any news on Met 1? this could be a great building for working class professionals if/when prices become reasonable. great location and nice looking. it will either become an affordable gem or an overpriced empty shell in my opinion.
AJ/Gables
bullshit. the fact you don’t have the original note is meaningless. if i’m making monthly payments on a mortgage, i’m certainly not doing it out of the goodness in my heart…thus, it’s a little disingenous gables on the back end for me to say gotcha, you don’t have a note, thus, there was never any contract between us. frankly, it’s absurd.
all this foreclosure nonsense merely delays the inevitable and makes the correction longer and harder.
ICON IS KILLING ME:
Before you walk away from your deposit, let me know – I’ll give you $25,000 for it. Seriously.
Samson, he could get 25% of the deposit back. Why would he settle for $25,000?
Lucas, I figured out Mino HD works with both XP, Vista and Mac OS. But I have a question, how did you tag those landmarks? Did you use another software or the Mino’s built in software allows you to do that? tks
AJ-
I didn’t know that. How much can he get back?
Got it, thanks. Stupid of me.
jcrimes,
I can produce 7 year old credit card statements or utility bills if demanded. They (Banks, utilities, credit card companies, various government departments) have always imposed the burden of proof on us, mere mortals. It has always been us, who had to go to great lengths and to the ends of the Earth to produce all kinds of silly documents just to get a refund or to prove that we already paid a bill or that we got overcharged. So why cry foul when the shoe is on the other foot? It is nice to see the other side scramble and trip over themselves for a change. I have no sympathies for them. If they are buying a loan from some bank, make sure that the paperwork comes along with it. If not they are the fools. In any case I am not insisting on them providing the original hard copy. How can they not even have an electronic copy of the note is mind boggling. How can you sympathize with such carelessness?
AJ
it has nothing to do with sympathizing with the banks. rather, it’s a disingenuous argument. you don’t pay your mortgage, you lose the place. that’s the deal that was struck when the borrower got the loan he eventually couldn’t afford to repay. to complain on the back end with something silly like where’s the original note? is the equivalent of people whining about spelling on a blog. it’s a waste of time. and as i said before, just further prolongs the correction.
Samaon said:
“ICON IS KILLING ME:
Before you walk away from your deposit, let me know – I’ll give you $25,000 for it. Seriously”
Sorry, but either Big Gorge will give him back $61,000 (contractual 25%) or some judge at the banko court will give him back $121,000 (50% – the remaining escrow).
Wow, talk about lame music! In other news, an 07 line of 1800 Club is now going for $2075. Uh oh! Better get Maco!
jcrimes,
you may feel it disingenuous, but as a consumer you are within your rights to demand that the servicer filing a foreclosure on you truly has the right to such action. what if i send you a foreclosure notice on your house? are you going to turn it over to me without proof? these documents should be available easily within a week or two. if not, i myself would suspect fraud and would never turn over my property until i was sure of the legality. a well run bank should have absolutely no problem with this rule. i dont advocate this necessarily as a delay tactic, but i certainly feel a debt holder has an obligation to show proof of ownership. otherwise you fall victim to the very common scam out there where people file thousands of liens against homeowners with the hope a small percentage pay you off on a debt you never owed. i spent several years living in a region where this was common practice, and the fraud would never occur if the litigation was challenged. if no fraud is present, it will work itself out soon enough.
dont make the mistake of assuming the foreclosed homeowner is the only one trying to milk the system. the other side has plenty of guilt as well.
That’s what I love about this blog – it is a force for good. This morning “Icon is killing me” sounded like he was about to walk from a $200K deposit on a unit at Icon. I offered him $25,000. AJ pointed out he could get $50,000 back from Perez. Then Un-related explained how he could get more than twice that back. Yes, this blog is better than a law firm.
gables
you’re elevating form over substance here. the people raising the note argument don’t deny that they took out a mortgage. they also don’t deny they aren’t paying it. their argument is that “how do i know you, mr rmbs trustee, are the person who should be foreclosing on this? ” short of it, why else are they bringing the action unless they are the real party in interest? we’re not talking a small lien shakedown here. this is hundreds of thousands of dollars. in those rare instances where there really is a screw up by the lender, it’s going to be evident pretty quickly. the person is going to deny a debt was ever owed and they’ll have a good counterclaim against the lender if it doesn’t get its shit together.
as for the docs…i can tell you that the typical rmbs file is not as organized as you may think. you’re talking thousand of mortgages, many times, none of it scanned…thrown in a warehouse somewhere. it’s just the way it is.
AJ,
Neither. YouTube has an editing function that allows you to place notes within the video after it has been uploaded and ready to be viewed.
unrelated
if there’s a bankruptcy, i’m not sure why you think he’ll get half his deposit back. related will move to assume the sales contract in the bankruptcy court and force the issue. best case you’re still looking at 25% back.
also, my understanding is that there are two icon contracts. one gives you 25% back. the other gives you nothing.
jcrimes,
If the Icon is an a banko proceeding and you are still in a “negotiating period”, you should petition the Court as a creditor for all the money in your escrow account (50% of deposit). The Icon entity or Related couldn’t deliver and the buyer’s contract is with the Icon entity not Related’s lenders. There are some 2008 cases in Broward of Palm Beach that went this way.
Geez…Two different contracts? Well, he better hope he has the 25% return or for my banko scenario!
jcrimes,
underwater homeowners are in their position because they did not perform due diligence on their loan details. they were too busy signing the documents and preparing to flip the property next year at a profit. on the other side of the table, lenders also did not conduct due diligence on the loans, as they allowed individuals who could not afford the loan to follow through with the contract. they were too busy collecting fees for the loan. implicit in those fees is the job of proper documentation and paperwork filing. if they cannot find these files properly, chances are it’s because they were more concerned with closing the deal and collecting their fees than properly filing the paperwork which they were paid to do. just as the homeowner will pay a penalty for taking on more debt than they could afford, the lenders will pay a penalty for improper storage and handling. as you say, that is just the way it is. if you are going to take away $400k worth of assets from somebody, you better have your shit in order.
My offer of $25,000 for the contract still stands.
As attorney Kenneth Damas told me ICON Tower One is completely different from the other two towers as each tower had its own contract. I was lucky because of the amount of leverage Ken had with the tower one contract.
Any news on Epic? since it is the apparent competitor to Icon, wondered whether it is having the same issues? personally, i like the look of epic better. but for the right price i am sure i would be happy in either building!
Has anyone heard anything on the Everglades project?
I looked at the Epic and it had much better views. The sales team seemed much more willing to negotiate price.
How did the common spaces measure up?
The law offices of Adorno, Damas & Associates are the attorney’s I utilized to fight for my rights. Someone has to get back at these developers who are stealing our 20 percent deposits. When I asked for the 5% ask required by the contract, they basically laughed at my face. They claim the market has dropped and I was not getting nothing.
After a zealous fight I was able to achieve most of my deposit back.
I read Big Gorge’s Herald alibi again and the following sets up his inevitable “blame-game” strategy:
*********************
“In retrospect, Pérez said he wished that he had done more to weed out speculators from buying units.
He also said builders — including him — should not have started to believe that South Florida was different, casting aside traditional methods of gauging housing demand. And he said he was wrong to assume that second-home buyers would continue to stream in from the Northeast, Latin America and Europe.
But Pérez insisted that if it hadn’t been for the credit crisis last fall and bankers reining in lending, his remaining condos would have sold. ”Six more months, I would have been out,” he said. “Could I guess that all the banks would go bad? Did anybody guess that?”
************************
1. Big Gorge didn’t realize those garbage-eating dirtbags at RCRS would contract with anyone who had a room temperature IQ and a pulse necessary to pick up a pen and sign their name. RCRS wasn’t acting as RE agents, they were “reservation takers” and you may see them soon manning the phones at the Blue Martini (if it hangs on). Nah….he DIDN’T KNOW…….Well, now he does!
2. Over-relied on foreigners? That is laughable. Hey Gorge, you had a couple of hundred at 500 Brickell. Do you even have an address for most of them? Probably not, that way he keeps their “excess” (25%) deposit. Nah…he didn’t know!
3. “Six more months and I would have been out”! I re-named the Icon “Stalingrad”. Now, if you haven’t heard of it or don’t know why I would use that term, look it up. Six more months……….
Big Gorge was “the man”, however, if you read the comments following the Herald article you can cut through the niceties and see three letters……F.Y.G……Now, that’s the spirit!
ICON had much better common area ammenities however most of it will be shared with the hotel guest. Who needs a football sized swimming pool? I have lived in Brickell 11 years and the best thing is having a good building with a down to earth board.
Has anyone heard if the Asia is closing units, or if they are reducing the price? I heard there is seller financing available.
jcrimes wrote: “AJ/Gables
bullshit. the fact you don’t have the original note is meaningless. if i’m making monthly payments on a mortgage, i’m certainly not doing it out of the goodness in my heart…thus, it’s a little disingenous gables on the back end for me to say gotcha, you don’t have a note, thus, there was never any contract between us. frankly, it’s absurd.
all this foreclosure nonsense merely delays the inevitable and makes the correction longer and harder.”
– Amen. If you think about, each month you pay your mortgage your principal is going down…don’t you get a statement every so often (I don’t have mortgages so not sure if they send you monthly statements or on the Internet or what)? Also, the really simple question is, if you paid off your mortgage today would the mortgage lien be released? If the answer is yes, then the whole produce the mortgage requirement is just a dead beat’s farce! Do you really want to allow dead beats to stay in their homes without having to pay ANY mortgage even though they owe money through either a purchase mortgage, HELOC, etc.? Get real. They owe money and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let dead beats stay in houses they can’t afford for FREE (not just at the teaser rates but FREE) and push these debt obligations onto tax payers which are me, children, grand children, and great grand children. Enough already of the games, you don’t pay, you’re out. Very simple and losing the home ain’t the end of the world…deal with it.
– Meanwhile, I’ll keep looking to buy something, bank savings by renting, wait for price to rent ratios to normalize……….
RT
Ho Hum. More selective outrage ala Rick Santelli for the poor homeowners who got hoodwinked. Yet not a peep from you about Citimank and Bank of America and AiG and General Motors asking for and getting billions more from the taxpayer just this last week. Tea party my ass. Ho Hum!
Oh Kramer, I’m just trying to stay focused on real estate here. We are on a slippery slope and economics is about behavior at the margin. What I see is more incentives for individuals to make bad choices that could greatly exacerbate the economic problems. While I will withhold comments on the many economic issues, I will say that if a million households decided to game the system, an economic depression would be a high probability. And yes, I am very much against the trillion dollar deficits which will place a serious debt burden on the US….the credit bubble shell game won’t work, will be more expensive and can’t continue since we’d need massive “stimulus” every year in an attempt to get back to that demand level….the demand curve shifted down. Again, this is not just a cyclical recession, it is a structural recession….let the economy adjust.
Dont beg off by saying your trying to stay focused on real estate when you know its all related – one to the other. You cant discuss whats going to happen to Miami Condos without a discussion about the economy in general.
I’ll bet the dirt bag in ther article who told the bank to produce her original mortgage paperwork isn’t paying a dime per month. They cry like babies, yet they are the one’s running a scam. Why doesn’t she pay even a few hundred a month? Where in the U.S. can you live for $0 per month?
Kramer
hate on santelli all you want but the guy knows his stuff more than any yutz in obama’s administration…he KILLED as a trader and his analysis of the current problems is dead on albeit, roughly presented. people just don’t want to hear it.
jcrimes
I was also a CBOT trader at one time early in my career and know first hand that these guys are far from squeaky clean, so for Santelli to characterize all people who are having trouble with their mortgages as “LOSERS”, just pisses me off. Your not a loser if you have medical bills due to an illness from cancer or the like that wipes out your savings. Your not a “LOSER” if you lose your job that was outsourced. My point was that RT and the Santelli’s of the world are so selective in their outrage. RT (“Ill be damned if I will let deadbeats stay in their homes”) Never heard Santelli critisize all the bailouts that started in October under Bush. Remember when Mcain (whom Santelli said he voted for) cancelled a debate with Obama to rush back to Washington to “Save” the first $700 billion Paulson bailout for the big guys? Where was their outrage then? But Obama tries to throw a lifeline to the little homeowner and they become hysterical.
Look, the vitriol is getting excessive. It doesnt help. We have elections in this country as the best alternative to shooting it out when we disagree. The only way to change the decisions coming out of Washington will come in 2012.
Lucas,
Thanks. That helps. Never posted on U-tube before. I will have to start using it soon.
re note:
A note is the heart of a contract between two parties. No note, then the burden of proof will lie on the person claiming ownership. Period. Live with it.
For all the outrage some of you are expressing, I am absolutely sure, a large majority of judges will agree with me, including conservative judges.
This is a simple rule of law and you pray that it exists because it is a double edged sword. Tomorrow, someone can break into your house and claim it is theirs. Then you will be running all over clutching your note or deed or title to prove that it is yours.
The Oscar for Best Buyer goes to…………..
The Smart Money
jcrimes and rt,
you must recognize this is nothing more than a game being played by both parties. one side does not want to own up to their debt, and the other side is disparately looking for a way out of their soon to be acquired debt burden. our society and laws have evolved to this point-like it or not. in fact, it is the big corps who are most to blame for this strict attitude towards the law, because most of the laws were written to their benefit.
but a foreclosure, bankruptcy, etc is LEGAL, and a due process and proof are a necessity of these actions. it is the law of unintended consequences. do you really think a person will choose to go homeless in the street, when the alternative is to tie up the court system and stay in their house for a year or more? when you litigate against big business, don’t they just tie you up in court until you can no longer carry the legal costs? ironic isn’t it?
hey, i am not a fan of this practice and would like the correction to occur as soon as possible so i do not pay more in time and taxes. but you do have to follow the framework of the written law-and it allows this practice to occur. are you going to change the rules in the middle of the game because you don’t like the anticipated outcome?