South Florida On The Market

Okan Tower will have a 294-room Hilton-branded hotel, 236 condo-hotel units, 153 condos, 64,000 square feet of Class A office space and a restaurant on the 67th floor. Okan Group unveiled the project at an event at its 3,000-square-foot sales gallery in Istanbul on Wednesday. The architecture firm behind the tower’s bold design in tribute to Turkish culture is Behar Font & Partners. Okan Tower’s studio, one-, and two-bedroom condo-hotel units will be delivered turnkey furnished, ranging in size from 447 to 1,245 square feet, while its condo-residence offerings will include one- to three-bedroom units plus a den, ranging from 698 to over 2,071 square feet; and 4 duplex-style penthouses ranging from 1,873 to more than 2,142 square feet.  Okan Tower will also offer world-class amenities, including high-speed elevators with separate access for various mixed-use components, a sky pool with panoramic views from the 70th floor, outdoor lounge, Hammam spa, state-of-the-art health and

The Opportunity Zone Program is becoming more and more popular in South Florida. Florida has 427 designated Opportunity Zones, 68 of them are in Miami Dade County. Areas include:  Liberty City, Opa-Locka, Carol City, Little Haiti, North Miami and Aventura.  See map above. T he program provides tax incentives to developers who build in these areas. An Opportunity Zone is an economically - distressed community where new investments, under certain conditions, may be eligible for preferential tax treatment. Localities qualify as Opportunity Zones if they have been nominated for that designation by the state and that nomination has been certified by the Secretary of the U.S. Treasury via his delegation authority to the Internal Revenue Service. Opportunity Zones are designed to spur economic development by providing tax benefits to investors. First, investors can defer tax on any prior gains until the earlier of the date on which an investment is sold or exchanged, or Decembe

Is it easier today for homebuyers with a high debt ratio and subpar credit scores to qualify for a mortgage than it's been in years? And if so, what might that mean for first-time and repeat buyers who are struggling with credit and debt issues but still hope to buy a home? When the Federal Reserve polled senior bank executives last month on whether they've been loosening credit criteria for home-mortgage applicants, most bankers said, "no way, not us." They've kept their rules tight to avoid the problems the lending industry experienced in the housing bust of the last decade. Studies by the Urban Institute's Housing Finance Policy Center have estimated that lenders' historically strict underwriting standards have prevented millions of would-be buyers from becoming homeowners. Researchers said that between 2009 and 2014, 5.2 million mortgages were "missing" – they would have been made if lenders had relaxed their tough post-recession requi