Margus Lehiste

Check out the $3000 per sqft condos in Dubai where you can park the car on the same floor you live & 360 degree rotating views:


Dynamic Tower: The World's First Rotating Skyscraper - Click here for funny video clips

Here's how a video should look for your listing - NOT:


Condo ad:

By: Polyana da Costa - Daily Business Review

onald Trump, the real estate mogul and reality TV star, says he’s “honored” to be a subject in a lawsuit brought by about 80 buyers of luxury condominiums who say they’re victims of a fraudulent sales program.

Web Extra: Lawsuit

The lawsuit, which does not name Trump as a defendant, claims the developers of the Trump Towers complex in Sunny Isles Beach — a partnership including the Related Group and Dezer Development — used the celebrated Trump name to attract buyers. But according to the suit, the billionaire’s name can only be used temporarily and for promotional purposes and may be changed once the units are sold out, the buildings are completed and the developers are no longer associated with the project. The lawsuit was filed Tuesday in Miami-Dade Circuit Court.

The buyers are seeking cancellation of sales contracts for units with prices totaling more than $100 million and the return of about $20 million in deposits.

Reached in Scotland where he was pushing his plan for a $2 billion golf resort, Trump said he was “honored” by the lawsuit and the fight over his name.

“Everybody wants to have the name Trump,” he said.

Representatives of the Related Group did not respond to several phone calls or an e-mail seeking comment.

Gil Dezer, president of New York-based Dezer Development, which owns dozens of acres in Sunny Isles Beach, was not available for comment. Gil Dezer’s father, Michael Dezer, said he couldn’t comment because he had not seen the lawsuit. A copy of the lawsuit was e-mailed to the developer, who did not call back before deadline Wednesday.

Trump said he had a “great involvement” with the three-building, high-rise project but wouldn’t say if he has invested in it. The developers have a licensing agreement to use the Trump name and trademark to market the project, he said. He would not say if he would seek to have the Trump name removed from the project once all the units have been sold

Although the Trump name was part of all promotional material, including banners, letters and document cover sheets, it is not included in any of the actual condo documents or the purchase contract, said Robert Cooper, an Aventura attorney who is representing the buyers in the lawsuit.

“There is no license agreement in existence between the association and Trump that would give them the right to call it the Trump Towers once the developers leave,” Cooper said.

Trump has licensed his name to various developments across the world. In some cases, he is a direct investor and partner in the project. In other instances, he licensed his name to developers for a share of the profits — about 8 percent to 15 percent of gross condo sales — plus millions of dollars in upfront payments, according to a September 2006 article in Forbes magazine.

Condos in buildings that carry the Trump name are worth 36 percent more than units in similar buildings that do not carry the Trump flag, according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit also alleges purchasers in Trump Tower II and III overpaid for their units because the developer “operated a fraudulent and misleading resale program by manipulating” asking prices in Trump Tower I to support vastly inflated prices of units in the second and third buildings.

“Let’s say someone bought a unit in Tower I for $700,000 and wanted to resell it for $900,000,” Cooper explained. “The person would sign an agreement with a minimum price of $900,000, but the [brokerage firm and the developers] would list it for $1.4 million. So when buyers looked at Tower II they said, ‘Wow, the prices for these units are going up fast.”

The alleged fraud not only hurt buyers in the Towers II and III — who overpaid based on the manipulated listing prices of units in Tower I — but also harmed owners of units in Tower I who couldn’t sell their units at the inflated asking prices and were prohibited from trying to sell their units through other venues, Cooper said.

Buyers of units in the first tower received letters stating, “They were strictly prohibited from listing units on any Multiple Listing Service, including Internet advertising, and that such advertising would constitute a breach of the contract unless the purchasers first obtained the developers written consent,” according to the lawsuit.

Exclusively Baronoff Realty is the brokerage that handled the sales for the three towers.

Elena Baronoff, the brokerage’s president, did not return phone messages and e-mails seeking comment before deadline Wednesday. The company operates in the Trump International Sonesta Beach Resort.

Baronoff’s Web site claims units in Trump Towers I and II are sold out, and the third tower is nearly complete.

Free classifieds site can be a place to find deals but BOTH renters and landlords should be aware of the amount of possible scams:

For renters typical scam would look like:
"I and my wife came over to the U.K. for missionary work, so I hope you will promise us that you will take care of our house. Send $2,400 via Western Union and then you know, I will send the keys to you"

How do the scammers make money from Landlords? If you contact this person, he/she would have likely offered to pay the rent for the apartment site-unseen.  In addition, the person would have offered that his/her employer will include money for expenses in a check, which you would cash and then send the difference to my new “tenant.”  Obviously, you would never see my new tenant again - or your money (as the check they send bounces).

More about those scams:
www.kget.com/news/local/story
Real Real Estate in Connecticut with comments

I guess best way to avoid scams is to follow the old adage: "if it sounds too good to be true - it probably  is a scam"

Brickell Video from the perspective of a Miami resident

Original article in Sunday Miami Herald BY LYDIA MARTIN:

A showcase Miami neighborhood is humming with an infusion of urban life -- a growing skyline, new places to eat and mingle, and a vibrant street scene.

At the new Segafredo cafe in the Brickell Avenue neighborhood, a Friday night crowd presses against velvet ropes. Inside, it's impossible to catch the bartender's eye, impossible to weave through all the bodies to find friends.

Just down the street, the Novecento restaurant is just as claustrophobic. A couple of blocks north at Rosa Mexicano, there's an hourlong wait for dinner, and servers are a blur of tableside guacamole-mashing.

Not long ago, the Brickell area, although home to a string of posh condo towers that went up in the 1980s and 1990s, was more a business district that seemed deserted after dark. But Miami's building boom is changing the skyline and street life.

Today's market is tough for condo sellers on Brickell, with some investors taking proverbial baths, and foreclosure rates climbing. But even with many of the new glossy towers seemingly half empty, the area is jelling as the real-estate slowdown offers a positive: It's opening the door for eager young professionals to snag rental bargains in an area they could not have afforded a year ago.

''I have a lot of friends who live and work on Brickell,'' Mario Baltizar, a 31-year-old accountant who moved to Miami from Argentina two years ago, says while sipping a vodka tonic and scoping the single girls at the Rosa Mexicano's bar. ``So I think I'm going to find a place down here to rent for a year and then maybe think about buying later when things get cheaper.''

More and more pedestrians are filling the sidewalks at night, taking their fancy-breed dogs for walks, strolling to just-opened restaurants, coffee bars, lounges.

That feel of city life is what attracted martial-arts teacher Darryl Lipsky, who used to live a few minutes from the karate school in West Kendall where he has worked for 16 years.

In 2006, Lipsky bought a loft with stunning bay and city views at Neo Vertika, on the Miami River at 690 SW First Ct. Now he has a serious commute to work. But the extra time behind the wheel is worth it.

''I can walk to restaurants, to clubs. I used to call where I lived the country,'' says Lipsky, 36. ``Kendall is great if you have kids, I guess. But I don't. For me, the city is the place to be.''

LIVELY ON WEEKENDS

NEW AND OLD SPOTS

-- AND MORE TO COME

On weekends, most of the new spots that have opened in the neighborhood (among them Andu, Badrutt's Place, Abokado, Blue Martini), plus the handful of old standbys (Perricone's, Rosinella, Tobacco Road), jump with crowds lured by the growing urban scene.

And there's the promise of more: An Epicure Market at the Off Brickell project west of Brickell Way on Southwest First Avenue. A Whole Foods and a movie theater at the Met Miami complex, on Biscayne Boulevard just north of the river. A Balans restaurant, a Publix supermarket and an L.A. Fitness gym at Mary Brickell Village, the recently opened restaurant-and-retail mall on South Miami Avenue between Southeast Ninth and 10th streets, epicenter of the action.

''Brickell has always been in the back of my mind as the place where I wanted to buy my first condo,'' says Marcia Martinez, 30, the Cuban-American vice president of Zakarin Public Relations, which just relocated from Coral Gables to a new space at Mary Brickell Village.

Martinez has lived in South Beach and is now in Key Biscayne while she keeps an eye on slipping real-estate prices in the Brickell area. She hopes to buy something within the year.

''I can't wait to start walking to work -- and to happy hour,'' she says. ``The big difference between Brickell and Miami Beach is that most people on the Beach are transient . . . and basically just looking for a good time. I'm more focused on meeting young, serious professionals who are local, preferably Latin, and have ties to the city like I do. And that's Brickell.''

In fact, many call Brickell the new South Beach, even though the neighborhoods are different. Brickell has a decidedly urbane, Latin American vibe as many of the well-to-do from Venezuela, Argentina and other places leave tumultuous governments and economies behind and gravitate toward the one area of Miami that is developing a big-city feel.

South Beach is about tourists, Brickell about locals who work at nearby law firms, accounting firms, banks. And, unlike South Beach, it's not the edgy, Bohemian crowd that's making Brickell pop but the suit-and-tie set.

Of the 6,500 new condo units currently available between the Brickell area (from the Miami River south to the Rickenbacker Causeway) and the adjacent pocket just north of the river where Met Miami and other new high-rises are sprouting, an estimated 4,000 are empty, says real-estate consultant Peter Zalewski, who is working with several international vulture funds planning to buy blocks of distressed units in the area. Once the dust settles on the current building boom around Brickell, there should be 30 new towers offering 16,000 units.

''The funds are going to rent stuff out at a price that will poach residents from Aventura, South Beach, Kendall,'' Zalewski says. ``You'll be able to get a sleek, new, 1,000-square-foot unit on Brickell for $1,200.''

Even at current discounted prices, a unit that rents for $1,200 would cost twice as much a month to buy once you figure in maintenance fees, taxes, insurance.

''You would pay about $2,600 a month for a place that costs about $300,000,'' Zalewski says. ``If you can rent the same place for $1,200, you suddenly have an extra $1,400 a month to spend at Segafredo, Novecento, Big Fish. That's what's making Brickell so attractive to the young professionals.''

Real-estate agent Maritza Cuellar has shifted from selling units to leasing them. Buyers are circling but waiting for deeper discounts. On a Saturday afternoon, Cuellar rushes to meet clients at Neo Vertika. Three or four other agents, with potential buyers trailing, pass one another in the lobby on their way to show units that likely won't move, although prices have dropped about 30 percent from a few months ago.

''I have to be honest. I haven't made a sale in more than a month,'' says Cuellar, who specializes in Brickell buildings. ``It's very slow.''

Cuellar takes young Colombian architect Andrés Osorio and his wife, Lina, to Latitude on the River, 625 SW Second Ave. They look at two-bedroom units with bay views, sleek kitchens and spa tubs. There's a listing for $379,000, which Cuellar thinks can be talked down to about $340,000. But as much as the couple fantasize about a condo just like this one, they say they'll wait for a better price.

''We have a condo in the Gables now, and it's great,'' Andrés Osorio says. ``But a lot of our friends live on Brickell. This is just more the life we want.''

19TH CENTURY PIONEERS

BRICKELL FAMILY BEHIND

EARLY DEVELOPMENT

Brickell was a showcase Miami address from the city's start. After arriving in 1871, pioneer William Brickell and his British wife, Mary, paid $3,000 for 2,000 acres that ran from just south of the Miami River to Coconut Grove. They set up a post to trade with the Seminoles and built a house at the edge of Biscayne Bay. Mary Brickell developed the Brickell thoroughfare after her husband died in 1908. She also created the Roads area nearby.

By the early 1900s, Brickell Avenue was becoming Miami's Millionaires Row. Among those who lived there: Carl Fisher, developer of Miami Beach; James Deering, who built Vizcaya; artist and designer Louis Comfort Tiffany, famous for his work in stained glass; presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan; Dr. James Jackson, namesake of Jackson Memorial Hospital.

Those who know Brickell's more recent history are confident that the neighborhood's condo market will rebound relatively quickly. They point to the boom in the 1980s, spurred in part by the free flow of drug money. When that business dried up, and when the economies of Latin America tanked and the U.S. debt crisis worsened, Brickell wound up with a huge inventory of empty upscale apartments.

''I moved to the area in 1989,'' says Miami historian Arva Moore Parks, who picked up a 1938 colonial-style house on South Miami Avenue for $237,500, according to property records. ``It was a depressed area. I couldn't have bought a house like that in Coral Gables. There were several new buildings up in the neighborhood, but none of the lights were on. It was a lot like it is now. But eventually, those units all got absorbed. And they will be again.''

Bernardo Fort-Brescia, founder of the internationally famed Arquitectonica, the architectural firm that has put the biggest stamp on Brickell, is optimistic about a quick turnaround.

'What happened during that bust in the 1980s is that within three years, the market was coming back, and people were saying, `We should have bought when it collapsed,' '' says Fort-Brescia, whose firm designed the iconic Atlantis, Imperial and Palace condo towers on Brickell Avenue that went up in the early 1980s and, this go-round, Icon Brickell, 500 Brickell and Latitude on the River, among other projects.

As the trend to leave the suburbs and return to the urban core continues across the country, Fort-Brescia says, Brickell will be the segment of Miami's building boom most likely to right itself first.

''Brickell Avenue itself is becoming very much like our Madison Avenue,'' he says. ``The infrastructure is there. Every day, there are more restaurants, more shops, more of what people look for in city life.''

Jorge Perez, head of The Related Group, the biggest high-rise condo builder in Florida, built several residential towers in the Brickell area in the early 1990s. Now, with more than 4,000 new condo units at Icon Brickell, 500 Brickell, The Plaza and 50 Biscayne, Perez shrugs about developers who may be losing their shirts.

''What's important is not whether Jorge Perez goes broke, or X developer goes broke. . . . People will live in these buildings either way. What you see now is nothing compared to what it's going to be,'' says Perez, who has joined a Wall Street firm to create an investor fund that would pick up troubled new properties at bargain-basement prices, including those built by his company.

''You have to remember that when the bust came to Brickell in the 1980s, there wasn't an urban trend, and it still turned around quickly,'' he says. ``Nobody really wanted to be in downtown Miami then. There were no restaurants, no performing arts center, no American Airlines Arena. Now, this is the cool place to be.''

Cooler than South Beach, say some folks who have recently opened restaurants and nightspots in the area.

''We looked at South Beach,'' says Johannes Badrutt of the Swiss hotel family, who recently opened one of the Brickell area's poshest new restaurant-lounges, Badrutt's Place, 1250 S. Miami Ave. ``But I don't like seasonal places. Brickell is year-round. And the crowd here is more elegant. This is the place in Miami that has the buzz.''

Although the U.S. economy is shaky, Badrutt -- like many folks developing residential and commercial properties along Brickell -- is betting that healthy Latin American economies will bring in more and more high-end Latin American companies (and those that do business with them) to set up shop here.

Says Loretta Cockrum, chief executive officer of Foram Group behind Brickell Financial Centre, the 40-story office tower going up at 600 Brickell Ave.: ``The commercial market is very strong on Brickell, and it will get stronger as more multinationals open offices in Miami, especially those that do business in Latin America. This is like a mini-Manhattan with a focus toward the south. And Brickell Avenue has had global cachet for a long time. There are streets in the world that if you say the name, everybody knows where you're talking about. Brickell is one of those.''

`A REAL NEIGHBORHOOD'

BRICKELL, SOUTH BEACH

DIFFERENT IN ATTITUDE

Brickell may be hot, but for the most part, restaurant and nightspot owners are trying to refrain from copping too much blown-up South Beach attitude. Valet parking at lunch time is $5 at most places, $15 in the evening, a substantial savings from Miami Beach, where valet parking is usually $18 to $30.

At Andu, a Mediterranean restaurant and lounge on the ground floor of Neo Vertika, a Grey Goose and soda is $10. In Miami Beach, it could be $18 to $25. Some weekday nights can still be slow at Andu, which opened in February, but owner Antonio Viejo is not discouraged.

''We're confident about this area,'' Viejo says. ``We've only been open a few weeks, and it takes time, like it does with any business. But we're doing great. Our focus is to become a real neighborhood spot in a real neighborhood. We want to be a place that's affordable and easy to be at.''

Segafredo's owner started out with the same idea. And a premium vodka cocktail remains a down-to-earth $9.50. But there was no way around the velvet ropes at the front door.

''We were expecting a big crowd when we opened. But we were surprised by how big,'' says owner Alejandro Ferllen. ``We are open from lunch until late evening, 18 hours a day. And we are packed almost 18 hours. There comes a point where we can't fit anybody else inside.''

The condominium market is about to get worse as many cities brace for a flood of new supply this year -- the result of construction started at the height of the housing boom.

More than 4,000 new units will be completed in both Atlanta and Phoenix by the end of the year. Developers in Miami and Fort Lauderdale, Fla., are readying nearly 10,000 total new units in a market already struggling with canyons of unsold condos. San Diego, another hard-hit region, will add 2,500 units, according to estimates provided by Reis Inc., a New York-based real-estate-research firm.

Artist's rendering of the Onyx on the Bay complex in Miami.

The new building comes on top of unprecedented supply. The U.S. finished 2007 with a supply of condos large enough to absorb 10 months of demand, the highest level since the National Association of Realtors began the tally in 1999.

The deluge means bad news for developers and potentially lower prices, including in cities such as Atlanta and Dallas that have avoided the worst of the housing bust. If defaults and foreclosures rise, lenders will feel the pain too.

Regulators have been sounding the alarm for weeks about the exposure of small and mid-size banks to commercial real estate, which mostly means construction loans to developers of condos and single-family housing.

Lenders of all sizes have $42 billion of condominium debt on their books, according to Foresight Analytics. In just three months -- between the third and fourth quarters of last year -- the delinquency rate rose to 10% from 5.9%, says the Oakland, Calif., research firm.

The news isn't bad for everyone. Vulture buyers have started to circle, hoping to take advantage of foreclosed properties that banks may start dumping at fire-sale prices. Also, some condos are being converted to rental units, increasing supply for renters and putting downward pressure on prices.

It may seem surprising that anyone would want to add supply to a market whose troubles have been well-publicized for many months. But the economics of condo building encourage developers to bring half-finished projects to completion, even when prices and demand are plunging.

Developers usually put up their own money for a project first, then spend borrowed funds. Once developers have spent their money and have commitments from lenders, they have a strong incentive to keep building to finish the project.

"These developers had millions of dollars tied up and they had them financed so they just moved forward," says J. Ronald Terwilliger, chief executive of Trammell Crow Residential, which builds many rental apartment buildings and also a few condos. "What they hope is that by the time the project is finished the market comes back."

Shelving Projects

However, developers and lenders can more easily shelve projects that are still in the early stages. Many developments nationwide are being canceled, suggesting that by next year or 2010, the number of new condos coming onto the market may slow to a trickle.

One big question hanging over the market is how many of the buyers who have put down deposits during construction will show up to close the deal. Some deposits were as little as 3% of the purchase price. The price of a condo has frequently fallen more than the amount of the deposit, giving the buyer an incentive to forfeit the deposit.

For example, if a buyer put down $50,000 for a unit priced at $500,000, and the value falls to $400,000, the buyer is apt to walk away -- or find some fault with the unit and sue the developer to get the deposit back. Furthermore, some buyers who still want to move in are finding that they no longer qualify for mortgage loans.

In Miami, only 57 units in the 118-unit Onyx on the Bay have closed since August 2007, leaving the remaining 61 units in the possession of the developer, according to Miami-Dade County records. Willy Bermello, the Onyx's developer, could not be reached.

The deteriorating economy isn't helping. "When the world goes to hell in a handbasket, the last thing anyone wants to buy is a condo," says Cathy Schlegel, a mortgage-loan broker in Fort Worth, Texas, whose condo in a high-rise called The Tower sat on the market for 14 months before she finally sold it at a loss in February.

The rising supply is a reflection of the picture in 2004 through 2006 -- a time of huge demand for condos. Speculation was rampant as investors believed empty nesters and young professionals seeking an urban experience akin to what they watched on "Friends" would prop up the condo market for years.

Most projects take about three years from the time they are marketed to potential buyers to the time they are ready to be moved into. Deposits help developers get a construction loan that is to be paid off when the buyers close on their new condos years later.

However, cancellations are rising, meaning developers may not be able to pay back their banks. Peter Zalewski, founder of Condo Vultures Realty LLC in Miami, says condo developers he is working with are expecting 20% to 40% of buyers who put down deposits to walk away from the deal. In some areas, such as inland buildings and new projects along the river in Miami "walkaways" are expected to be even higher.

Unlike single-family housing, condos tend to be concentrated in certain areas, meaning the pain is limited to pockets of the country.

In Jacksonville, Fla., developer Cameron Kuhn had planned to redevelop the SunTrust office tower into office condos as part of a larger complex that included residential condos. Now the housing condo tower is on hold, dashing city officials' hopes that the project would help to bring parking, residents and more life to the downtown.

Prices of condos have been steady in some areas and fallen elsewhere. The median condo sales price in the Cape Coral-Fort Myers area of Florida fell 26% to $202,300 in the fourth quarter of 2007 from $273,400 a year earlier.

Prices dropped nearly 20% in Tucson, Ariz., and 12% in the Atlanta area during that time, according to National Association of Realtors data. Inside the newly minted Quantum on the Bay in Miami, prices for two-bedroom units have fallen from the high $700,000s to around $500,000.

One option for a developer is to convert the condos to apartments. However, these projects are usually financed with the presumption that sales of individual condos pay off more than rents from a comparably sized apartment building. Also, lenders typically expect developers to pay off condo construction loans with the millions of dollars they receive when closing on the sales. Such a quick payout isn't possible if the developer is only receiving monthly rental payments.

Mr. Terwilliger says Trammell Crow plans its condo developments with an eye towards converting them into rentals if necessary. But its profits are cut when it does that because the company typically spends more for land and amenities when developing condos, he says.

A project called ATLofts at the mammoth Atlantic Station project in downtown Atlanta presold about 80% of its 303 units in a mixed-use building that had condos above retail space. But the project ran into water-infiltration problems. That gave buyers an out.

The developer, Lane Co., ended up turning about half the units into rentals. The developer of the retail space, Atlantic Town Center, bought the remaining 156 units as condos. Today, only 52 of those have sold, according to Haddow & Co., an Atlanta-based real-estate consulting company. An Atlantic Town Center spokesman predicted the remaining condos will sell "considering the prime location."

As more condominium projects get into trouble, investors are looking to pounce. Some 700 people showed up for a distressed-real-estate conference this past week in Miami where the condo glut was the dominant discussion subject.

Valet parking attendants had to wave participants away from the hotel and toward a parking lot at a shopping center, and attendees overwhelmed the conference halls, forcing many to watch the proceedings on screens in adjoining rooms.

--Peter Grant contributed to this article

Original story by Tom Van Riper, Forbes.com:

Want to live where the air is sweet, the water is pure and the streets are clean? Try the country. But what if you don't like the sticks? Then try Florida.


Led by Miami, the Sunshine State dominates our 2008 list of America's Cleanest Cities with four metro areas in the top 10--Jacksonville (No. 3), Orlando (No. 4) and Tampa-St. Petersburg (No. 8) all make appearances. Clearly, a state that relies so heavily on tourism and part-time snow-bird residents knows the value of keeping itself spruced up for company.

With the built-in advantage of weather patterns that blow out smog, these large metropolitan areas, together with No. 2-ranked Seattle and No. 5 Portland, Ore., top our 2008 list. But it's more than just sea breezes pushing these metros up the list. These big cities are also reaping the rewards of investing in efforts to keep clean, even as their populations boom.



In recent years, Florida's Department of Environmental Protection has launched programs aimed at providing power plants with the equipment needed to scrub out harmful emissions before they're discharged. The agency has singled out the Tampa Electric Co. (other-otc: TAECM - news - people ) for going beyond federal and state requirements on emission reductions.

On the water side, the agency has aimed its budget not only on fighting direct discharges into public waters but on indirect spillage from things like storm drain runoff.

The same is true elsewhere. Portland, for example, is 10 years into a 14-year, $2 billion investment aimed at cleaning up the Willamette River. In addition, the city's added more light rail, sidewalks and biofuels to its bus fleet. It's gone a long way toward reducing air pollution in the region. "The investments we've made on land use and transportation over the past two decades are paying off," says Portland city council commissioner Dan Saltzman.



Air quality is a huge health factor for urban dwellers, so we made it a very big deal in our study. To determine the cleanest major cities in the U.S., we initially measured the rankings for air pollution and ozone levels among all 49 U.S. metro areas with populations exceeding 1 million, using data from the American Lung Association. After eliminating those areas that ranked poorest in air quality, we measured the remaining 29 cities on the additional but less-weighted factors of water quality and per-capita spending on Superfund site cleanup and solid-waste management. From this list, we drew our top 10.

All figures were based on Metropolitan Statistical Areas (which include the city and surrounding area) with the exception of waste-management spending, which was based exclusively on the city proper.

Water cleanliness rankings were derived from statistics compiled by the University of Cincinnati from local reports of EPA violations. Metros were ranked based on reports of bacteria, chlorine byproducts and chemicals or metals such as arsenic, copper and lead in the drinking water. Operational expenditures for solid-waste management are recorded at city-data.com.

Beyond health, cleanliness appears to have an important economic impact. While nine of our 10 cleanest cities showed population increases between 2000 and 2006, major metro areas losing residents over that period tend to rank near the bottom of the cleanliness list; they include Philadelphia, Chicago, Buffalo, N.Y., and Detroit. Many factors, notably economic ones, go into a person's choice to move, of course. But a reputation for clean air, water and streets seems to count as well.

The migration has been most pronounced in the Sunbelt, with Jacksonville growing its population 8% and Miami 11.5% since the start of the decade. Can they keep clean with all this growth? That's the challenge of the coming decades. Here's hoping they can.

List of condos in Brickell:

#	Building	Address	Year	For Sale	For Rent
1	1201 Brickell Bay Drive	1201 Brickell Bay Drive
2	1390 Brickell Bay	1390 Brickell Bay Drive
3	1550 Brickell Apartments	1550 Brickell Ave			2
4	25 Bay Tower Condo	175 Se 25 Rd	1971	3	1
5	500 Brickell	500 Brickell Avenue		4
6	Atlantis On Brickell	2025 Brickell Av	1982	10	2
7	AXIS Condos	1101 SW 1st Avenue	2008	160	1
8	Bayshore Place	1420 S Bayshore Dr	1973	4	1
9	Brickell 25 Condo	145 Se 25 Rd	1970	3
10	Brickell Bay Club	2333 Brickell Av	1974	23	3
11	Brickell Bay Tower Condo	1408 SE Bayshore Dr	1964	8	3
12	Brickell Biscayne	150 Se 25 Rd	1969	10	3
13	Brickell East Condo	151 SE 15 RD	1983	3	2
14	Brickell Forest Townhomes	2400/2410/2420/2430 Brickell Av	1980	6	5
15	Brickell Harbour	200 Se 15 Rd	1974	8	4
16	Brickell Mar	2201 Brickell Av	1969	5	3
17	Brickell On The River	31 SE 5th Street	2006	66	21
18	Brickell On The River, South Tower Lofts	41 SE 5th Street	2007	15	37
19	Brickell Park Condo	130 SE 25 Rd	1981	4	2
20	Brickell Place, 1865 Brickell Av	1865 Brickell Av	1975	13	6
21	Brickell Place, 1901 Brickell Av	1901 Brickell Av	1975	19	7
22	Brickell Place, 1915 Brickell Av	1915 Brickell Av	1980	12	6
23	Brickell Place, 1925 Brickell Av	1925 Brickell Av	1980	12
24	Brickell Shores	1440 Brickell Bay Dr	1978		1
25	Brickell Terrace Condos	1918 Brickell Ave		4	1
26	Brickell Townhouse	2451 Brickell Av	1963	22	10
27	Brickell View West	1723 Sw 2 Av	2007	2	2
28	Brickell View, 126 SW 17 Rd	126 SW 17 Rd	1997	6
29	Bristol Tower	2127 Brickell Av	1993	13	3
30	Camden Brickell	50 SW 10th St			2
31	Capital at Brickell	1420 South Miami Ave	2011	5
32	Capital at Brickell	1430 South Miami Ave	2011
33	Commodore Bay Condo	1402 S Bayshore Dr	1994	4	1
34	Costa Bella	1450 S Bayshore Dr	1977	10	6
35	Emerald at Brickell	218 SE 14 St	2006	19	14
36	Espirito Santo Plaza, Mayfield Condos	1395 Brickell Av	2004	30	5
37	Fortune House Condo Hotel	185 SE 14th Terrace	1998	25	11
38	Four Ambassadors, 801 Brickell Bay Dr	801 Brickell Bay Dr	1968	8	1
39	Four Ambassadors, 825 Brickell Bay Dr	825 Brickell Bay Dr	1968	11	2
40	Four Ambassadors, 905 Brickell Bay Dr	905 Brickell Bay Dr	1968	11	1
41	Four Ambassadors, 999 Brickell Bay Dr	999 Brickell Bay Dr	1968	18	4
42	Four Seasons Residences	1425 Brickell Avenue	2003	34	13
43	Glass Lofts	1004 Sw 3rd Ave	2008	6
44	Habitat Condo	1701 SW 2 AV	2008	4	1
45	Holleman Park, Brickell Roads Atriums	1712 SW 2 AV	2008	9	9
46	ICON Brickell & Viceroy	495 Brickell Ave	2009	6
47	Imperial at Brickell	1627 Brickell Av	1983	18	5
48	Infinity At Brickell	60 SW 13th St.		10
49	Infinity II - Lofts at Brickell	1300 South Miami Ave.
50	Jade Residences at Brickell Bay	1331 Brickell Bay Drive		65	23
51	Latitude On The River	185 Sw 7 St	2007	60	38
52	Lofts on Brickell	1528 Brickell Ave	2007	2
53	Lofts on Brickell II	1650 Brickell Ave	2007	5
54	Neo Brickell Inn	1950 Brickell Ave	1968	3
55	Neo Vertika	690 Sw 1 Ct	2006	69	52
56	One Broadway Brickell	1451 S Miami Ave			2
57	Park View Condo	115 Sw 11 St	2007	4	2
58	Point View	1430 Brickell Bay Dr	1961	5	2
59	Santa Maria	1643 Brickell Av	1997	21	9
60	Skyline at Mary Brickell Village	900 SW 1 Av	2008	17
61	Skyline on Brickell	2101 Brickell Av	2004	60	27
62	Solaris at Brickell	186 SE 12 Te	2006	27	7
63	The Avenue	1060 Brickell Ave		9	14
64	The Club at Brickell Bay	1200 Brickell Bay Dr	2005	119	28
65	The Mark	1155 Brickell Bay Dr	2001	49	21
66	The Metropolitan	2475 Brickell Av	2001	23	12
67	The Palace Condo	1541 Brickell Av	1981	23	7
68	The Plaza On Brickell	901 Brickell Ave	2008	43	36
69	The Sail on the Brickell	170 SE. 14 th street		48	21
70	Villa Brickell Condos	1824/1834 Brickell Ave	2000	1	1
71	Villa Regina	1581 Brickell Av	1982	11	2
72	Vue at Brickell	1250 S Miami Av	2004	83	7

Original story at: suburbanhousehunters.com

Thanks for Lucas from Miami Condo Investments for bringing us this story:

Yesterday afternoon, the Regent Bal Harbour Hotel & Residences held its grand opening celebration. The Regent Bal Harbour is a 5-star hotel with world-class amenities, a 5-star restaurant and gorgeous water views from every hotel room. It will likely be a favorite amongst affluent South Florida vacationers. Prices range from $750 to $8,500 per night.

Take a look at the CBS4 video of the Regent Bal Harbour inaugeration yesterday.

There are also Residences for sale with prices range from $645,000 to $6.8M: 75 units for sale in Regent Bal Harbor
and for rent ranging from $6,500 to $16,500 17 units for rent in Regent Bal Harbor

It has come to my attention that due to housing market downturn - there are new kind of condo developments under way. See the photos below for Red N. Development Group's newest projects:




Here are some comments from proud owners:
Great amenities! That pool looks wonderful.
I love my studio. (red to the left)
I call the grey loft on the top :)


Here is a picture of the exclusive penthouse unit:


and waterfront: