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hippsy01 · 7 years ago

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Reasons to Hire a Real Estate Agent When Buying a House

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St.Petersburg, FL – May 9, 2018 – The advantages of hiring a real estate agent to purchase a home is one of the top questions asked by clients. Due to the amount of information available online, many clients think that they could look for a house without help from a real estate agent. Some buyers are lucky to purchase one without an agent. But this is not true for many more clients.

Benefits of hiring a professional agent

A professional St. Petersburg real estate agent has a formal educational regarding buying and selling Florida properties. A client needs to find the right agent. The real estate is a regulated industry, thus the cost of hiring a professional real estate agent is more or less the same. Instead of spending your valuable time searching for the right property, you can leave it to the pros who spent the time to learn the business and sit down for the examination to obtain a license.

Agents act as a filter. Instead of you going out to several property visits, the agent will do the filtering for you. Based on the information you supply and your preferences, your St. Petersburg Realtor will locate the right properties that fit your requirements.�

If you are about to move to a new location, a professional Florida real estate agent will be of great help to you. The person will know the neighborhood and will be able to find the right houses for you to choose from. You can benefit from local data such as demographics, schools, convenience stores and shopping areas, hospitals and clinics and even crime rate. You will also benefit from their inside knowledge about the houses available in the area.

A real estate agent will guide you on how the real estate market works. You will also learn how the sale prices of houses are structured. They provide all the pricing information, but the final decision will come from the buyer. From what the potential buyer decides, your St. Petersburg real estate agent will devise a plan on how to negotiate for better prices.

You’ll be able to gain access to market information that is not readily available to the public. You can likewise benefit from the professional networking skills of the real estate agent. They know many professionals who work in different fields who can provide services that only real estate agents can access. They can provide you a list of other competent and efficient companies or individuals who can help you make the final decision about buying a certain property.

You’ll be able to benefit from the negotiating skills of a professional real estate agent in St. Pete. Your real estate agent will have a price negotiating strategy. This will ensure that you’ll be able to get the best price for the property you want. Likewise, your information will remain confidential before the sale is finalized.

The paperwork involved in purchasing a house is substantial. With a St. Petersburg real estate agent, you will not handle most of the paperwork. The agent will also review and analyze the details, ensuring that there are no errors or omission in the paperwork. Further, your agent will still provide after-sales service to help you some complications with the transaction, such as taxes, including transfer tax, documentary stamps and tax assessments.�

It is important to find the right real estate agent to work with you to secure your dream house or the new house that will fit your requirements if you are new to the area. In St. Petersburg, find the most trusted real estate agent, by reading industry reviews, customer reviews and references from former clients and colleagues. Moreover, it is important to trust the St. Pete real estate agent you find.

Media Contact Company Name: Real Estate St. Petersburg Contact Person: Realtor Leisa Erickson Email: Send Email Country: United States Website: http://www.realestateagentstpetersburg.org/

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hippsy01 · 7 years ago

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Catsimatidis compares apples to oranges as New Yorkʼs mean streets spit out more regulations, higher taxes

gristede’sjohn catsimatidisREBNYred apple group

Supermarket titan John Catsimatidis is trading in the Big Apple for Florida oranges.

The one-time mayoral candidate and chairman of the Red Apple Group said bureaucratic pemitting processes and heavy taxes in New York are driving many investors to the Sunshine State.

At the Real Estate Board of New York Residential Management Awards breakfast last week, he announced his company just purchased a 100,000 s/f development site in St. Petersburg, Florida for $16.5 million where he plans to build a 1.6 million s/f mixed use development.

“When you leave New York, the mayor of the city of St. Petersburg says ‘What would you like to do, you want your permits?ʼ” Catsimatidis told the gathering. “I said, ‘It takes a year to get permits in New York.’ [The mayor said] we’ll get them for you in four months — three if you need them faster.

“Every time New York raises taxes, you know what Florida is doing? Celebrating. ‘Come on down,’ that’s what they’re saying.”

Catsimatidis also offered his thoughts on the harsh retail market and the process of shedding his unwanted title as the Grocery King.

“No matter what I do, I’m not going to lose the title of Grocery King,” Catsimatidis joked at the start of his remarks.

“I love the supermarket business. It’s my 50th year in the supermarket business. If I were committed for murder, I would’ve gotten out for less.”

Catsimatidisʼ Gristedes is one of the longest-surviving supermarket chains in New York City.

As many neighborhood supermarkets close down locations, including Gristedes, Catsimatidis is still actively invested in the market. When rival supermarket D’Agostino was in financial straits, Catsimatidis reopened some D’Agostino locations under his Red Apple Group flag and an expected merger is “down the line.”

Catsimatidis is also reportedly looking to scoop up rival Fairway, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2016 but emerged from bankruptcy shortly after. “If they go bankrupt again, if something goes wrong there, their people know we have a checkbook,” Catsimatidis told Real Estate Weekly.

The supermarket magnate said he sympathized with his competitors. Businesses south of 96th Street pay commercial rent tax and landlords are now looking at a potential vacancy tax that charges them for keeping retail spaces vacant for too long.

“Retail is in deep shit, the whole commercial real estate industry is very, very tough in Manhattan,” Catsimatidis said. “Commercial rent tax, very tough. The proposal for vacancy tax is crazier. We’re going to triple or quadruple our costs.”

He attributed his own success with Gristedes to being “faster on my feet” in dealing with new problems but noted many of his competitors couldn’t make a living.

“I’m just happy to be above zero,” he said. “But other people can’t make a living and if you can’t make a living, you’re going to give up your location.”

Nevertheless, Gristedes represents just two percent of Catsʼ Red Apple Group, now in its 40th year, an entity that also includes the oil refinery United Refining Company, home heating company United Metro Energy, and Red Apple Real Estate.

The Greek billionaire said he began looking into real estate back in 1977 when he took the excess revenue from Gristedes and invested in properties nearby his supermarkets.

“I said, ‘If I can’t find a tenant, I’ll open a supermarket. Before you know it, you wake up one day and New York real estate is worth a lot of money,” he said.

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hippsy01 · 7 years ago

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Sarasota nonprofits focus on babies’ first 1,000 days

Ambitious Sarasota County initiative will embrace all babies

Every day in 2017, an average of 10 babies were born in Sarasota County — half of them to parents who could not even afford the price of bringing them into the world.

Each of these five babies came into the arms of a single mother who earned less than $22,311 a year — or perhaps joined a family of six surviving on less than $61,000 annually. Such thresholds — 185 percent of the federal poverty level — qualify a woman in Florida to have Medicaid cover her health care costs during labor and delivery. At Sarasota Memorial Hospital’s maternity ward, the only one in the county, this stark fact of life applied to 51 percent of all 3,564 newborns last year.

Of course, babies in low-income households can and do thrive, while those more comfortably situated are not immune to setbacks. But this stubborn pattern of economic disparity suggests that a given pair of babies born on the same day in Sarasota are likely to leave the hospital on vastly divergent trajectories. And when they meet again — perhaps in kindergarten, when the maturation process in their brains is about 90 percent complete — they are liable to begin their formal educations armed with such radically different vocabularies and capacities for comprehension that they might as well be growing up on opposite ends of the planet.

It’s a harsh dichotomy that Kelly Romanoff calls “unacceptable.” As projects manager for the Charles & Margery Barancik Foundation, she has worked for the past year to assemble a coalition of 32 nonprofits, foundations and government agencies in service of a new campaign, First 1,000 Days Sarasota County. The partnership, after an official launch this Wednesday, will seek innovative ways to support local families during a child’s most critical period of development — from conception through the first two years of life.

Within this small window of time, children learn to distinguish sounds, recognize a face, scoot across a room, put words together and make early sense of the world, forming neural connections in the brain that will determine habits of perception for the rest of their lives. First 1,000 Days efforts are built on the premise that babies deprived of proper nourishment and stimulation, or exposed to toxic stress at levels that damage their fragile brains, are being failed not only by their families, but by the larger support networks designed to protect them.

“This is a problem that can be solved,” Romanoff says. “While the families face many obstacles, as a whole our resources in this community are so abundant, that by just bringing everyone together, closer, and inviting people to invest in the work that’s being done, we can really get access to these families and help mitigate so many of their challenges.”

While the scope of the dilemma is complex and daunting, local collaborators believe they can make significant headway, for two reasons:

• Everybody loves babies, and feels responsible for their welfare.

• Research has shown that, allowed time and space to develop fully, the mother-infant bond is so powerful that a woman can overcome such hurdles as poverty, addiction, trauma and social isolation in order to give her child a life far safer and more nurturing than her own has been.

‘I have feelings’

Sarah Guinn is one of the lucky young women to find that time and space, but she had to go to jail to get there.

Cradling her 5-week-old son Carter against her shoulder and locking him into a loving laser-gaze, she tells her story: After years of addiction, she was shocked to discover she was pregnant. Determined to get clean for her baby, she called three detox facilities and was rejected by all of them. Finally, she says, she turned to her probation officer — and asked for the urinalysis she knew would prove she had violated her probation by using illegal drugs. After more than 100 days in jail, going through withdrawal, she obtained a court-ordered referral to First Step of Sarasota, a partner in the First 1,000 Days project.

For more than 20 years, First Step’s treatment and education program has offered behavioral therapy, parenting and nutrition classes and 24-hour support from counselors, along with residential care for the baby’s first months of life. Formerly addicted mothers can study for a GED or take vocational classes to get ready for what comes next. Because residential facilities like this are rare in Florida, mothers come from all over the state. Along with child-rearing skills, they learn how unwise it can be to return to former routines, so Sarasota County is often where they choose to make a fresh start with their babies.

Kyley Flores is hoping that she and her 3-month-old daughter Audra can find a place at Our Mother’s House, a Venice housing program run by Catholic Charities. Her long-term goal, she adds, is to open her own nail salon.

“I know it won’t be easy,” she says. “But I already had to do a lot of hard things, and make a change in the kinds of people I associated with.”

Guinn isn’t sure yet what comes next for her and Carter; she lost her apartment and job in Polk County when she went to jail. But it was worth it, she insists: “He’s awesome. He’s the reason I did everything.”

First Step clinical director Nancy Page has seen women respond almost magically to the methodical encouragements they receive at the center, after enduring the social judgment that convinces other struggling mothers to give in to old habits. When they see their babies born drug-free and at a healthy birth weight, she says, they are motivated to forge a more disciplined and grounded family life.

“I feel great,” Guinn says. “I hadn’t been more than a day sober in eight years, and now I have feelings. I want to be the best mom I can for him. When he was born and they put him on my chest, I just stared at him. I didn’t know what to do.”

Page, who has been in the field of recovery counseling since 1992, does not underestimate the current opioid epidemic’s implacable force. But she will testify that a natural maternal instinct can be just as irresistible.

“If you talk to our clients, they say it was a game changer for them,” Page says. “They give credit to being pregnant for saving their life. You know, these are people who are broken in some way, emotionally, spiritually. They’re doing the best they can, and it’s become a way to numb out from what’s going on, until you get to somewhere you can feel you don’t have to hide. Then they learn to care more about another living being — even if they can’t see or touch it, but they can feel it — than they do their drug of choice.”

Prabhu Parimi, director of the Maternal, Fetal & Neonatal Institute at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, is a specialist on what happens when a woman cannot resist her addiction long enough to deliver a drug-free baby. Parimi will speak in Sarasota Thursday at a fundraising luncheon for Healthy Start, another partner in First 1,000 Days Sarasota County.

“Not very many OB’s” — obstetricians — “are willing to take those mothers who have been on medications. They don’t want to deal with this patient population,” Parimi says. “The consequence is that we as a medical community aren’t doing the right thing. That’s a broken system. Consequently, mothers don’t seek prenatal care. And then they deliver premature, low-birthweight babies.”

These newborns are not addicted to medications; rather they have been exposed to them in ways that are known to stunt fetal development. When the birth is premature, Parimi explains, the problem is compounded because growth that should have occurred in the womb takes place in a disruptive artificial environment. On top of these factors, he says, is one just beginning to be more fully understood: toxic stress. According to a recent New York Times Magazine article on the notoriously high mortality rates for African-American infants and mothers, toxic stress is suspected to be a determining cause in their problematic pregnancies.

“It’s an emerging area of interest,” Parimi says. “That’s why we are invested in caring not just for the babies but also the mothers. Cortisol” — the hormone that floods a body under stress — “has been shown to change the type of bacteria in the gut, and there’s a connection between the gut and the brain. So if a mom has been subjected to these psychosocial stressors, the baby acquires this abnormal microbiome. That means if you disrupt normal microbiota through a number of different mechanisms, it may affect an area of the brain.”

Stress — the constant companion of women living in or near poverty — is also known to affect cognitive development in infants. Anything from sudden loud noises to unaddressed hunger can bathe the swiftly forming brain in cortisol, prompting a fight-or-flight response similar to the effect of trauma in more mature brains.

“Robust prenatal care is an important component” in mitigating these stresses, Parimi says. “At least we can take two things out of the equation: a low birth weight and being born premature.”

But even when free prenatal care and education services are available, evidence shows that something prevents a significant share of mothers from obtaining them. According to a 2015 study of pregnant women covered by Florida Medicaid, 14.7 percent of them had no prenatal care until the third trimester, and 6.1 percent had no prenatal care at all.

A jigsaw puzzle

At Sarasota Memorial, the women who show up in active labor with no prenatal medical records are sometimes referred to as “walk-ins.” In 2017, according to data shared by the hospital with the Florida Department of Health in Sarasota County, there were 300 such cases — 8.4 percent of all births. The numbers are preliminary, but already they show a disproportionate share of single and African-American mothers.

First 1,000 Days Sarasota County has identified this group of mothers as its starting point, reasoning that they represent the most severely missed opportunities to make life dramatically better for babies. Working groups have formed to interrogate the available records on these worst-case scenarios, and also to meet with Medicaid analysts at the state level to understand what keeps women from seeking and getting prenatal care.

“We’re not going to guess at this,” says Bill Little, a former Sarasota County deputy administrator and longtime director of the county’s department of health. “We’re going to look at the data.”

This is the first time such an ambitious collaboration has been tried here, and it’s part of a nationwide wave of attempts to rethink conventional approaches to prenatal and baby care — largely in response to the devastating opioid crisis that is overwhelming social service systems and endangering children at every age. Responses look different in each community, but the national 1,000 Days movement frames it primarily as an issue of malnutrition, in the womb and for 24 months after birth. This emphasis was inspired by a 2008 Lancet report documenting how undernourished girls and women pass on the effects of physical and cognitive damage to generations well in the future.

There’s also a state-level operation, which concentrates on highlighting legislative priorities and fostering collaborations among agencies across Florida. The coalition will hold its first-ever summit this September in Palm Beach.

In some ways, the local initiative is blessed from the start. Sarasota County has an unusually vigorous network of public and private agencies that can support mothers and infants. But the system can be opaque — and sometimes forbidding — for women whose challenges include poverty, substance abuse, language barriers and distrust of authority. Studies show that while these women want the best for their babies, they can be easily deterred from asking for help.

The loose structure of agencies and health care providers positioned to help low-income pregnant women resembles a jigsaw puzzle, where the interlockings are tenuous at best, with crucial pieces missing here or there. For many of these mothers, it is as if they are approaching the puzzle from its nether side, and cannot see the picture at all. So they are reduced to pressing blindly on whatever piece is nearest at hand — which may or may not yield to their specific needs.

Once they fail to find help, it’s easy to stop trying.

For women who are undocumented, addicted or fluent in a language other than English, health care providers say, it’s even easier. Nicholas King, a psychosocial case manager at Sarasota Memorial, says that of all the barriers to prenatal care — which can range from a lack of transportation to cultural differences — difficulty understanding the Medicaid system is the one he hears about most.

Judy Cavallar, clinical manager of the labor, delivery and mother-baby units at the hospital, says that women who cannot take time off from their jobs — or can’t afford to — rely on Sarasota Memorial’s 24-hour emergency obstetrics center when they have an issue, even though some local obstetricians do keep regular evening hours.

“Patients that are facing whatever those barriers are,” she adds, “are good people. They want good outcomes for their baby and they want to gain the knowledge they need to bring home a healthy baby. The challenge is trying to navigate through a health care system that isn’t easy to navigate through. Having prenatal care allows you to have a relationship with a doctor who is going to see you after you deliver, so that relationship continues.”

Cavallar is enthusiastic about one early component in the First 1,000 Days project: embedding two patient navigators at the hospital who will work with mothers before and after delivery. The navigators will be a consistent friendly presence, demystifying the health care safety net and steering new families toward the community services they need.

“I keep going back to the word relationship,” she says. “A lot of these patients just are afraid. If I’m a drug-dependent mom, then maybe when I do go to the hospital they’re going to take my baby away. A lot of these patients don’t have the support systems they need to make good decisions for their baby.”

One example of this navigation model was recently put in place at Johns Hopkins All Children’s, where Kathryn Wooten serves as nurse coordinator at a new clinic for drug-exposed newborns. Established to complement a similar clinic started five years ago at the hospital’s Sarasota site, the program recently received a $2.5 million gift that will allow both locations to delve more deeply into research on fetal drug exposure. At the St. Petersburg clinic, Wooten serves as an initial and continuing contact for all mothers in the program.

“The focus for so long has been: ‘What are these moms doing wrong?’” Wooten says. “We villainized them, and I think it’s shifting.”

Wooten confesses that as a nursing student who trained at All Children’s, she had a few judgmental remarks to make about women whose careless choices damaged their newborns. Then a coworker invited her to visit a drug rehabilitation center.

“It just blew me away,” Wooten says now. “When you hear these moms’ stories, you realize that: ‘Oh my gosh; if I had made one decision differently in my life, that could be me.’ If I had been through a tenth of the things some of these women have been through, I don’t know if I would be here. The fact that they’re out there and surviving is so impressive.

“For the ones that do decide that they want to try to go through recovery, so much is required of them, and they’re working so hard for their babies — I think it’s our moral obligation to support them.”

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Recruiting Organ Donors A Personal Mission For County Employee

ST. PETERSBURG, FL — When you visit the Pinellas County Tax Collector’s Office for a new driver license, chances are you will be asked whether you are interested in becoming an organ donor.

For some tax collector customer service technician Jessica Dyksterhouse, this question isn’t simply routine.

It’s personal. She believes her mother, Sonia Platt, wouldn’t be alive today if someone had decided not to check the organ donor box on the driver’s license form.

Sonia Platt was at church when her daughter got the call in March 2016. After only two weeks on the transplant list, both the pancreas and kidney that Platt needed to save her life were available.

Platt’s surgery was successful, and both mother and daughter are grateful that the anonymous donor had the forethought to agree to donate organs. But they realize that Platt’s short time on the organ transplant list is an anomaly. Some people have waited years to receive organ transplants.

Among those who have been hoping and praying is tax supervisor Christine Frangipane. Her son, Frankie, has been on the organ transplant waiting list for 10 months. Like Platt, he needs both a kidney and a pancreas.

With this issue touching so close to home, Pinellas County Tax Collector Charles W. Thomas has partnered with LifeLink Foundation and Donate Life Florida to encourage drivers to register as organ donors.

Throughout April, which is National Donate Life Month, tax collector’s office employees will sport Donate Life T-shirts and lapel pins to remind customers to sign a donor registration certificate and donate to the campaign.

In 2017, only 59 percent registered as organ donors during an in-office driver license visit at the Pinellas County Tax Collector’s Office. That’s 10 percent higher than the statewide average, but it’s not good enough as far as Thomas is concerned.

Nearly 120,000 children and adults in the United States are waiting for life-saving organ transplants. This includes more than 5,000 in Florida. Approximately 22 people die every day while waiting for an organ transplant.

"We are honored to do our part to help the many families in Pinellas County and throughout the United States who are waiting to receive that life-saving phone call that an organ is available," said Thomas.T

If you are not due for a new driver’s license, you can always register as an organ donor online at Donate Life Florida.

Image via Jessica Dyksterhouse

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hippsy01 · 7 years ago

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Nearby Neighborhoods in Saint Petersburg, FL

Saint Petersburg, FL 33711

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DevMar Secures $36M for FL Community

DevMar Development has obtained financing totaling $35.5 million for the construction of The Vantage, a multifamily high-rise in St. Petersburg, Fla. The project, which Michigan-based DevMar is developing with local real estate investor Jonathan Daou, is slated for completion in September 2019.

The Vantage will consist of 211 units in 11 stories. The apartments will average about 631 square feet with balconies of over 100 square feet. A four-story parking garage will be adjacent to the residential tower, with the entire property on about two acres that have vacant for over a decade.

Common amenities at will include a rooftop pool, terrace and veranda, fitness center and yoga room. The property is about one mile from downtown St. Petersburg, within the Edge district, an area characterized by shopping, restaurants, and art galleries. It is DevMar Development’s first project in Florida.

Opportunities to Finance Multifamily

Mike Lemon and Matt Shane with Q10 Lutz Financial Services arranged the financing, which was by Hall Structured Finance (HSF), a part of the Dallas-based Hall Group. HSF has now closed eight construction loans in Florida, with The Vantage being the third residential project in the state, preceded by the Gale Residences in Ft. Lauderdale and the Millennium at Citrus Ridge in Kissimmee.

“The Vantage presented us with the opportunity to finance the construction of a multifamily project in a growing market,” said Mike Jaynes, president of HSF. “As institutional banks continue to pull back, we anticipate more asset allocation in 2018.”

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At CRC hearing, people power aims to do what lawmakers won’t

Kim Bankoff, of Weston, left, Tamara Levine, center, of Parkland and Amanda Savastano, right, of Parkland, hold up green cards in support of better gun safety legislation during the Road to the Ballot Public Hearing Tour at University of South Florida St. Petersburg’s Student Center on Tuesday in St. Petersburg. (GABRIELLA ANGOTTI-JONES | Times)

The people showed up en mass, hundreds of them, to pack into a public hearing Tuesday at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg urging changes to the state Constitution.

Jacksonville resident Michael Liles spoke about his wife beaten to death on the floor of their kitchen last year. He urged members of the Constitution Revision Commission to put a so-called "Marsy’s Law" proposal on the ballot to increase the rights of crime victims.

"I have heard people say that Marsy’s Law is nothing but a solution in search of a problem. I’m the problem. I’m missing my bride. I need some support, and Marsy’s Law would provide it," he said of the proposal that defense lawyers warned could strip away their ability to question accusers and key witnesses.

Members of Racing Proud, from left: Hazel CopelandCrystal Zwarr, Hazel Copeland, Melissa Loyd, and Jorja Alvarez, all from Sarasota, FL., hold up green cards in support of better gun safety legislation during the Road to the Ballot Public Hearing Tour at University of South Florida St. Petersburg’s Student Center on Tuesday in St. Petersburg. (GABRIELLA ANGOTTI-JONES | Times)

Nine-year-old Violet Carr of Tallahassee nervously asked commissioners to stop inhumane treatment of greyhounds by putting on the ballot a ban on betting on greyhound races. Assorted Derby Lane employees said such depictions are hogwash.

"As someone who spends countless hours in the lab working on cancer research, I still recognize the best treatment is prevention," he said.

And Tony Montalto, whose 14-year-old daughter Gina was killed with an AR-15 rifle at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School 27 days earlier, asked commissioners to do what elected lawmakers won’t: ban military-style semiautomatic rifles and large-capacity magazines.

"I cannot help but think how different our lives would be today had the changes in this proposal been enacted before now," he said haltingly, as much of the overflowing auditorium rose to their feet in support.

Florida’s Constitution may rest on the premise that the people are in charge, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the majority gets its way in our republic. That’s especially true when it comes to the Florida Legislature.

State lawmakers over the years have bucked majority opinion on everything from term limits for lawmakers to handgun waiting periods to forbidding inhumane treatment of pigs — and in each of those cases, voters eventually bypassed legislators to enact changes to the state Constitution.

That exercise in direct democracy is again in full swing as voters try to sway the CRC, which amounts to a constitutional convention every 20 years in Florida.

Julie Kessel, president of the League of Women voters of the St. Petersburg area, speaks at a press conference outside of the University of South Florida St. Petersburg’s Student Center on Tuesday in St. Petersburg. The St. Petersburg Chapter of the League of Women Voters is calling for gun safety measures to be considered on the ballot. (GABRIELLA ANGOTTI-JONES | Times)

"The idea that we can’t get our legislators to consider an assault weapons ban is both suspect and disgraceful," fumed Freedom High student Brianna Auker at a news conference before the hearing started. "Why should we have to go to a commission that meets only every 20 years when our Legislature meets every year? … We will not stand by and watch our friends slaughtered when there is an obvious, common-sense solution."

Slightly more than half of the 37 CRC members attended the public hearing, and they mostly kept quiet as speaker after speaker stepped up to the microphones. At one point, however, Commissioner Frank Kruppenbacher rose to address the residents of Parkland who drove to Tampa Bay to plead for more restrictions on semiautomatic rifles.

"Yesterday, I said to myself, ‘Am I going to wake up and drive to St. Petersburg from Orlando to stand and talk for two minutes to people who might be tired of listening to people by the time I get there?’ " said John Sowinski of Orlando, Florida’s ballot initiative guru responsible for the successful campaigns to enact term limits and ban fishing with controversial gill nets.

Farah Stokes, of Tampa, dressed as a Handmaid from the show ” The Handmaid’s Tale,” takes a lunch break during the Road to the Ballot Public Hearing Tour at University of South Florida St. Petersburg’s Student Center on Tuesday in St. Petersburg. Stokes, a member of Florida’s League of Woman Voters, came to oppose Proposal 22, which she believes is an intrusion to women’s reproductive rights. (GABRIELLA ANGOTTI-JONES | Times)

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The 25 Cities with the Most Credit Card Debt

Credit card debt. It seems to be an inevitable part of life for many Americans. And, recent data suggests that it really is. According to the Federal Reserve, American credit card debt hit a record high in 2017, rising to more than $1 trillion. Many people carrying high balances on their credit cards will notice their credit score suffering as a result. That’s because credit utilization ratio makes up a large portion of a credit score.

So, where in the U.S. is the bulk of that credit card debt located? Let’s take a look at the most recent data on 25 cities where the highest credit card debt is held by residents as well as the median income in those areas.

Residents of our nation’s capital have an average card balance of $7,442. That debt level may be less burdensome that it appears, however, considering that D.C. enjoys one of the higher median income levels — $46,536.

The Lone Star State has several cities that made a recent list of cities with the most debt. Specifically in the Dallas area, credit card debt hovers at an average of $7,171, and the median income there is $33,621.

The Big Apple has among the highest cost of living, so it’s not surprising it made the list of cities with the most credit card debt. The price for a one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan is more than $3,700 per month. Credit card debt averages $7,145 and the median income is low compared to the cost of living, at $38,951.

The second Texas city on the list, Houston’s average credit card debt is $7,121 and the median income is $33,244.

The Alamo City has almost as high of a debt average as it’s Texas counterparts, at $7,070, but its median income is significantly lower than Dallas or Houston, hovering at about $29,124.

In Baltimore, the average person carries a credit card balance of $6,985. The median income there is $41,241. On the bright side, the city had one of the top 25 strongest job markets in 2017.

The average credit card debt in Atlanta is $6,907 compared to a median income of $32,658. However, the Big Peach also enjoyed one of the 25 strongest job markets in the country last year.

Credit card debt averages $6,848 in San Diego and the median income is at $32,656. Like New York, San Diego residents pay higher-than-average rent, with rents increasing more than 7 percent between 2016 and 2017. Renters pay an average of more than $1,800 per month.

This coveted vacation destination is also a place many people want to call home. But they’ll pay a hefty price to do so because Seattle is also among the cities with highest rents and cost of living. The average credit card balance here is $6,729 compared to an average income of $40,482. Rent for a 900-square-foot apartment average over $2,000.

The Mile High City is growing at a breakneck speed in terms of population growth, and the cost of housing and living is reflective of that. When it comes to credit card debt, the average Denverite holds a balance of $6,720, while the median income is $37,049.

The city of brotherly love isn’t just home to the current Super Bowl Champs. It’s also home to a considerable amount of people in debt. On average, Philadelphians have card balances of $6,693. The median income, meanwhile, is $36,962.

It’s no secret that the city of Chicago isn’t exactly fiscally healthy. The Windy City has individual debt burdens over $30,000 per taxpayer and that’s just the municipal burden, not taking into account state or federal debt. When it comes to personal credit card debt, the average Chicagoan has $6,649 worth. The median income in the city is relatively low, too, at $35,329.

The average credit card debt in L.A. is $6,632 and the median income is $30,944. While there are many draws to the city, it got a downgrade last year in terms of overall quality of life when it comes to places to call home.

Miami/Fort Lauderdale.

There is no shortage of ways to enjoy the sun, surf, and sights of the Miami area. Perhaps that’s why it’s so easy to rack up debt. Miami residents have an average credit card debt burden of $6,615 while the median income there is $28,396.

The City by the Bay is also one of the most expensive in which to take up residence. The median home price hit $1.5 million last year. The debt, in comparison, seems fairly low, hovering at about $6,533, particularly considering the median income is a bit higher than other cities, at $44,304.

Bean Town residents have an average of $6,455 in credit card debt. The median income in the city is $40,935. However, the city has the highest rate of income inequality among the 100 largest cities in the country, according to an analysis of 2014 Census data. Households in the top 5 percent of earners in Boston made at least $266,000, nearly 18 times as much as households in the bottom 20 percent.

Phoenix continues to be one of the cities with consistent, dramatic population growth. As of 2016, it claimed 1,615,017 residents. Those living in the city make an average income of $31,744 and carry an average of $6,422 worth of credit card debt.

Residents of this city carry an average of $6,296 in credit card debt. $31,896. Despite a high crime rate, people continue to flock to the state of North Carolina in general. Home sales there are predicted to grow 6 percent statewide in 2018.

Tampa/St. Petersburg, Florida.

Home to breathtaking rivers and canals and historic architectural structures, it’s easy to see why people want to live in Tampa and St. Petersburg. Overall, residents carry an average credit card debt burden of $6,204 while the median income is $30,830.

On average, residents of this city have credit card balances totaling $6,203. The median income here is $32,674.

In addition to battling some of the worst traffic in the nation, Portlanders also make the list of the worst debt burdens. The average resident has credit card debt totaling $6,120, while the median income is $32,050.

Minneapolis/St. Paul.

While Minneapolis residents have more debt than people in other cities — approximately $6,036 — they also have higher-than-average credit scores. In 2017, the average credit score in Minneapolis was 709. The city’s median income is $38,067.

Home to Disney and Universal, the tourism industry gives this city a boost. But its full-time residents still carry higher-than-average debt when it comes to credit cards. The average balance is $5,984 and the city’s median income hovers around $28,044.

The city of Detroit’s 2013 Chapter 9 bankruptcy filing was the largest municipal bankruptcy filing in U.S. history by debt. The total was estimated at between $18–20 billion. Luckily, residents there aren’t in quite the same plight as the economy rebounds. The average credit card balance of Detroit residents is $5,889 and the median income is $31,921.

Residents in these cities have an average of $5,829 in credit card debt. The city’s median income is $28,533.

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San Francisco’s housing market is so dire, people need to make over $300,000 a year to afford the typical home

The household income required to buy a typical home in San Francisco is now $303,000, according to a report from Paragon Real Estate.Only 12% of households in the city can afford the median-priced home.The high cost of living is making it harder for tech companies and non-profit organizations to recruit and retain employees in San Francisco.

Being part of San Francisco’s middle class doesn’t mean you can afford middle-class living.

A new report from Paragon Real Estate reveals that the household income now required to buy a median-priced home in San Francisco reached an all-time-high of $303,000 in December.

That means a person who wants to buy property in the city needs a mid-six-figure salary in order to afford the 20% down payment on a $1.5 million home — the median sale price of a single-family home in San Francisco last quarter.

According to Paragon Real Estate, only 12% of households in San Francisco can afford it.

Patrick Carlisle, the chief market analyst at Paragon who worked on the report, has said low housing affordability is the greatest economic and social issue issue facing the Bay Area.

San Francisco, one of the epicenters of the tech industry, does not have enough dwellings to house all of its workers. Tech companies frequently locate their campuses in areas without much nearby housing, and tech workers often use their high salaries and stock options to bid up home prices.

Even tech workers can’t afford to live in the Bay Area

The report was unsurprising but still unsettling for Bay Area residents.

Katherine Maher, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, wrote on Twitter, "As a non-profit employer, I cannot see how we reconcile this with a future for our organization in San Francisco."

The non-profit was founded in St. Petersburg, Florida, and moved to San Francisco in 2008. Maher said that fewer than two-thirds of Wikimedia Foundation’s staff work out of the city office. The organization has embraced remote work and seen "tremendous benefits."

Maher said the findings of the Paragon Real Estate report are "nonsensical" to the group’s staff and donors, and the high cost of living hurts their ability to recruit and retain employees.

"Our local employees, particularly the younger ones, struggle to make ends meet. They leave when they start families. How can we be an equitable employer when only those who can afford to work for us, do?" Maher said on Twitter.

Mike Rosenberg, a reporter with the Seattle Times who previously worked at the San Jose Mercury News, responded to the report with some free advice for millennial homebuyers.

"You’d need to avoid eating 33,600 avocado toasts a year to generate $303,000," he said.

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Highlights from the 2018 Sailing Leadership Forum

The 2018 Sailing Leadership Forum attracted leaders in the sport to meet and learn from one-another amid a full schedule of presentations on February 1-3 in St. Petersburg, FL. This video captures the essence of the event with the summary below provided by US Sailing’s Chief Executive Officer Jack Gierhart and President Bruce Burton.

The energy was so contagious, and the positive atmosphere was inspiring for us all. This year’s Forum attracted 532 attendees! It was great to see so many of the attendees returning from past Sailing Leadership Forums and equally encouraging to see so many new faces at this year’s Forum; 156 new attendees, to be exact. We know many past attendees made it a priority to invite friends, co-workers, volunteers and fellow sailors.

We had over 90 presenters and keynote speakers who volunteered their time to share their collective knowledge. We had tremendous participation during the spectacular Demo Day featuring the latest product lines and equipment from the top sailboat manufacturers and industry brands in the country. The weather and conditions could not have been better!

Like so many other sports, sailing has its challenges in terms of growing the sport for newcomers and advancing more opportunities for both beginners and experienced sailors. Fortunately, there are a great deal of strengths and opportunities within our respective sailing communities and you can all take advantage of them.

We are focused and ready at US Sailing to confront these challenges and are confident we can work together to help ensure a healthy future for sailing in the U.S.

Here are five key strategies that US Sailing is engaged in to help drive a healthy and sustainable future for our sport:

1. Establish a deliberate pathway for life-long opportunities and development. 2. Ensure sailors have access to a full spectrum of organized sailing activities – from “all about fun” to “all about competition” and from participation to administration. 3. Regionalize and localize US Sailing presence and support. 4. Make volunteering with US Sailing more mutually beneficial and rewarding for all involved. 5. Establish and sustain a reputation for American success at the highest levels of sailing.

Together, let’s find a way to reinvent an inviting on ramp for new audiences, ready for the promise of connection, adventure, fun and enjoyment that sailing offers. Let’s align our goals, collaborate, and strive not only for your organizations’ goals, but broader goals for the good of the sport.

We learned a lot last week from our keynote speakers, Ron Tite and Brian Fanzo, about personal and professional brand reinvention and the importance of embracing change. Disruption can be a good thing. It’s time we start trying to translate the DNA of sailing to younger generations in their language. And, remember to focus on the “why” not the “what.”

So, let’s drive up the fun factor and bring new people and younger people into the game and into our community. We are in a new economy, a membership economy, an economy that is about access, experience and community, rather than ownership.

You are the leaders of the sport. We are the leadership that people rely upon. If we do our job right, we can get to the point where our sport is growing, and we can light the path of the sport for newcomers and future generations.

Finding a better way at Sailing Leadership Forum

The Sailing Leadership Forum has attracted leaders in the sport to meet and learn from one-another amid a full schedule

Harry Price Triumphs at Warren Jones Dazzling Day in Antigua for Superyachts Invites Sent for 2018 Race to Mackinac Partnership to Develop Cup Team Extreme Conditions for Ice Racing Growing Sailing in China: Dongfeng Race Team Groundhog Edition of Speed Reading Volvo Ocean Race: Follow the Guangzhou In Port Race Clipper Race: A Windless ZoneHonorees Recognized at US Sailing Awards

The US Sailing Award winners for 2017 were recognized for their contributions to the sport of sailing in the United

World on Water Global Sailing News – February 2, 2018

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New Extra Space Storage Opens in Downtown St. Petersburg

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla., February 1, 2018 (Newswire.com) – Orlando, Florida-based Liberty Investment Properties, in partnership with Tampa, Florida-based Osprey Capital and private investors are pleased to announce the grand opening of a new self-storage facility in downtown St. Petersburg, Florida.

Standing four stories tall, the facility, managed by Extra Space, houses nearly 600 units within its 92,000 square foot footprint. Offering a variety of climate-controlled unit sizes, quality self-storage is a welcomed asset in the growing St. Petersburg corridor. “There seems to be no slowing down in downtown St. Pete. Growth keeps moving outward in every direction with walk-ability being a key draw for residents and businesses,” stated Adam Mikkelson, President of Liberty Investment Properties, Inc. “There was a real need to develop a storage facility with easy access and close proximity to the expanding community with millennials and businesses being key target customers.”

Adjacent to the new St. Petersburg Police Department Headquarters currently under construction, the storage facility complements the substantial development projects within the area. “The swath of land around the new St. Pete Police Department is ripe for revitalization and we look forward to seeing more successful projects come out of the ground.”

There was a real need to develop a storage facility with easy access and close proximity to the expanding community with millennials and businesses being key target customers.

The storage facility provides customers with an award-winning 230 foot covered drive-thru bay design to protect them from the taxing Florida climate while accessing their secured goods.

A celebratory grand opening ceremony will take place in the Spring.

About Liberty Investment Properties, Inc.

Liberty Investment Properties, Inc. specializes in the development and operation of high-performing, income producing, commercial real estate. The company’s portfolio includes 11 storage facilities in the southeast with several new developments planned within the year. Learn more at LibertyProp.com.

About Osprey Capital

Osprey Capital is a Private and Direct Lender and Investment Group which provides Debt Financing (Bridge Financing and Mezzanine Loans) and Preferred Equity Investments secured by commercial real estate. Osprey Capital will also purchase Notes, Finance Note Purchase and on a select basis, Purchase Commercial Real Estate. The Founder and Principals have financed over $10 Billion in Commercial Real Estate transactions and have extensive experience in structuring the complete stack.

Media Contact:

Mark Poole [email protected]

Source: Liberty Investment Properties

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After the Storms: How 2017 Storms Affected Forecasts for Texas, Florida, and Elsewhere

The surveys and interviews for the Emerging Trends in Real Estate® 2018 report were complete; the data had been compiled, and the reports had been written. Then, for some of the major U.S. Sun Belt cities, everything changed. Historic storms raged across the Gulf Coast and the Caribbean, destroying property and lives and upending all the forecasts and predictions for property markets in the Southeast. Investors and developers were sent scrambling to reassess their analysis and financial models.

“What we’ve seen after hurricanes is that the recovery stretches over years, not months,” says Robert Murray, chief economist for New York City–based Dodge Data & Analytics, which tracks the construction industry.

Before the storms, several of the most-affected markets were ranked among the best markets in the Emerging Trends survey. Fort Lauderdale was sixth on the list of U.S. markets to watch; Tampa/St. Petersburg was ranked 19th as a market to watch and 24th for homebuilding prospects. Houston, which was number one in Emerging Trends 2015, had fallen to number 60 in the 2018 report, due to a slowdown in energy-related business.

However, the surveys were completed long before the storms hit and drought-fueled fires swept through the West, which might explain why “risk from extreme weather” ranked at the bottom of respondents’ concerns. That may have changed, particularly in Houston, Florida, Puerto Rico, and the Caribbean. Even ahead of the storms, Emerging Trends authors noted the ongoing threats that such events pose to business and the economy. With property losses from natural catastrophes soaring, data “clearly show that complacency” is not the answer “in the face of a long-term rise in significant natural disasters since 1980,” the Emerging Trends report noted. The report is published annually by ULI and PwC.

If nothing else, massive storms tend to be complacency killers, says Jim Murley, chief resilience officer for Miami–Dade County. In the wake of the natural disasters, resilience and sustainability move back to the forefront of discussions, wiping out what planners often call “hurricane amnesia”—the tendency to forget the dangers as the memory of the last hurricane fades.

“This thing compensates for the amnesia,” Murley says. “If it does anything, it accelerates what we hope we can get done between now and the next storm.”

Short-Term Effects Developers and builders in the Southeast were already experiencing labor and material shortages; the demands of rebuilding are exacerbating those conditions. Speakers at an event held by ULI Austin in October voiced concerns about statewide effects on construction labor and materials. Jim Rado of Austin, regional manager at David Weekley Homes, said the Houston-based homebuilder already was hearing from roofing contractors and suppliers that post-Harvey price hikes of 5 to 10 percent would take effect January 1.

On the labor front, David Weekley’s manager in the Houston area tried to recruit drywall crews from San Antonio to finish ten houses before the end of 2017, Rado said. But those crews were in short supply because many drywall laborers were flocking to Texas’s hard-hit Gulf Coast cities like Port Aransas and Rockport to rebuild residential properties, he said. Available out-of-town crews were commanding a premium.

Over time, such effects will be “pretty drastic,” Rado said. But the picture will not become clear until insurers pay homeowners’ Harvey-related claims and residents decide whether to rebuild, he said.

Nick Moulinet, an Austin executive at commercial builder DPR Construction and chairman of the Real Estate Council of Austin, said he was not sure how pricing in commercial construction would fare in the aftermath of Harvey. So far, he said, DPR had noticed no impact on the costs of labor or materials in Texas. Still, Moulinet said he worried that workers hopping over to the residential side would create a labor shortage in commercial construction.

“The thing that I think scares us the most is the perception that prices are going to increase, the discussion that prices are going to increase, that fear of, ‘Hey, it’s going to come, we just don’t know when,’” Moulinet said.

The Houston Market Hurricane Harvey caused $73.5 billion in economic losses—second worst in history, behind only Hurricane Katrina—according to Moody’s Analytics. More than 61,000 people were displaced and 136,000 structures in Harris County were flooded, local agencies report.

In its initial analysis, research firm CoStar estimated as much as 600 million square feet (56 million sq m) of commercial real estate space in the Houston metropolitan area—38 percent of Houston’s total gross leasable area—had been affected by the flooding. At least 25 percent of the property damaged was not in a flood zone designated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), CoStar found.

But the damage was not universal; some areas were much harder hit than others. The Katy Freeway West submarket, the second largest in the area, had more than 2 million square feet (186,000 sq m) of office space affected by the floods, but downtown Houston was largely unscathed, CoStar reports.

The storms provided an immediate and dramatic correction to Houston’s multifamily market, which was largely seen as oversupplied before the storms, local experts say. More than 72,000 apartments were in the flood zone, including about 35,000 units in southwest Houston alone, or 45 percent of the submarket, CoStar found.

“We had a lot of [multifamily] supply taken off the market,” says Todd LaRue, managing director of Austin for RCLCO Real Estate Advisors.

The residential market in Houston is already starting to surge, as demand for homes soars, LaRue says. Investors are buying damaged homes at steep discounts; many owners did not have flood insurance, local experts say. And buyers remain interested in the commercial and industrial markets, where Houston is seen as a growing market, thanks to its port and energy interests.

“We still see transactions in the market,” LaRue says.

Before the storms, Houston’s office market was starting to emerge from the energy slowdown, as the city worked to diversify its economy, Murray says. In the first nine months of 2017, the dollar volume of office construction starts was 37 percent higher than in the same period a year earlier, according to Dodge Data & Analytics. But there’s a new question facing the market: Will tenants turn away from flood-prone areas?

“What remains to be seen is interest in new construction from the commercial side,” LaRue says. “Are companies going to think twice about going to Houston? I don’t know if that story has played out.”

Speaking at the same ULI event in October, CW Sheehan, an Austin vice president at commercial real estate services company JLL, said some people might reconsider whether to live or start a business in the Houston area in the wake of Harvey—and major floods that hit the region in 2015 and 2016.

But Sheehan and Moulinet said that people and businesses will remain in and relocate to Houston because of its status as the fourth-largest U.S. city and a global energy hub. One incentive for companies to locate there is the office vacancy rate of nearly 23 percent for the third quarter of 2017, which provides leverage for tenants seeking deals on leases, according to a JLL report.

As the area recovers, the issue of housing affordability looms, said Rado.

“In my 40 years in the business, I’ve never seen a bigger disconnect between what it costs to buy land, build something, and have somebody be able to afford it, and then leave any of us a profit,” Rado said. “If we grow, we can’t grow in the places that people want to be, because they can’t afford it. We’re having to build further out, like we did in the ’80s and ’90s.”

In building away from the core of the Houston area, developers end up drawing blame for sprawl-induced flooding, Moulinet said. “Whether it’s true or not, that’s the narrative,” he added.

Florida and Puerto Rico Communities often emerge as different places in the wake of natural disasters. When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, thousands fled and never returned. (Many went to Houston.) A similar phenomenon may be playing out in Puerto Rico; more than 186,000 people left the island in the three months after the storms hit, according to a New York Times report. Many of those people are expected to settle in Florida, where the Puerto Rican community has been booming in recent years. There are already more than a million Puerto Ricans living in Florida, more than double since 2000, according to the Pew Research Center.

“The migration is expected to transform Orlando, a city that has already become a stronghold of Puerto Ricans, many of them fleeing the island’s economic crisis in recent years,” the Times reported. “The impact of this latest wave is likely to stretch from schools and housing to the workforce and even politics.”

In Puerto Rico and other places that were devastated by the storms, traditional market forces will no longer be the primary driver of many local trends, executives say. The pace of recovery will be “entirely driven by federal funding,” AECOM’s Christopher Ward said during a panel at the 2017 ULI Fall Meeting in Los Angeles. “It’s not going to be a reflection of the market.”

If federal aid does not materialize, cities and states will need to find funds from already stretched budgets to aid the recovery. Traditionally, devastating weather events lead to a surge in storm and water infrastructure construction, but it can take years to develop, Murray says. New York and New Orleans are still working on projects created from the debris of hurricanes Sandy and Katrina, he notes.

Traditionally, rebuilding efforts are seen as a chance for communities to reshape their infrastructure. Storms wipe out the old and provide opportunities for something new. For example, in Puerto Rico, Tesla is installing solar panels and battery packs to help bring power back to some neighborhoods. Drones and balloons are being used to extend telecom networks.

“We have this historic opportunity: instead of going with incremental changes, we can go and push the envelope to really transform the infrastructure,” Manuel Laboy, head of Puerto Rico’s economic development department, told CNNMoney. “That is the silver lining opportunity that we have.”

Resilience Dividends In many ways, the storms that hit Florida demonstrated the success of changes made in the wake of the last big hurricane to ravage the area, Hurricane Andrew in 1992, property experts agree. After Andrew, strict new building regulations and disaster preparedness programs were implemented around the state.

“Ever since Hurricane Andrew, we have put significant resources into our classic emergency management,” says Murley, the chief resilience officer for Miami–Dade County. “We drill. We practice every year.”

Overall, most parts of Florida were not as badly damaged as originally feared, as the storm veered up the coast. “We’ve learned lessons,” says Lee Arnold, executive chairman of Colliers International Florida. “It is really a function of better planning, better communication, better technology, and better hardening [of construction],” he says, adding, “and recognizing we are a wind storm state.”

The impact on most Florida property markets was primarily felt in the days before and after the storms, Arnold says. Closing deals was impossible, he recalls. “The insurance market shut down.”

Early hurricane warnings helped give owners time to prepare their properties, he notes. Beyond simple window and roof protection, the state was better prepared with generators, fuel, and facilities to help evacuees. “People just seem to know what to do better,” Arnold says.

Around the state, there was evidence of the impact of new practices implemented in response to past disasters. “Better overprepared than not prepared,” says Bill Zhou, managing director of the Elite International Investment Fund, a real estate–focused fund with investments in Texas and Florida. “We took down cranes in Miami in anticipation of Irma, which proved to be a prudent decision.”

The impact of the storms may prod investors and developers to rethink sustainable and green designs, which will also help the long-term resilience of projects, some experts say. In Florida, mangrove trees and shrubs are seen as one of the best protections for the coastline; in Houston, additional green belts would help absorb flood water runoff.

“We do believe that green building initiatives will get more traction and may increasingly demand a price premium in the marketplace,” Zhou said, “Building green is always a good thing to do, and now it is justified economically more.”

In the future, the risks of natural disasters will need to be evaluated in a holistic sense, Zhou says. “It has not materially changed our view yet, but it will depend on the future of flood insurance programs and the costs to build in these markets,” he says. “It does affect the way we look at certain specific locations prone to flooding.”

Ultimately, in Florida, Irma was likely not destructive enough to force a real change in policies in a state where hurricanes are relatively common, Murley says. “We didn’t have physical damage that would change the trend lines we’re already on.” But the storms will influence discussions. Stormwater, drainage, and coastal protection issues will not be easily pushed to the back burner, he says. And the disproportionate impact on low- and moderate-income households will raise larger societal issues. “It scrapes away all the fog over the really tough issues of housing and income equality,” he says. “It exposes that right away.”

Houston has already started the process of rethinking its approach to developing in a city that largely sits in a floodplain. The city has launched a new planning effort to rework the plan for the downtown business district, which will include a new resilience component. Initial proposals call for green belts, permeable surfaces, and natural vegetation to help absorb stormwater.

Moulinet said that more foresight is needed regarding design, development, and construction in Houston and elsewhere in Texas to accommodate growth, but also to anticipate disasters like Harvey.

Government officials who establish development codes must be held accountable for “where and how we grow,” Moulinet said. But he added that builders, engineers, architects, and other industry professionals also bear a responsibility to help people understand the risks of where they want to build homes and offices.

The struggle over responsible development boils down to a tug-of-war between supply and demand, Moulinet said. “Is it the real estate community that’s responsible for putting people in harm’s way, or the people who are buying themselves into harm’s way?” he asked. “That’s going to be the big question that we’re going to have to answer. [Developers are] always going to be responsive to the demand.”

Coming out of the storms, many issues need to be addressed, industry experts say. For Arnold of Colliers, the question is the availability of catastrophic insurance. “We’ve got to solve it,” Arnold says. “And it can’t be solved just by Floridians.”

Murray believes the key issue that must be confronted is the level of funding for flood and storm control projects. “What the storms did is emphasize the need to direct more attention to environmental public works,” he says.

Those discussions will not be limited to the areas devastated by storms and fires this year, the Emerging Trends report emphasizes. Damage from natural disasters is expected to have hit an all-time high in 2017. Beyond the hurricanes, the phenomena of rising temperatures, drought, and wildfires wreaked havoc across the West. In the East, rising sea levels will force Boston, Miami, New York, and the Carolinas to reconsider plans to prevent future flooding.

“Harvey and Irma may be seen as a harbinger of future flooding affecting billions of dollars’ worth of real estate,” the Emerging Trends authors concluded. “While natural events catch our attention, climate trends are longer-range changes, but ones that developers and investors will be increasingly wise to pay close attention to.”

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