Agreement Nets Funds for Affordable Florida Housing, First-Time Home Buyer Assistance

In Pembroke Pines, the city’s tough stance against condo conversions resulted this week in a deal that will create a boon to first-time home buyers.

Fairfield Residential of Grand Prarie, Texas, wants a permanent sign on Pines Boulevard to advertise the 468-unit Marquesa rental complex it is converting. But the city strongly opposes conversions because with housing prices so high, working people may not be able to live in the city without enough rentals.

The city is using its sign law as a weapon to discourage the depletion of more units.

To get the city to approve their request, however, the company on Wednesday night offered to provide thousands of dollars in incentives for first-time home buyers. It’s a big step toward more affordable housing in Florida.

Affordable housing deal

Under the deal, Fairfield would pay the city an initial $5,000, plus $1,000 a month until its 333 available apartments are sold. The money would go into an affordable housing fund to help first-time buyers make down payments.

Moreover, the firm promised to hold educational seminars for new home buyers. Qualified buyers who attend would be offered $5,000 off the price of its condos, and receive Florida home loans with no down payment, no closing costs and no payments for six months, as well as other incentives.

The six-year-old complex, located across from the Pembroke Lakes Mall, features one- to three-bedroom apartments that sell for $190,000 to $300,000.

“I’m absolutely blown away by what they are proposing to do for us,” said Vice Mayor Iris Siple. “They’re answering all the questions we had about affordable housing, they are resolving all issues.”

Responses to the proposal

Jack McCabe, a Deerfield Beach real estate analyst, called the idea unique.

“In truth, what they’re talking about is a drop in the bucket, a very minimal amount,” he said of the cost to Fairfield. “But it is the first public-private agreement I know of to move affordable housing in the right direction.”

City codes allow condo conversion signs to remain up only for 90 days. Then they must be taken down and not replaced for another 90 days.

But Fairfield said it needs the 256-square-foot sign full time in order to sell its units because the condo market has slowed so dramatically in the past year.

Despite their tough position against condo conversions, city commissioners voted 4-1 to allow the Marquesa sign.

Affordable housing for working people is considered a major problem in the Broward County housing market, where the median price of a house in September was $370,300.

A study by the Broward Housing Partnership early this year showed 22,000 rentals had been converted between 2003 and 2005. In Pembroke Pines, 30 to 36 percent of the 8,290 rental units are being converted, according to the city Planning Division.

But the market for condo conversions has been hit especially hard.

“A majority of buyers [and Florida mortgage applicants] a year ago were speculators who are now putting their money into the stock market, so the inventory has skyrocketed,” said McCabe, who is chief executive of McCabe Research & Consulting.

Another reason, he said, is taxes and insurance, which have become so expensive that “a vast majority of the population” can’t afford to buy.

“That’s why we’re seeing so many young families leaving the area now,” he said.