“Doral Council talks
downtown, development and mosquitoes”
In this story, The Doral City
Council passed a series of ordinances on first or second hearing Wednesday
night during its regular council meeting. For the purposes of this blog and
assignment, I’m going to focus on the the ordinance that requires Doral property
owners to eliminate or treat standing water within 48 hours. The purpose of
this ordinance is to prevent mosquitos from breeding. This is an issue, as the
Zika virus, one of 2016’s most pressing matters, is carried by mosquitos. The
problem in this story is that Doral property owners have to find the means to
take meaningful action against mosquitos in order to meet the standard in this
ordinance – if they don’t address it two days after the first notice, they’ll
receive a $150 citation and a second notice, followed by a third notice and a
$250 citation. The residents of Doral have this issue, and they need to be
educated on the matter, as mosquitos don’t just carry the Zika virus, but also
transmit diseases like West Nile virus, dengue fever, encephalitis, and
malaria. There’s opportunity here for the pest control industry.
“Key
West cracking down on vacation rentals”
This story’s premise focuses on Key
West, and how they require a license to rent short-term housing for fewer than
30 days. In order to rent a home in Key West, you must have a rental license,
or you can face up to $8,000 in fines and fees. One must abide by these laws,
and not doing so can and is problematic for those that are renting out their
second homes in Key West. One main in the tory said he was raising the money
for a college scholarship fund that he created. It might seem unorthodox, but I
see opportunity here – this could be a good chance for someone with auditing experience
to open a business that audits homeowners that rent out their homes for
short-term spans. There are plenty that do so in Key West, so there is
definitely a chance to gain traction in that area for this.
“Number
of South Florida million-dollar homes nearly doubled since 2012, report says”
The premise of this story is that
those in the market for a million-dollar home are likely to find one in Miami.
The supply of luxury homes has nearly doubled from the 3.3 percent that was the
number in 2012 to 6.3 percent in 2016. While this is undoubtedly a good thing
for those developers, it also limits options for those that can’t afford to live
in million-dollar homes. This is a problem for residents in the Miami-Fort
Lauderdale area that can’t find places to live near their jobs or places of
worship. This is a good opportunity for a business or developmental company
that prides itself on building nice, affordable housing.
“Bigger data caps on way for South Florida
high-speed internet customers”
AT&T and Comcast will
officially be instituting data caps on all of its plans for South Floridians on
Monday. Though technically in place since 2011, the caps in place were not
enforced on all of their data plans. Depending on the plan that the customer
has, they’ll not get anywhere between 300 to 600 gigabytes or one terabyte of
data per month. After they’ve fulfilled that usage, customers will be charged
$10 for each additional 50 gigabytes of data, up to $100, regardless of what
plan they’re contracted for. This is problematic for customers because in today’s
digital era, streaming on Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon is the craze, so households
can use data very quickly if they aren’t careful. This is opportunistic for
companies that can offer data plans with no caps.
“Miami-Dade, Broward home prices continue to
rise in April”
The premise of this story is the
fact that South Florida is still vehemently a sellers’ market, as April marked
another month for a rise in the median price of existing homes in both
Miami-Dade and Broward counties. In Dade county, the median sales price for
existing single-family homes rose to $285,000 from $260,000 in April 2015,
which amounts to a 9.5 percent year-to-year increase. Like the previous story,
this is problematic for the citizens of Miami, as the price of a home in that market
is just not affordable to the average consumer. It is a stable market, yes, but
ultimately, the one ones benefiting from it are the sellers. There’s also a decrease
in inventory for single families, as the number of existing single-family
transactions dropped 7.6 percent, while existing condo transactions dropped
12.1 percent year over year. This is opportunistic for someone interested in
creating a new market for more affordable housing.
Jared,
ReplyDeleteGreat grouping of articles! Your first article is interesting to me, because if they can see the standing water on your property first of all how do they know if it has been treated, and secondly what if your yard has a privacy fence. There could be standing water in the fenced area that can't be seen. I'm definitely a fan of mosquito control, but this could be difficult to enforce! I agree with you that some companies enforcing data caps will push customers to other competition. In my family, there are five of us using data on various devices. It adds up quick! I too had an article regarding the pricing of homes, and how there is a lack of affordable options.
Great post!
Jared my favorite of your local opportunities was the data caps from Comcast of AT&T. I don’t think I’d know what to do if I had a data cap. I absolutely agree that this is a great opportunity for companies that can provide this service without a data cap, because people definitely aren’t looking forward to be limited in their streaming abilities.
ReplyDeleteJared, great new articles you have outlined! Zika virus has scared me out of a cruise I was going on for Spring break! I can see the concern that the Doral is having about mosquitos breeding and possibly passing along Zika to more innocent people. About the Key West article, it seems that Florida in general is starting to crack down on many ‘party’ locations as there has been much problems in the past in those areas. I know they are also doing the same in Panama City Beach. It seems like the housing market in Miami is flourishing which is great for real estate brokers down south!
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