House for rent in Apopka

UGGGGGHHHH!

Yours truly just discovered that the family currently renting his former home in Apopka will not be renewing their lease next month.

If any of ye socks know of anyone who may be interested in renting (or buying) the place, let me know!

Time to pay the piper . . .

In this case, for ye local socks anway, that means Earl K. Wood.

That's right, it's that time of year again.

Unless you escrow your property taxes, it's time to stroke a check to our illustrious Orange County Tax Collector.

Oops, that was probably in bad taste to use the word "stroke," wasn't it?!

Dry season?

Today found yours truly touring the hill country of Lake County with a distant cousin and a not-so-distant cousin.

The primary objective of our excursion was to scout out some of the distressed properties in that neck of the woods.

With the housing bust, construction of many subdivisions out here came to a screeching halt. The result is wide swaths of developed land, with roads, sidewalks, lamp posts, etc., but no houses.

Anyway, lunchtime found us in Clermont, and we ended up grabbing some grill food at the Tiki Bar on Lake Minneola.

This is a shot of the boardwalk leading down to the grill. See that gas pump? Well, before the lake waters receded beyond the dock, boats used to be able to pull right up to it to fill up their tanks.

So, it looks like just about everything's dried-up over in Lake County.

Well, except for the juicy Swiss burgers at the tiki bar . . .

Hopefully, some of ye socks have saved up for a rainy day, because it won't be like this forever.

Kudos to Martha O. Haynie's office

The Orange County Comptroller is without a doubt the most capable public official in this neck of the woods.

Now, her office is deserving of extra credit for their efforts at making local land records more accessible.

Until recently, only records dating back to 1955 were available online.

Now, however, ye socks may peruse deeds and plats dating back more than a century beyond that date. Click here to check it out:

http://or.occompt.com/recorder/eagleweb/docSearch.jsp

Even if your family's roots around here aren't as deep as my own, you may still get a kick out of tracing back the genealogy of your home.

For instance, after visiting a friend's vacant lot on Lake Pineloch today, I thought I'd do a little investigating of my own. Not only did I discover it was part of an 80-acre state land grant to pioneer Jesse Bumby dated 1869; but after it was subdivided into smaller parcels, it was part of the 5 acres owned by my great-aunt and uncle Nellie (nee Patrick) and James Neal from 1912 to 1916.

Who'da thunk it?!

Keeping my fingers crossed

Well, ye socks, I *think* I received some good news this morning.

As with the recent Magic play-offs, though, I'm worried about jinxing things by posting too much here.

I know. Thanks for being cryptic.

But, if the news proves correct, it will be a tremendous blessing and relief for yours truly.

And, who couldn't use some good news AND good things *happening* nowadays?!?

I'll keep you posted . . .

Feeling empty inside?

If so, you're not alone in this little corner of heaven.

Zack O'Malley Greenburg over at forbes.com has declared Orlando one of the "emptiest" cities in America.

According to him, homes around here have a whopping 7.3% vacancy rate.

And, rentals are worse: 12.3%.

I can support his findings with some personally-collected anecdotal evidence. Some of the residential unit shells we built as far back as two years ago are not only still sitting empty, but were never finished by the homebuilders. You can peer in the windows (provided, of course, that they haven't been boarded-up) and see exposed wall studs, no drywall, no flooring, and no appliances.

It's that bad.

The flip side of all this excess inventory is there are some incredible bargains to be had. It's a good time to be a buyer, if you can find the financing. But, that's a big "if" in this new era of nationalized banks . . .

In case you're interested, here's Greenburg's top ten emptiest cities from across the country, some even worse-off than we are:

1. Las Vegas
2. Detroit
3. Atlanta
4. Greensboro, NC
5. Dayton, OH
6. Phoenix.
7. ORLANDO
8. Kansas City
9. Jacksonville
10. Indianapolis