Huntsville Real Estate Blog

Developers of the Big Spring Summit office tower in downtown Huntsville are hoping to put a restaurant on its top floor. Meanwhile, they’re still analyzing designs for a condominium high-rise next door.

The building overlooks Big Spring International Park, offering perhaps the best view of the park’s lagoon and Huntsville’s skyline. The building overlooks Big Spring International Park, offering perhaps the best view of the park’s lagoon and Huntsville’s skyline.

William Stroud of Huntsville-based Triad Development told the City Council at its meeting Thursday night that the Summit’s top floor would become office space if no restaurant steps forward to buy or lease the space.

About 70 percent of the 80,000-square-foot office tower space has been leased, Stroud said. Some tenants, which include a bank, a realty company and an investment firm, may open between the end of August and the first part of October.
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The U.S. House of Representatives has passed “The Expanding American Homeownership Act,” which will increase homeownership opportunities for millions of Americans by modernizing the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and returning it to its traditional role as an important financing option in today’s Huntsville real estate market.

The Expanding American Homeownership Act will:

1) Eliminate the current statutory three percent minimum down payment, reducing a significant barrier to homeownership. FHA’s existing down payment requirement does not meet the demands of today’s marketplace, where most first-time homebuyers put down two percent or less. The “new” FHA would offer a variety of down payment options.

2) Create a new, risk-based insurance premium structure for FHA that would match the premium amount with the credit profile of the borrower.  It would replace the current structure, in which there is standard premium amount for all borrowers, while still protecting the soundness of its Insurance Fund.  FHA would have the flexibility to charge a lower premium for low-risk borrowers, and to charge higher-risk borrowers a slightly higher premium.

3) Increase and simplify FHA’s loan limits. FHA’s loan limit in high-cost areas would rise from 87 to 100 percent of the GSE conforming loan limit and in lower-cost areas from 48 to 65 percent of the conforming loan limit.  This change is crucial in today’s housing market.  In many areas of the country, the existing FHA limits are lower than the cost of new construction, eliminating FHA financing as an option for buyers of new homes in those markets. FHA has simply been priced out of the market in other areas, such as California, where FHA insured only about 5,000 home mortgages in all of 2005, down 95 percent from 109,000 in 2000.
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