Things To Do In SW Florida

By ALEX VEIGA (AP Business Writer)

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Would-be homebuyers are willing to take on sharply higher mortgage payments, even as home prices have begun to pull back this year.

The median monthly payment listed on applications for home purchase loans jumped 14.1% in May from a year earlier to an all-time high $2,165, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. The May figure also represents a 2.5% increase from April.

“Homebuyer affordability eroded further in May as prospective buyers continue to grapple with high interest rates and low housing inventory,” Edward Seiler, the MBA’s associate vice president of housing economics, said in a release last week.

The size of the mortgage and the interest rate on the loan influence how large the monthly payment on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage will be. Those two housing market variables have ballooned in recent years.

Home price growth accelerated during the pandemic, fueled by ultra-low mortgage rates and bidding wars as competition for relatively few properties on the market intensified. Even after the market cooled last summer as the Federal Reserve raised interest rates in its bid to slow economic growth and tame inflation, home price appreciation remained resilient until this February, when the median U.S. home price slipped 0.2% from a year earlier — its first annual decline in 13 years, according to the National Association of Realtors. read more

It’s not exactly Willy Wonka, but an actual chocolate factory is coming to the Lake County city of Groveland, along Florida’s Turnpike a short drive west of Orlando.

However, chocolate enthusiasts and those with a sweet tooth may be disappointed to learn that public tours of the Behr’s Chocolates factory aren’t currently planned, according to a report in GrowthSpotter.

“Most of what we do is private label, so we manufacture for a lot of the products you might buy at the grocery store. So those contracts often preclude us from being able to tour people through,” said Douglas David, owner of the business. “Our customers are pretty sensitive about their brands, so I don’t think there’s going to be a tremendous element that’s going to be public-oriented for this project.”

David owns David Delights LLC, which owns Behr’s Chocolates. He made the remarks at a recent meeting of Groveland’s Planning and Zoning Board.

Although public tours aren’t on tap, the chocolate factory will mean more jobs for the Groveland area — although it’s not clear yet how many more jobs. read more

By WYATTE GRANTHAM-PHILIPS (AP Business Writer)

NEW YORK (AP) — Threads, a text-based app built by Meta to rival Twitter, is live.

The app, billed as the text version of Meta’s photo-sharing platform Instagram, became available Wednesday night to users in more than 100 countries — including the U.S., Britain, Australia, Canada and Japan. Despite some early glitches, 30 million people had signed up before noon on Thursday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Threads.

New arrivals to the platform include celebrities like Oprah, pop star Shakira and chef Gordon Ramsay — as well as corporate accounts from Taco Bell, Netflix, Spotify, the Washington Post and other media outlets.

Threads, which Meta says provides “a new, separate space for real-time updates and public conversations,” arrives at a time when many are looking for Twitter alternatives to escape Elon Musk’s raucous oversight of the platform since acquiring it last year for $44 billion. But Meta’s new app has also raised data privacy concerns, and is notably unavailable in the European Union. read more

Boards of directors

Felicia Haslom Davis, Associate Vice President of Strategic and Community Partnerships at Concorde Career Colleges, was elected to the board of directors of the Orlando Union Rescue Mission.

Allen Peacock, Senior Vice President of Development – U.S. at Taurus Investment Holdings LLC, was elected to the board of directors of the Orlando Union Rescue Mission.

Education

Anil Menon was appointed as the new George D. and Harriet W. Cornell Dean of Global Leadership at Rollins College’s Crummer Graduate School of Business. His tenure will begin Aug. 1.

Patrice Scanlon was promoted to Department Chair in Full Sail University’s Recording Arts degree program.

Engineering

Yimin Yang, aviation civil designer, has joined Hanson Professional Services Inc.’s Orlando regional office.

Submit professional appointments, management-level promotions and significant awards for individuals, along with photos as .jpg attachments, to peopleonmove@orlandosentinel.com.

The search for the new head of Space Florida has come down to three men, each of whom pitched an expansive vision of where the state’s future lies during interviews with the board’s search committee.

An initial list of 14 viable candidates applied by the May 1 deadline to replace Frank DiBello, 80, who has led the state’s aerospace economic development entity since 2009. He recently agreed to stay on past his previously announced June 30 retirement.

Those 14 were whittled down to six who were interviewed last week by Space Florida’s transition team led by Space Florida board chair Lt. Gov. Jeanette Núñez.

The team on Thursday chose as the top three candidates a Space Force colonel from California, a two-star general who works at the Pentagon, and a retired former head of a competing state’s space authority. They will now be invited for face-to-face interviews with the entire Space Florida board.

“Filling the role of president and CEO of Space Florida at this point in time, given the vast success that we’ve had, and given the extraordinary work that Frank has done, it’s going to be almost an impossible task,” Núñez said. “So we were faced with having to fill in very large shoes.” read more