Things To Do In SW Florida

Erik J. Martin | Bankrate.com (TNS)

When you’re financing the purchase of a home, it’s important to understand what mortgage lenders look for when evaluating potential borrowers. One factor they strongly value is your credit score, a measure of how creditworthy you are: The higher your score, the more attractive you will appear to lenders.

FICO and VantageScore, two of the most prominent players, score in a range from a low of 300 to a high of 850. Ideally, your credit score is closer to that high end. But what if your credit score is a bit lower than ideal? For example, is 700 a good credit score to buy a house? Here we’ll break down recommended scores for different types of mortgage loans, and whether you can buy a house with a 700 credit score.

What credit score do I need to buy a house?

“There are four major factors mortgage companies typically use to make decisions when lending money: credit score, income, assets and payment history,” says Ralph DiBugnara, a senior vice president at Cardinal Financial and founder of Home Qualified. “A good credit score is the only one that will directly impact the interest rate you will receive as a borrower, so it has the largest impact long-term.” read more

Disney asked a judge Friday to declare it the winner in the ongoing legal battle with the tourism oversight board handpicked by Gov. Ron DeSantis to run the company’s development interests in Central Florida.

Disney filed a motion in Orange County Circuit Court on Friday objecting to Tuesday’s motion by the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District seeking to declare it the victor in the lawsuit.

In the suit, the state wants development agreements limiting the board’s authority over Disney’s future development to be made null and void.

But Disney argued that doing that would violate its First Amendment and due process rights, its lawyers wrote. It has asked the court to declare unconstitutional the legislation signed into law by DeSantis that strips it of its authority to govern over its 25,000 acres in Central Florida and stop the state from enforcing it.

The feud began last year when Disney’s CEO at the time criticized the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law DeSantis signed last year that bans most classroom instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity. The CEO said Disney would fight to repeal the law, and DeSantis and his legislative allies took measures to dissolve Disney’s self-governing body of the last five decades, the Reedy Creek Improvement District. read more

Instead of resigning, Glen Gilzean is suggesting Florida’s ethics commission “weaponized” a memo that concluded he was ineligible to serve as both the state’s ethics chairman and administrator of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ tourism oversight district.

The opinion released on Thursday concluded that Gilzean couldn’t do both jobs because of a state law that bars ethics commissioners from holding public employment.

Gilzean earns a $400,000 annual salary as administrator of the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District, the special district taxing that oversees Disney World’s government services. His position on the ethics panel is unpaid.

In an email Thursday afternoon, Gilzean wrote that he was “weighing” his options on how to proceed and then questioned the ethics commission’s timing in releasing the opinion. The Florida Bulldog first obtained the correspondence, which the ethics commission released Friday to the Orlando Sentinel in response to a public records request.

“[I]t is deeply inappropriate that your legal opinion was disseminated to the press at the same time you sent it to me,” Gilzean wrote in the email to the commission’s general counsel and ethics director Kerrie Stillman. “As far as I’m concerned, someone on your staff knowingly leaked this memo and weaponized it, how did this happen?” read more

By Sam Kemmis | NerdWallet

Travel planning can be a real chore. Booking flights, deciding on the right hotel and building an itinerary might be fun for some, but others dread it. That’s why some travelers are opting for an unorthodox travel strategy that eliminates the planning stage altogether. It’s called “mystery” or “suprise” travel, and the destination isn’t revealed until the day of departure.

This idea isn’t new. Some friend groups plan regular mystery travel vacations, with one person or family planning and booking the itinerary for everyone else.

Lanie van der Horst, a travel blogger, asked her husband to plan a trip. He decided to keep the destination — Byron Bay, Australia — a secret.

“I literally cried when he told me that he had a trip planned that I didn’t have to think about,” van der Horst says.

Let a travel company plan your trip

As these surprise trips have become more popular, travel booking companies have begun offering them. Customers pay a flat fee for the trip and set certain guidelines such as dates and preferences, but the destination remains a surprise until the last minute. For group travel, this means that everybody will be surprised when the destination is revealed. read more