Well, it’s that time of year again and the tropical season is heating up. Because we have an impending storm approaching we decided to do a video on Hurricane tips for agents and the public alike. We hope these tips will help you prepare for this storm or any others that may come our way.
Hurricane Tips for SW Florida
If you’d like market information on SW Florida including the Fort Myers, Cape Coral, Bonita Springs real estate market and how it stacks up against the national real estate market be sure to watch our National Housing Report
Last week the News Press ran a story about the rebounding housing market and they used inventory stats that said the single family inventory is down to 13,897 in Lee County, down from 14,113 the month prior. The only problem is, they were looking at the chart wrong as those were cumulative inventory numbers, not current.
SW Florida Housing Inventory
It was an easy enough mistake if you don’t study those numbers on a regular basis. The chart should have quoted 3,579 single family homes on the market, but even that number isn’t the best number, and we’ll explain why.
I sit on the MLS stats committee and for the last year or so we’ve been working hard on cleaning up the data and defining how listings should be classified to best reflect what’s actually happening in the market. Look for inventory levels to increase because of this change.
In the past inventory numbers only reflected Active listings that were not Active Contingent Short Sale. In other words, agents were still taking offers to present to the bank or as backups until the banks accepted a short sale offer but it wasn’t being counted. At the point a bank accepts a short sale offer the property was to be placed pending, like a normal sale would be.
A high degree of pending sales actually close, but the same cannot always be said for Active Contingent sales, especially short sales. Another reasons aside from being a short sale a property could be listed as Active Contingent would be if something else has to happen first, like a buyer selling another property before they can close.
In this case a listing agent may mark the property Active Contingent and insert a Right of First Refusal clause and continue to market the property. To me, this property is still an active listing and should be counted in inventory. From now on it will.
It’s easy to count and search for sold properties in MLS, but it’s much harder to go back and search for active listings from the past on a certain date unless you have frozen copies of the database. Because of this, the Board of Realtors cannot post what the active listings would have been under the new guidelines since they weren’t searched that way at the time.
Some on the committee pondered whether it would be easier to just keep the status quo since we didn’t have that data. Most of us preferred to rectify and make the most accurate possible, even if it meant postponing the revisions to past inventory levels until we have a new baseline to present. Everyone on the committee concurred once the tough decision was made to make it right, even if it would cause some heartache and confusion for a few months.
Personally I’d rather take the tough steps now to get the most accurate statistics to agents and the general public, and the committee and the Board agreed.
Housing Numbers Becoming More Reliable
I feel much more confident going forward with the data that will be provided. All the definitions will be posted and any agent should be able to duplicate the data, something that wasn’t possible in the past. This will provide for full transparency and credible data, and should eliminate various sources from having differing standards and definitions.
While mistakes in the newspaper or anywhere else will always be possible, hopefully we’ve made some changes that will eliminate systemic errors. We still have the issue of various boards reporting separate data which can cause duplication in areas served by two nearby MLS’s, we can account for this within a consistent statistical deviation.
It really depends on whether the press is quoting one board or multiple boards as the source for their data, as some listing may appear in one board and not the other, and some appear in both.
I feel very confident in the new definitions presented by the Florida Gulf Coast MLS which will begin to take affect soon. In the meantime, we’ll continue to report the stats and inform you where we believe the numbers will change. Inventory numbers are low but will increase under the new guidelines.
We’ll talk about some of the new formulas in future articles that better reflect the SW Florida real estate market.
Lately agents have been complaining about Condo or Homeowners Associations being difficult to work with to obtain numbers to payoff associations to put a short sale closing together. To give readers a little perspective, here is the process of a short sale.
SW Florida Association Fee Chart
Once a buyer is found and contract is negotiated it is sent to the seller’s bank for consideration to take less than the full proceeds to payoff the loan. The bank asks us to put together a sample HUD closing statement. To do this, we along with the title company estimate a closing date, pro-rate for taxes and any other costs that would go on the statement. A lender will not allow the seller to receive any money from the closing, so this statement must match almost exactly. We plug in the payoff on the loans last and the bank decides whether they’ll take the payoff.
Are Association Management Companies Causing More Foreclosures
We must put in the HOA fees, and there in lies the problem, HOA and Condo Associations won’t tell you how much is owed without paying them a fee. Keep in mind it’s in everyone’s best interest to get the deal closed so another happy homeowner can begin paying fees. If the property goes to foreclosure, the Association has some rights to recover some past fees, but only to a certain point. Many times the association loses money in unpaid fees. There are Florida Statutes that cover this and we won’t cover that in this article.
HOA’s and condo associations typically contract with CAM”S (Common Asset Property Manager’s) to manage their association. There is still a board of directors and officers, but the day to day management falls to a management company unless an association is self managed. Typically the Board interviews and hires a company based upon tasks, and fees among other things. The management company will quote a fee, let’s say $50,000 in this hypothetical example to manage the association, hire the landscapers, collect HOA fees, and all the things an association must do. The list goes on and on.
What the Board doesn’t always consider are the hidden fees a management company charges, like estoppel letter fees. An Estoppel letter is the formal instrument that tells the title company how much is owed by the owner so the property can be closed. Typically the short seller is having money problems and this is why they can’t pay their mortgage or HOA fees. They are trying to sell, but the HOA fees and legal fees keep mounting.
So when an owner cannot pay the estoppel fee so the file can be closed, it sometimes forces the property to foreclosure. Here is a list of fees some of these companies charge to tell you how much you owe. As you can see, they charge a certain fee nd make you wait, but if you upgrade and pay more they’ll tell you sooner.
Most even charge more after 30 days to update the fee. It typically takes the bank longer than 30 days to approve the short sale, so more fees are almost guaranteed.
Now, the HOA or condo association doesn’t keep that money. You guessed it, that money stays with the management company, so it’s a profit center for them. They get paid either way a management fee to run the association. The HOA or condo may lose money by prolonging things, but the management company doesn’t.
Keep in mind many people belong to multiple associations, so these fees may be doubled or tripled. Also, if a homeowner is in default, they may owe an estoppel fee to the law firm in addition to the management companies.
If more Boards asked better questions when interviewing management companies they’d save their property values from declining further and the association’s financial situation would be much better off. Keep in mind, everyone else pays when someone in trouble isn’t. HOA fees for everyone would be less if they didn’t have to make up for those that aren’t paying. And less foreclosures leads to higher prices in a community, so everyone but the management company has a vested interest in providing this information quickly and painlessly.
Extra fees are the dirty little secret in association management people aren’t aware of until it hits them. Nobody is saying a company who does good work like CAM’s do shouldn’t be paid nicely for their work. I’d rather see them be upfront about it and quote it in their bid instead of complicating things on the back end when time is of the essence.
These companies will tell you it costs them to look up and report these fees. Does it really cost them a lot more to look them up quicker? How long does it take an employee to check the computer?
We’ve included a chart that shows recent transactions encountered and the fees that were charged. This chart is by no means complete. Next time you go to your HOA or condo meeting, you might ask your board to look into this. If you’re wondering if it’s really an issue, call your agent or title company and ask them their opinion.
In the old days agents would ask sellers to come into their office in hopes that the seller would be so impressed they’d select the Realtor they were going to list with on the spot. This was a good strategy, and if a Realtor stands out from the crowd by a wide margin, why wouldn’t a seller be impressed? Some Realtors even refused to visit the seller’s property until the seller selected them as their agent. While this may seem a little over the top, some Realtors actually used this strategy with some success.
90% of Homebuyers Now Shop on the Internet to Buy a Home
Listing Presentations Going Mobile
Today there is no reason an agent cannot do both! With the advent of Tablets like the iPad or an Android Tablet an agent can now bring the office to the seller. It’s quite easy to show your office, how you work, and how you market in a mobile world. If the agent works and negotiates contracts in a mobile world, why can’t they list in a mobile world?
The truth is they can, and they should. The two most important ingredients in a successful home sale is the relationship between the seller and the listing agent, and the property itself. The agent’s office really doesn’t matter.
How do Buyers Find Their Agent
Oh, we’re proud of our physical office and all the things we can show a buyer or seller from the office. However, many times offers have come in while I’m out of town or away on appointment and I’ve been able to look at the offer, make changes, negotiate, and close the sale, all in the amount of time it would have taken to drive back across town from the appointment and begin that process. The office never entered into the equation.
Sure, we have a team of assistants back at the office assisting us, but that had nothing to do with negotiating the offer. Just the same, we no longer feel the need to show a seller the office and meet the team before listing their home. We can bring the team to the seller. We even have powerful video conferencing we can utilize with our sellers and our team.
A seller can surely list a home without going to an agent’s office, but it’s pretty tough for an agent to list a home without seeing the sellers home. Pricing the home depends on condition, functionality, upgrades, etc. There is no substitute for viewing the home.
You have to ask yourself, am I listing my home or listing the agent’s office? We all know the answer is the home, so why not focus there?
You’re also hiring an agent, so it’s important to ask questions, such as how will you market my home? Why should I hire you? What do you bring to the table that another Realtor doesn’t? Show me examples.
Some things are just hard to show on paper. So much marketing today is online or the print is not the standard 8 1/2 x 11. I remember the days when we used to handout 80 page packets explaining the sales process and our team. Those days are now gone.
An agent today can show a seller how buyers are using Apps to search for their home. We can show how the home looks online, how many people have seen it, and where the agent ranks in search engines. Sellers can see virtual tours, photos, satellite views, etc all in the comfort of their home.
Not all agents are the same. Results can vary greatly from agent to agent, and from company to company. Ask your Realtor to show you everything. Buyers today are demanding tech savvy agents when searching for a home. If your Realtor can’t show you their business in a mobile world, how in the world are they going to market your home to today’s buyer?
Later on it may be necessary to meet at the office, but selecting which Realtor to list with is no longer one of those necessities. If you’re considering selling your home, let us show you how buyers really view your home, and why selecting an agent with today’s tools matters.
The Ellis Team at RE/MAX Realty Group is holding two open houses this weekend.
Ellis Team Weekend Open Houses July 14-15
2322 SE 8th Street, Cape Coral $165,000
Open Saturday 1PM-4PM
2322 SE 8th Street, Cape Coral $165,000
Move-in ready, 3 bedroom, 2 bath canal front home in quiet, well maintained neighborhood. Home features spacious bedrooms, vaulted ceilings, large screened lanai which overlooks dock and canal. All assessments are in and paid.
2322 SE 8th Street, Cape Coral Water View
14091 Oak Hammock Lane $300,000
14091 Oak Hammock Lane Fort Myers, FL 33905 Front View14091 Oak Hammock Lane Fort Myers, FL 33905 Rear View
Paradise for those who love the outdoors and peace and quiet. Spacious family home on 1+acres with 5 bedrooms, 2 baths is surrounded by towering Live Oaks and many tropical plants. Home site borders creek that forms one boundary. Exquisite Brazilian Mesquite floors in the living areas, wood burning fireplace in the family room. Sitting room/den off master bedroom could be used as as office, tv room, nursery, your choice. Large master bath has over sized walk-in shower as well as a jacuzzi tub and dual sinks. Large flagstone patio has a built in fire pit and just a short walk away is a personal putting green. Call today to see this beautiful property. Some furniture available separately.
We’re seeing another shift in buying habits and it’s affecting everything from store coupons to selecting hotels to buying real estate. Yes, we’re talking about mobile marketing. Mobile Marketing Influencing Real Estate Buying.
Ellis Team Virtual Tour on Smartphone
Years ago the Internet came along and everybody said newspapers and TV stations would no longer be needed. We found this wasn’t true; however the delivery methods have changed a bit since the advent of the Internet.
Ironically now some are saying the Internet isn’t needed because everything is going mobile. I’ve seen reports that there is now more traffic to websites via smart phones than computers. While it is a fact more people have the power of information literally in their hand wherever they go, there is no substitute for wasting time at work on a big screen surfing the Internet, at least for now.
Smartphone Market Share
The iPhone was a big player in bringing the mobile world to the consumer, but many would be surprised to know that Android is actually the bigger player today. Android just crossed over the 50% mark in January of this year and market share is still growing. The only thing constant is change. Years ago Netscape was The browser in the industry. Microsoft managed to knock off Netscape with Internet Explorer. Now Google Chrome is making inroads along with Mozilla, Firefox, etc.
Remember when Yahoo was the thing in search engines? Today it’s Google with Microsoft fighting for relevance with Bing. We don’t know what tomorrow will bring, however we do know what works today.
If you’re in real estate, you’d better design your website to work on a mobile phone. If you visit our website Topagent.com from a mobile device it recognizes the mobile device and gives you the option to view on a mobile optimized website. We’ve included a photo example of one of our virtual tours. All our virtual tours are optimized to play on any smart phone or phone capable of viewing the Internet. Of course we still have our full blown feature rich tours available for those old fashioned people viewing tours at work or home on a laptop. That sounds kind of weird talking about people on the Internet as old fashioned, but kind of fun I guess too. My how times are changing!
The point is, if you want to be successful in business, you’ve got to be where the customers are. If a business employs old technologies, they’ll get diminished results and wonder why their leads are falling off. They’ll blame it on the Internet and say things like the Internet just doesn’t work anymore. We heard that about newspapers, yellow pages, and radio advertising in the past. They all still work, but customers buying habits are evolving, and if you want to maximize your success, it pays to find out what the consumers are doing and provide solutions.
We have several websites. Even though Android is now king of the mobile market, we can tell you that the iPad is 74.76% of our mobile users on our Topagent.com site. These numbers change on various sites. As more tablets are released this year featuring Android, perhaps those numbers will change. The key is you have to know your market, design your marketing to work on the various technologies, and be available to answer customers in the fashion they like.
If a customer calls you speaking English, they generally would like to speak to someone in English. If a customer calls speaking German, chances are German is their preferred language and they’d like to speak with someone that speaks German.
The same is true with technology. Many people will contact you from their Smart phone. It doesn’t mean they’re ready to talk to you yet. If they ask you to email or send a text of a home, you’ll probably lose that buyer if you fax it to them because that’s more comfortable to you.
If you want to pick up more German buyers, it might help to learn the German language. If you wish to pickup more buyers today, it might help to learn to speak their tech language. If a customer texts you, I’d respond with a text. If you’re not willing to learn the technologies customers want, the real estate industry will pass you by. But then again, so will most industries.
If you don’t know what a QR code is, how to text, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, provide virtual tours, syndicate your listings, do videos on the market, etc. you might be well served to visit Best Buy and look around at how they market with Bar scans, and what devices will read them. Watch customers compare prices the store is offering versus the Internet, and listen to how these devices are shaping buyers decisions. If you can see all this in half an hour at the electronics store, just imagine what is happening on the street in front of the home.
RE/MAX has launched a mobile app that allows you to search all the homes on a map directly from your mobile phone. You can see what homes sold for, what people are asking, and photos of the home you’re in front of. Talk about changing the dynamic of house shopping. Customers can text, call, or email an agent directly from the street for more information. If you’d like this cool new free mobile app send us your email address and we’ll send you the link. Brett@topagent.com
Have you ever negotiated with someone and felt like you weren’t getting anywhere, or felt like you’d like to ring their neck because they weren’t reasonable. After negotiating thousands of transactions and teaching negotiating sessions for the Council of Residential Specialists and national conventions, we’d like to offer a few tips that may help you in the future. While we could probably write a book, we’ll offer what we can in about negotiating to win.
Negotiating Success Tips
Some people feel they’re excellent negotiators as evidenced by their ability to out-negotiate anybody and win at someone else’s expense. This rarely works unless one party is all out of options and there are no other interested takers. In this market, there are usually several interested takers. Let’s talk about some tips that may lead you to a successful deal.
Find out what’s most important to the other party and try to give it to them. Most people think it’s all bout price, but sometimes the closing date is important, or the move in date. Maybe it’s the personal items or the furnishings. I’ve seen some people emotionally attached to a washer and dryer a family member gave them as a present. Ask yourself, is that washer/dryer more important than the overall deal? This question could be asked of either side.
One tactic that rarely works is when one side asks to split the difference as a gesture of good will. This works when both sides feel each has negotiated in good faith and you’re close on the deal. This will blow up the deal when this isn’t the case. Here’s an example. Let’s say a seller prices their home at $200,000 and it’s truly worth $200,000. A buyer makes an offer at $150,000 and the seller laughs. Maybe the seller goes to $198,000 and the buyer goes to $160,000. The seller says they’ll go to $195,000 just to keep it going, but they’re about done. Buyer and seller are now $35,000 apart when the buyer says, “let’s split the difference and go to $177,500.” The deal dies.
Splitting the difference is usually the quickest way to death of a transaction. It’s all a function of where you started. Had the buyer started at $190k and they were only a few thousand apart it might work, but using this tactic when the buyer was unrealistic to begin with only exaggerates an unrealistic deal.
You might save a little bit on price if you give the seller something they want. Maybe the seller has kids and doesn’t want to move them until the end of the school year. They might sacrifice a little bit of money knowing they have their house sold but occupancy until the end of the year for the kids. If that works for the buyer, it’s win/win for both buyer and seller, and buyer saves a little bit of money while helping out the seller.
Another tip is research the market and offer fairly upfront. I’ve seen buyers get better deals by making a fair offer upfront rather than insulting the seller and offering far below market value. Everyone wants to get the best deal they can. This includes buyer and seller. If a buyer insults the seller, the seller is on guard and subsequent dealings tend to be contentious, so the seller counters higher to a buyer they don’t like than a buyer that was fair to begin with.
Don’t use gimmicks and deceit. Make your offer clear and complete. If you try to back-end your way into a negotiation the seller or seller’s agent will sniff that out and it will usually backfire. If you’re clear upfront with your intentions, contingencies, etc. you’ll build trust and perhaps you can get what you’d like. When trust is broken on the front end, it’s very difficult to get what you want through trickery and deceit. I don’t have room for examples and we could list plenty.
Work with an agent that listens and will guide you. Listen to your agent. Agents work with people all day long, every day for their job. Experienced agents who are successful have learned a thing or two about dealing with people and negotiating for success. If you find yourself out-negotiating the market but never ending up with a purchase or a sale, you might be out-negotiating yourself. It pays to seek the advice of a negotiating pro. It pays even more when you listen and act upon it.
If you’re a buyer, your success could very well be getting your first choice or moving on to your 4th or 5th favorite home. If you’re a seller, your success could very well be negotiating to close with your first buyer or waiting months and several price reductions later to close with your 4th or 5th buyer.
Your agent’s marketing brings buyers to the table. What you do with it can make those efforts worthwhile or futile.
If you look at the February and March 2012 graphs for single family home sales in Lee County, you’ll quickly notice that a large percentage of homes have sold for cash versus financing. This is not a new trend. While cash sales have saved our market the last few years, it does have its good and bad points. And we’ll attempt to explain why we’re seeing so many cash sales as well. Cash Sales Dominate SW Florida Real Estate Market!
SW Florida Cash Sales Versus Financed Sales
You would think that with interest rates at historical lows, more people would be jumping on the train to buy now and finance. Homeownership is affordable, as rates are low and prices are low compared to the height of the market, although prices are on their way up. We believe price will go much higher if the government would get out of the way and make financing possible again.
Local lenders are complaining, as are buyers, that the Dodd Frank Act has made it so difficult for qualified borrowers to actually produce unnecessary redundant and onerous documents that many just give up. Banks have gone from easy documentation loans in the boom to crazy stupid documentation now. We can’t just blame the lenders, because lenders are just following new provisions of the Dodd Frank Act. You might recognize the names, Chris Dodd and Barney Frank, two names synonymous with getting loans and perks from the banking industry maybe they shouldn’t have gotten. We’ll leave those scandals for another story. I’m sure you can read all about them over the Internet.
In an attempt to regulate and improve the mortgage market, Dodd Frank has hurt the market in several ways. Parts of the act require higher down payments which will take many buyers out of the market. 2 recent studies suggest requiring all buyers to put at least 10% down would force about 40% of otherwise credit worthy buyers out of the market and requiring 20% down would force about 60% out.
Mortgage Rates Trends
FHA has always required about 3-3.5% down and allows sellers to pay buyers closing costs, and their delinquency rates haven’t been substantially higher than banks requiring 10% down or more.
Secondly, and speaking from personal experience, the documentation requirements banks are adding because they’re afraid of getting fined or having to buy back the mortgage are awful. We’ve had several buyers have to go back to the Social Security Administration and request newer social security cards because their older cards may not reflect a name change due to a divorce, marriage, etc. The number has stayed the same throughout their life, and the lender can see this, but they still require the new card which pushes back the closing. Because the closing gets pushed back, it generally requires all new bank statements and employment stubs. We’ve had lenders wait until next month’s stubs before they’ll loan the money, so both buyer and seller must wait.
Wait, there’s more. Because a few fees might change due to the delays, like the interest rate lock may have expired, or the prorations could be off due to the delays, it required a new Truth in Lending Disclosure. You guessed it, if the lender has to re-disclose, there is a waiting period for that. That waiting period could trigger more bank statements, and updated pay stub, etc. It seems the cycle never ends, and it’s ridiculous. It’s no wonder listing agents want to know which bank is approving the buyer, and if the bank has a track record of delaying deals due to extemporaneous paperwork, it may cause the seller to accept another buyer’s offer over that one.
Lenders are getting penalized under Dodd Frank, and they’re getting hammered by sellers and real estate agents who are looking at best offer and most likely to close on time, if at all.
We feel that requiring higher down payments wouldn’t stop the market in a correction like the one we saw starting in 2006, so why add that on to borrowers who could never save that down payment while paying rent, preventing them from the American Dream? And even if you disagree with that statement, most would agree that Dodd Frank is preventing the market from moving higher because it’s essentially blocking access to capital markets for many.
Don’t get me wrong, if you’re qualified, you can get a mortgage. You just have to know where to go to get the money, and be prepared to document everything just in case.
Good luck and happy house hunting. Rates are low, and prices are low but on the rise. If our buyer agents can be of assistance, feel free to call us at 239-489-4042
It seems these days everyone’s got a quick and easy theory on how to price a home, but many are filled with errors that will either cause you to under-price your home, or over price it. Neither is good, because under pricing it means you’re just giving your equity away to the new buyer, and over pricing it means it will sit on the market longer and perhaps never sell. Statistics show that homes that are over-priced tend to sit longer and the seller ends up taking less because the market wonders what is wrong with it when it sat so long. Top Tips for Pricing Your Home in Today’s Market.
Top Tips For Pricing Your Home in Today’s Market
Here are some tips to consider:
Don’t go by the property appraiser’s assesses value- I’ve talked to several property appraisers over the years including our own Ken Wilkinson. A property appraiser from IL told me it’s not the property appraiser’s job to value a home correctly, but rather simply it’s their job to value it fairly. There is a big difference. Because property appraisers use a mass appraisal system, they’re trying to price all homes fairly. Obviously if they could price each home at market value that would be wonderful, but they appraise hundreds of thousands at a time without going in the property, so it’s all done in relation to every other property. There can be a wide margin for errors with this system, and thus why there is an appeal process if you believe they’ve made an error. It’s amazing how well they do county-wide, and yet we can’t rely on any one valuation to be absolute. There are variations on many properties.
Sites like Zillow provide Estimates. In fact, they call it a Zestimate, but it’s only that, and I’ve seen the valuations vary widely in just a matter of days. They use an online computer model, but again this model doesn’t visit the home, see inside, evaluate the condition, etc. They may look at all homes in a subdivision or street, but here in SW Florida there can be wide variations from street to street. Picture a riverfront home compared to a home 100 ft away across the street, or a golf course lot versus off golf course.
Be Wary of Price Per Foot- I could show you two identical 2,000 sq ft homes from a builder. One is built with a pool, the other is not. One is on a waterfront lot, the other not. One upgrades the kitchen, adds a 3rd garage, upgrades carpet, cabinets, etc, and the second remains plain Jane. Obviously the pool and the lot location affect the price per square foot, so the square footage doesn’t really mean much. You could have a home built in 1952 sitting next door to a stupendous home built in 2012 with all the new hurricane protection, wiring, plumbing, roof, etc.
Study the Appraisal- Appraisals can be ordered for different reasons. It could be ordered for resell, refinance, estate value, eminent domain, taxation, etc. The scope and purpose can affect the value. If the bank sees you’re a great credit risk, it’s possible a refi appraisal could come out higher than a resale appraisal.
Be Careful Valuing Amenities- Just because you put an upgrade in the home 20 years ago doesn’t mean it has much value today. I recall back in the late 1980’s going to a seller’s home on Wren Rd in San Carlos Park. Back at that time homes were selling on that dirt road for $30’s. The seller added a $20,000 pool and expected over $50,000 for that home. It’s true, if you add value to pool cost you would think it would be worth that, but a $22k pool to a $30k home buyer is an extravagant amenity they cannot afford. That’s roughly 50% of the house value which was considered an over-improvement for the area at that time. It’s possible that pool had little to no value in that price range at the time. FHA wouldn’t even give value to a sprinkler system there as it was considered an over improvement.
It pays to value a home correctly the first time, as the market has a way of speaking in the end. The sooner you listen to the market, the better off you’ll be. It pays to work with a seasoned agent who can help you price your home using sound methods. On paper you might be able to make it come to what you want, but does that do you any good if a buyer won’t pay that, or a lender won’t lend that much. Be realistic. No matter the market, up, down, or sideways, you will always find those that over price and find a way not to sell. And even in the ugliest of markets’ homes do sell, because sellers price it at today’s value, not some number they need, nor a number from the past.
Remember, the market never cares what you need for your home. The market only cares if it’s priced correctly, and if it matches the buyer’s needs. Good luck, and happy home selling.
All news is relative. Building permits are up which is good for construction and jobs. While building permits are up from last year, they’re a shell of what they were in the building boom, so you can spin the data any which way you want and we’ve seen it spun both ways recently. Good news for local jobs.
April Leading Economic Indicators
For years we’ve talked about statistics and provided updates about what’s going on in the local SW Florida real estate market. Prices go up, prices go down, sales go up, sales go down, etc. All along we’ve said supply and demand will affect the market, but ultimately the real rebound will occur when the economy improves and jobs return to the area.
Well, we’ve got some actual good news to report, and while some may spin it and say jobs are not what they used to be back in 2005, I would argue this is good news no matter how you look at it. Nationally, jobless claims rose to 380,000 which was an increase, and this doesn’t even count those who have given up seeking a job, or whom are under-employed.
Locally it’s a much better story. Two recent stories in the press touted jobs coming to SW Florida. You may have heard about a company called Arthrex that is building a $25 million manufacturing plant in Collier County. That will bring construction jobs to the area, but that’s just the beginning. According to a News Press article, the company employs 347 Lee County residents between its Plantation Rd complex and it’s North Naples facility. The company plans to add another 400-500 workers by 2016 with an average salary at its Collier facility running $59,580. Arthrex expects to have about 2,000 local workers by 2016
I spoke to Government leaders back in January and other projects like this are in the works, so we look forward to bringing more good news to our area in the future. Another local company made news this past week. CarMax announced it is hiring for about 80 positions at its news store on Colonial Blvd. CarMax is a retailer for used cars and a welcome addition to the SW Florida employment pool. By the way, if you’d like to apply for a job, visit www.carmax.com/careers
The real estate market has definitely been on the upswing since 2009. For any recovery to be sustainable, jobs have to enter the picture, and now that is happening. As inventory dwindles and more jobs come to the area, there is the potential for more construction opportunities, which fuels more jobs. SW Florida has always been home to service industry jobs and construction, and with the addition of manufacturing companies like Arthrex, it could be a boom to our local economy.
There is talk of adding convention center space and perhaps a casino in the Fort Myers area which would also be a boom to the area job wise. Gambling has always been a hotly debated topic and will always have opinions on both sides of the fence. We’ll keep our eye on this however we suspect it will take months for this decision to play out.
Traditional Sales Bring More Money Than Foreclsoures
Foreclosures are down which is another reason prices are up. If you look at the attached chart you’ll see the median price of a traditional sale in Lee County Florida is almost double the foreclosure price. This is a function of which homes come on the market in a particular price range, but I think it’s safe to assume that traditional sales are more indicative of actual market values than distressed sales. The good news is, there were almost 600 more traditional single family home sales the 1st qtr of 2012 than there were in 2011.
Let’s keep the Good News coming! It’s hard to spin this data as anything but good.
