Daniels Park Archives - Fort Myers Real Estate and Homes For Sale

Buyers choose to buy all year long for various reasons. Leases expire, their existing home goes under contract, or a new job opportunity in SW Florida presents itself for an out of state buyer. People retire, relocate, and buy vacation homes 12 months out of the year. Florida is a net gain state, meaning it’s gaining more residents than it loses each year. So, we decided to answer the question, “Are certain months better to list your home for maximum results?”

As you can see from the graph, listings pick up each year around October. In 2016 it started in September, but only modestly. As a seller, you have a distinct advantage of being on the market in August and September over those that enter the market in October.

With limited choices for buyers, they are forced to scoop up homes that meet their criteria quickly for fear of losing out to other buyers. This fear disappears when more listings enter the market. In fact, when buyers lose their fear of missing out on a home, they become indifferent. When this occurs, we know we’ve hit a pricing plateau and buyers have turned off. The market must re-balance itself, and correct. The sellers that react and respond quickly get out. The sellers that do not, linger on the market wondering what it’s going to take to sell their home.

Thankfully we don’t have that market right now. Buyers are motivated because many sellers have made price corrections. Interest rates are rising, and it’s costing buyers to wait. They need a home, and they want one now, within reason. Buyers aren’t acting stupid today. They are educating themselves, studying the market, and acting when they need to.

And this is precisely why sellers who are on the market in August and priced correctly have a distinct advantage to sellers who wait until October. Ask yourself two questions?

When is the best time to sell an item? The answer is when there are fewer items on the market. When is the best time to purchase an item? This answer is when there are more items to choose from. It’s simple supply and demand.

The listings are coming, we know this for sure. It happens every year. If you’re a seller contemplating a sale, wouldn’t it make sense to beat the seller rush and put your home on the market now? Buyers are out there, and they’re motivated. Many buyers are frustrated because they can’t score a deal. They’re getting beat out by other buyers and watching home after home come off the market while they have none. They need a home, they’re watching rates go up, and yet they can’t catch a break.

Sellers can take advantage of this mismatch, but time is running out. Soon, other sellers will have the same idea and place their home on the market, and you lose your advantage. Oh, you can still sell in October-December. It’s just more fun when less sellers are competing with you.

Imagine being a high school girl waiting for a guy to ask you to prom. Wouldn’t it be nice if there were 5 girls in the class and 30 boys? You’d practically have your pick of which offer to choose. You wouldn’t settle for the 1^st offer if it wasn’t right, because you know better options are a moment away. It wouldn’t be so good for the buys though. Only 5 would get dates, and the other 25 would be waiting for a new girl to move to town.

This is what it’s like in August in the SW Florida housing market. Buyers are looking. Supply is limited in certain price ranges. Our team is having another record month in August. We need more listings. Our marketing is working. If you’re thinking of selling anytime soon, we should probably talk.

Call Brett or Sande Ellis 239-489-4042 Ext 4. Or visit www.SWFLhomevalues.com to get an instant free idea of what your home may be worth. Let us show you how we can save you thousands on your next transaction!

Ellis Team Weekend Open Houses

Like clockwork Lee County summer real estate sales are heating up. So why aren’t Lee County home sellers jumping for joy? Many home sellers are happy, because their home was on the market all season and now it’s selling. Others are happy because their home just sold while their neighbor’s home sits on the market.

This past season we saw many sellers priced at one point while the buyer’s perception of value was at another. In many cases, the seller’s perception exceeded the buyer’s perception by 10% or more. Sellers didn’t want to accept this reality, so homes sat on the market. You’ll always have some sellers that refuse to accept today’s market prices, but when you have many, it causes the market to take note and listen.

The market always speaks to us. It’s up to us if we’re ready to listen. We’re humans, and we don’t always want to accept change. For those that accept change and react quicker, the opportunity is the greatest.

Right now, home sales are brisk $300,000 and below. This makes sense because that’s where the bulk of the buyers are. That’s what more people can afford. We just pulled up the 7-day market watch from MLS, and we notice there more pending sales (379) than new listings (365). You’ll notice too there were more price reductions (385) than either. These price reductions are leading to more pending sales as sellers get their home down to where the buyers are.

Selling a home is kind of like fishing. If you place your bait 20 ft above where the fish are, you get nothing. Lowering the bait 10 ft above where the fish are still yields nothing. Fish tend to swim in schools. You’ve got to place the bait where the fish are, not where you want them to be. Pricing a home is the same.

If you price your home above where the buyers are, they don’t even look at it. Typically, you should expect an offer with every 4-5 showings. If you’re not getting offers, your home is probably still overpriced. Sellers say, “We just reduced our price $10,000” so that can’t be it. It can. If you were $30,000 overpriced, that $10,000 reduction still places you 20 ft above the fish. Until you get down where the fish are, you’ll attract few showings and little to no offers.

Of the 379 new pending sales, the median price was $249,000. The average price was $335,540. This confirms the $300,000 range and below as being the sought-after part of the market. If you have a home $400,000 or more on the market right now, you’re probably still fishing for the correct asking price. You may be wondering why buyers just are not accepting your price. Your neighbor’s home may be sitting on the market too. Occasionally one will sell, and you’ll be wondering what they did to attract that buyer.

It takes aggressive marketing. Aggressive marketing alone won’t work. Together with your agent, you’ll need to adjust that bait until you find where the fish are. When you do, it will sell. The SW Florida real estate market isn’t suffering from a lack of buyers. The buyers are not aligned with some sellers’ asking prices. When the seller gets down to where the buyers are, the buyers are biting. This past week or so the Ellis Team has placed 7 properties under contract. Some agents believe the summer is the slow time, but that’s a bad assumption. We have buyers in all price ranges. We just closed a property over $1 Million.

The agents out there hustling are selling homes. It’s a great time to sell, so long as you’re willing to price your home at the market. Isn’t that always the case though? Together with your agent you should ask yourself, “Am I willing to price my home at a price that will cause it to sell?” If the answer is no, then why are you putting it on the market?

If you’d like to talk to Sande or Brett Ellis about selling your home, call us at 239-489-4042 Ext 4. Next week we hope to share some exciting news that may make your home stand out and sell faster. Find out what your home is worth online.

Search the MLS like a Pro! Get real-time updates, price changes, new listings, and All the MLS listings.

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Unbelievable changes are coming. I remember having a conversation the other day. I told my wife that our kids would freak out if we told them we didn’t have Internet growing up as kids. The Internet today just seems fundamental, and certainly to a Millennial, they wouldn’t understand the concept of its absence. Just as the Internet changed our lives, so too will artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence will change real estate shopping and everything else too.

I just watched a live video whereby you take out your smartphone and open the camera. In your screen is a lamp. Your phone will show you other accessories that match that style, so you could shop for and put together a room that matches. I watched another video where the camera showed a woman in an outfit. Artificial intelligence scanned billions of images and within a second pulled up where you could buy that outfit, along with other similar outfits, and prices.

So, imagine walking down the street and noticing a home that looks good to you. It’s not for sale, but you like the look. Your phone could instantly find other homes on the market right now that look just like the one you love, show you the price, and even setup a showing appointment to see it. Sound futuristic? Perhaps, but it is coming.

Keller Williams has already been working on this for its agents. Currently I can ask our artificial assistant Kelle many things, and instantly she will give me results that used to take hours. Let’s say I have a client moving to Bowling Green, KY. I whip out my phone and tell Kelle, “show me Bowling Green agents with the CRS designation.” Kelle spits out agents with their CRS designation. There is a ton of activities I can ask Kelle to do while I’m in the field and Kelle only gets smarter. As we ask her to do things, she learns and becomes capable of more.

Google held its I/O conference this week and announced some amazing things. Companies like Google, Microsoft, IBM, etc are all working on artificial intelligence.

Artificial intelligence offers the ability to ask, scan, analyze, and deliver billions of pieces of information instantly. Our military is scanning and analyzing photos on video and delivering results with over 90% accuracy. It used to take people days and months to scour video. Now our defense department can search for and do things in minutes.

Our company is working on analyzing photos in MLS. Let’s say you like a certain kind of counter-top, or a certain color cabinet. We’ll be able to ask, show me all kitchens with Black Quartz priced below $450,000. Having the ability to scan photos and deliver results would save an agent or consumer many hours perusing photos of listings.

We use big data to search for buyers for our listings. When we list a home, we serve up ads on that home to consumers that match certain criteria. For instance, we just listed a nice 4-bedroom pool home in Belle Lago. We’ll be holding it open this Saturday from 1-3 PM. We’ll serve up online ads for buyers looking to purchase in the Estero area. Big data allows us to target specific buyers. It helps us sell homes faster and for more money for our clients.

Big data is great, but artificial intelligence is what will tie it together. The pentagon can have all the videos it wants, but what good is it when it sits in a vault and is too big to work with? The same is true for real estate. Being able to ask and analyze data is key. Many sellers interview agents and ask which one can save them 1%. The real question should be, which agent can sell my home for 3% more and 20% faster. Saving 1% doesn’t save anything if they sell it for less and take longer.

If you want to search the MLS like a pro go to www.LeeCountyOnline.com.

If you’re thinking of selling, call Sande or Brett Ellis 239-489-4042 and find out how Today’s systems just might help sell your home faster, and for more money.

Ellis Team Weekend Open Houses

Belle Lago

Open Saturday 1-3 PM

19790 Maddelena Cir

Daniels Park

Open Saturday 1-4 PM

14077 Danpark Loop

Let’s start with what we know and work backwards. Homes priced $200,00 or less are flying off the shelves with multiple offers. Homes up to $250,000 are as well in some neighborhoods, but not all. This assumes the home is in good condition and priced correctly. So, you might wonder why we’re asking the question, are changes brewing in Southwest Florida real estate market?

Buyers are still buying; however, we’re noticing they’re price sensitive now. Prices have gone up so much perhaps it’s testing the limits of what buyers can or will pay. Sellers are counter-offering offers and buyers aren’t just accepting that. They are negotiating back and forth until both are happy. Some buyers are walking from counter-offers. We’ve seen this over the years and it appears it’s no longer a seller’s market across the board.

The numbers from June seem to bear that out as well. The median time to contract jumped 7 days in June from May’s numbers, and 9 days from last year. It’s taking longer to get contracts on houses. It’ll be interesting to see July’s numbers in a few weeks.

Median time to sale also jumped to 117 days. That’s a 11.4% increase from last year. New listings are up 5.8% and new pendings were down 1.6% from last year. Could these be leading indicators for sales in months to come?

So, what’s the takeaway here? Sellers need to take a good hard look at their price and make sure they’re competitive. If your home has been on the market awhile, it may be time to re-evaluate where you stand. New listings could have come on the market and become instantly more attractive than your home, or other sellers may have reduced their price. Both events can affect you. Sometimes as little as $2,000 in some sub-markets can be the difference between selling and sitting.

We are in a price sensitive market, primarily because prices have risen and stretched home buyers thin. They simply can’t purchase as much home as they could have a year ago. We warned buyers this would happen. And we’re warning sellers not to get too greedy now.

Prices are good. Buyers are buying. We don’t have a runaway market where the seller gets to dictate all the terms. Buyers and sellers are on even ground right now, and price matters. Sellers, you’re not in competition with the buyer. You’re in competition with all the other sellers out there competing for your buyer.

Buyers, same thing. You’re not in competition with the seller. You’re in competition with all the other buyers out there for the best properties. The best valued homes always sell fast. You don’t want to be late to the table and eating scraps when you could have had the best. Be prepared. Get your financing in order so you can jump when that property hits the market.

To take advantage of opportunities in this market we’d suggest sitting down with us and going over your objectives. As a buyer, we can show you the best homes and eliminate the rest. Wasting time on the junk takes away time looking at the good stuff. That can be the difference between success and failure. Let an Ellis Team professional work with you and save you time. We have some other tips for you as well that we’ll save for when we meet.

Sellers should have the same sit-down with us. We’ll educate you on the market, look at your competition, and show you how we market better than anybody. This can be the difference between selling and sitting on the market.

Feel free to search homes at www.LeeCountyOnline.com Our database comes directly from the MLS and is always up to date, unlike some of these other sites with bad or outdated data.

You can always call us at 239-489-4042 We’d love to help you buy or sell your next home in paradise!

Ellis Team Weekend Open Houses

Open Sat 1-3 PM

Reflection Lakes

13812 Lily Pad Cir

3 Bed, 2 Bath, 1,474 SQ Ft 2 Car Garage-Gated Community

$250,000

Open Sat 2-4 PM

Fisherman’s Cove

10081 Lake Cove Dr Unit 101

3 Bed, 2 Bath 1,564 SQ Ft 2 Car Garage

$227,500

Open Sun 1-4 PM

Daniels Park

14011 Danpark Loop

3 Bed, 2 Bath 1,830 Sq Ft Gated Community

$275,000

While pulling data for the latest monthly supply of inventory we noticed some increases in buying activity in certain price ranges. Today we thought we’d bring you the latest monthly supply numbers and answer what price ranges are hot in SW Florida real estate market.

The overall months’ supply of homes on the market today stands at 4.2 months. 5.5 months’ supply is considered a balanced market, so overall, we’re in a seller’s market. However, as we all know, there are segments in the market and supply changes by price range.

Obviously by looking at the chart, anything $250k or under is the sweet spot for this market. However, anything up to $400k isn’t too bad either. So where did we see a pickup in home sales since we last published this report?

What Price Ranges Are Hot in SW Florida Real Estate?

We saw a nice gain in sales in the $200-250 range. For the past 365 days there were 2,177 sales compared to a rolling 365 day count back in April of 2,059. That’s a pickup of 118 sales in a 3-month period. The overall market saw a pickup of just 6 homes. There were almost 19,000 home sales in the last 365 days, so 6 homes is almost dead-even.

The $300-$399k range saw a pickup of 87 homes, and the $400-$599k range saw a pickup of 86 homes. So, if the overall market only picked up 6 homes, there had to be some drops. The $100-$149k range saw the largest drop of 160 homes followed by the $100k or less of 108 homes. Now, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It means these homes graduated to higher prices and there were fewer homes available in those ranges. The market didn’t suffer because as those homes graduated, we saw an increase in home sales into the prices ranges they graduated into.

What does all this tell us? It tells us the market is segmented and you have to know your numbers. Pricing is still important as to how aggressive you choose to be. When you’re stretching it, you must market the home well, and be prepared to adjust if the market doesn’t respond.

Nationally, homes sales slipped month over month. Interest rates are creeping up. Rents are high in Southwest Florida which motivates buyers to purchase, however rising rates crimp their ability to pay. We love a seller’s market that is close to balanced. There are winners and losers in every transaction.

Getting to Win-Win

Many times, there are two winners, the buyer and seller. The loser is the buyer who missed out because they weren’t ready. Getting pre-approved before you offer helps so much, especially in a multi-offer situation. Having an experienced agent who can help make your offer look the best to the seller helps too.

Remember this. The buyer and seller are not in competition with each other. Buyers are in competition with all the other buyers out there competing for the same supply of homes. The sellers are in competition with all the other sellers out there for the interested buyers. When you find a home you like, don’t screw it up. Go get it.

Sellers, when you find a buyer that works, don’t screw it up either. The best homes go fast, and the best buyers go fast. You must ask yourself, am I willing to lose this transaction, because the next may not be as appealing to me as this one?

It Takes a Pro

It takes a strong real estate professional who knows the market and knows the numbers to properly help you make that decision. If you’re thinking of buying, selling, or both, always call the Ellis Team at Keller Williams Realty. We’ve been doing this awhile, and we’ve seen a few things. We can help make the difference for you!

Feel free to search the MLS, or find out what your homes is worth online for free at www.LeeCountyOnline.com Or call us at 239-489-4042 We’re glad to help!

Ellis Team voted best real estate team in SW Florida News Press Readers Poll — Brett and Sande Ellis Voted Best Real Estate Team in SW Florida

Ellis Team Voted Best Real Estate Team in SW Florida by News Press Readers

Ellis Team Weekend Open Houses

Open Saturday 1-3 PM

4351 Pine Rd, Fort Myers

4 Bed, 3 Bath 2,372 Sq Ft $350,000

Oversized 2 car Garage

Perfect property for an RV

Open Saturday 1-3 PM

14154 Danpark Loop, Fort Myers

2 Bed, 2 Bath 1,209 Sq Ft $185,000

Gated Community-Daniel’s Park

See our Weekend Open Houses Ads on Facebook

Hopefully everyone had a great Labor Day weekend. The Ellis Team household celebrated with friends and family with a cookout and football party. Good times were definitely had by all, and that’s the way it should be. Beating the post Labor Day real estate stall isn’t rocket science, but more on that after we tell you about the stall.

I started cooking the day before. I made all the sauces, put the rub on the meat, and eventually placed the pork on the smoker at midnight. The plan was to smoke the meat at 225 degrees for about 17 hours. The meat must reach a certain temperature, but inevitably the temperature gains stall out at about 160 degrees for a period of 5 hours or so. This frustrates many who are not accustomed to the stall.

The stall is that period where temperature gains cease for a long while. This is because at 160 degrees the meat begins to sweat and cool itself. Juice go from the center to the edges during this time period. One way to beat the stall is to wrap meat in aluminum foil at 160 degrees and keep the heat on. By doing so you can retain some of the moisture and cut the heating time down.

Beating the Post Labor Day Real Estate Stall

So you might ask how does all this relate to real estate? Each year after September the SW Florida real estate market reaches a stall. If you know it’s coming there are things you can do to shorten the time-frame of the stall. You must power through it as buyers and sellers are counting on you.

Knowing it’s coming is half the battle. The other half is preparation. Just as most of the work to cook the meat was done the day before, so it is true with the real estate market.

We continue to list and sell properties. In fact, we’re cranking some sales now at a time when county-wide sales are down. We don’t stop advertising, and we don’t stop prospecting for buyers for our listings.

In fact, much of the work we’ve done the past few months helps us with sales during the typical “Stall” time. Some Realtors take off in the slow months, but this is the time to put the real work in. Championships are built in the off season. This was opening weekend and you can tell which teams put in the work as they were the most prepared for week 1.

When we list a home in September it’s very possible we already have the buyer we obtained in July or August. We have a database of thousands of buyers we’ve worked hard to build up. Some are buying today, some are buying tomorrow, and some next month. We don’t control their time frame, we only control our efforts to obtain buyers for our listings.

Often times sellers will ask us if we have a buyer for their home. Quite often the answer is yes. When we take a listing we bring it back to our team of agents who cross-check our database to see if we’ve got someone for that home. Perhaps we have someone flying in on October 2^nd who matches perfectly. Perhaps we have someone now.

In any event, we market the home too, because even though we may have 3 buyers for our listing the market may have one ready, willing, and able to buy it today. And you never know which buyer will pay the highest price.

Don’t Sweat the Stall

It’s the hard work we put in year-round that enables us to sell homes every month of the year. So we don’t worry too much about the “Stall”. We advise our clients on what the market is doing, and if we’re doing our job at the highest level, perhaps we can shorten our client’s time-frame and power through it for them.

If you’ve got a home to sell, we should probably talk. It’s possible we have a buyer for it, and either way our marketing attracts buyers. If you’re a buyer, we’ve got some great new listings coming to the market in the next few weeks. You can search at www.LeeCountyOnline.com or call us at 239-489-4042

We look forward to working with you! Good luck, and Happy House Hunting!

Join us for Two Great Open Houses

Reflection Lakes Open House — Reflection Lakes 3 Bedroom 2 Bath $215,000

13971 Lake Mahogany Blvd Unit 2623

Open Sunday 1-4 PM

Gate 4 Reflection Lakes

14154 Danpark Loop

Open Sunday 1-4 PM

Daniel’s Park

Affordable Living in Great Neighborhood

Watch the Future of Real Estate September 2016

Fort Myers Real Estate and Homes For Sale

SW Florida Real Estate Market Updates & News

Tag Archives: Daniels Park

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