“Back To Reality” In Florida
The Herald Tribune reports from Florida. “Prices remain the story in home sales, with Sarasota-Bradenton prices falling 18 percent in October, the second biggest drop in the state. The Charlotte County-North Port market was not far behind, with a drop of 17 percent, from $243,900 to $202,800.”
“Only Fort Myers-Cape Coral took a bigger fall, posting a 44 percent decline in median sales price, from $445,100 to $249,200, the Florida Association of Realtors reported on Tuesday.”
“Chad Roffers, president of Sarasota-based Sky Sotheby’s Realty, said the price decline goes hand in hand with slowing sales. ‘An 18 percent decrease feels about right. We’re seeing unit sales down by a third across the board and prices off by 20 percent from the peak in mid-2005,’ said Chad Roffers, president of Sarasota-based Sky Sotheby’s. ‘Those sellers who accept that level of value are seeing action. Those who hold out for 2005 prices are not.’”
“Budge Huskey, president and chief operating officer of Coldwell Banker Residential Real Estate, is not convinced that prices are done declining. ‘Sell now; you may get less in three months than today.’”
“Sales of condominiums in the Sarasota-Bradenton market were off 51 percent from the same time a year ago. The median sales price dropped 27 percent, from $294,000 to $216,000. ‘Condos always go belly up when economy gets sluggish,’ said (realtor) Barbara Anson.”
“‘We now have to come back to reality,’ she said. ‘I am explaining to my sellers in Myakka that the bubble has busted. They’re not going to get $350,000-$400,000 for a 10-acre parcel like they used to. They’ll get $200,000.’”
“‘All I can say is nothing in my neighborhood is moving,’ Yetta Levitt said, noting that one of the less expensive, nonwaterfront homes in her 210-home subdivision sold last month for $410,000. ‘Prior to that sale, I believe the last sale was November 2005.’”
The Miami Herald. “The median price for existing single-family homes in Miami-Dade dropped to $356,000 in October, the lowest since August last year. In Broward, prices went down to $349,400, the lowest since April last year.”
“Ronald Shuffield, president of Esslinger Wooten Maxwell, contends that people who buy now may still see prices go down in 2007, as the market digests the enormous number of homes for sale. Nearly 65,000 homes are now listed for sale in South Florida, from 25,174 a year ago. The antidote, some industry players and watchers say, is still for prices to come down.”
The Sun Sentinel. “Palm Beach County’s October median declined $50,900, or 12 percent, on an annual basis, and experts say prices will keep falling into 2007.”
“Prices actually have fallen even more than that because sellers are giving buyers lucrative incentives, that aren’t reflected in the sales prices, analyst Jack McCabe said. ‘Sellers are not getting all that money in value for their properties because they’re having to pay a big chunk of that out as concessions,’ he said.”
The News Press. “Lee County’s housing market continued to slow in October, with sales and prices down and the inventory of homes for sale still going up. The median price of an existing home sold with the help of a Realtor was $249,200 in October, down 4.7 percent from $261,400 in September. People selling their homes in Lee County have seen prices fall steadily since the median price reached an all-time high of $322,300 in December 2005.”
“The number of homes on the market in the county in October was 13,260, almost five times what it was in October 2004.”
“In Collier County, the median price was down 17 percent from October 2005 to $420,000 and the number of sales fell 27 percent to 204. Charlotte County’s median price fell 17 percent to $202,800.”
“Warren and Tracy Pearce sold their three-bedroom, two-bath, lakeside house in North Fort Myers recently to move into a condo. ‘We’d had it for sale since February,’ he said, but at the initial asking price of more than $400,000 there were no takers.”
“The Pearces’ agent got them to reduce the asking price, it finally sold for $289,000. The Pearces paid $170,000 for the house 31/2 years ago.”
“When sellers are unable to get the price they need, agent Michael Burke said, increasingly, ‘It’s Plan B: rent it.’ Owners usually can’t break even on the expenses of keeping the home, he said, ‘but they’re easing the pain.’”
From Florida Today. “Brevard County’s housing market continued to slow in October compared with the same period a year ago. Condominium sales year over year plunged 69 percent, falling to 85 transactions from 273 in October 2005. The median sales price for condominiums in Brevard dropped 17 percent.”
“‘We still have to convince sellers we’re in a new phase and the asking prices they had last year are probably not realistic now,’ said Gene Collins, president of the Melbourne Area Association of Realtors. Daryl Adkins of Indialantic has been trying to sell his three-bedroom home for more than a year and has dropped his original asking price of $325,000 to $238,500.”
“‘It’s slow all over the county because there is so much on the market,’ Adkins said, adding higher taxes and insurance costs ‘aren’t doing us any justice either.’”
The Daytona Beach News Journal. “Gertrude Butler and her husband have been trying to sell their house since April, dropping the price twice, so they can move back to Delaware to be near their family. But, Butler said, ‘If we don’t sell this house, we won’t be going anywhere.’”
“The Butlers have dropped their price $12,900 in seven months. They started out asking $289,900, and now are asking $277,000 for their three-bedroom, two-bath, lakefront home in the Cypress Cove subdivision. ‘We’ve had people look and even a few really low offers,’ Butler said, admitting she feels discouraged.”
The Nassau Neighbors. “Jeff Timian was sure he was making a good investment this year when he bought and renovated a house in Fernandina Beach. But now, after the house has sat on the market for months, Timian’s sure thing isn’t so sure. He’s now offering it for sale below its appraised value.”
“This week it’s down to $225,000, he said. ‘I’m not going too much below $225,000. At that point, I still make money,’ he said.”
“Sales of single-family existing houses in the Jacksonville area, which includes Nassau Countym dropped 18 percent between July and September as compared to the same quarter in 2005. Condominiums fared worse. Sales plunged 49 percent between the same period in 2005.”
“Lou Goldman is the sales manager for a Yulee marshside subdivision. He said the current buyer’s market is a cycle that recurs in the real-estate industry, Goldman said. What complicates it is that the most recent ‘boom’ phase lasted a lot longer than usual, he said.”
“‘From 1992 to 2005 was the longest run there’s been,’ he said. ‘Most people don’t remember what it was like the last time it plateaued. The last one was from 1990 to 1992. This is a buyer’s market. You don’t have the urgency you have when there’s a seller’s market, because the prices aren’t going up.’”
““Only Fort Myers-Cape Coral took a bigger fall, posting a 44 percent decline in median sales price, from $445,100 to $249,200…”
Armageddon time!
Back to the Future –
1926, here we come…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_land_boom_of_the_1920s
It would be interesting to see single home comparisons to see what is really going on…The median certainly is intriguing, but is only a high level indicator.
If single same model homes have dropped this much this fast, then this area will become very affordable within another year or so…we could see unprecendented (post WWII) 70% or more drop!
Heck, in 2008-09 it might be time to buy that retirement lot or house (then again, hurricanes, rising sea level, maybe not).
You make a good point. When the median drops 40%+ YOY, the median decline in comparable housing is likely smaller, as some of what is showing up is a downshift in quality preference — less expensive housing suddenly becomes more popular when prices are falling.
Hence the high-end stuff stops selling (especially given that the wealthy can more easily ride out the down phase of the cycle) and we have a dearth of evidence on how far the market values have fallen at the high end.
Only at this stage in the market. As it declines even further, entry level buyers will skip the low end of the market and go straight to medium price range which will be where low end is today. This is what happened in UK in 1990’s when many of my ‘must get on the train’ friends held a property that attracked no lookers when the market eventually picked up.
The housing market is a chain. Break one link at it ripples through to all stages.
Agreed — but your scenario is a few years out at this point.
Psychology is correct. Sitting on my wad of Australian bonds and looking at CA coast, I am saying, why buy a $450K POS when for $550K I could have something reasonably attractive?
“It would be interesting to see single home comparisons to see what is really going on…The median certainly is intriguing, but is only a high level indicator.”
I zillowed our former home on Cape Cod this morning. At one point in Feb. its zestimate was $629k. Now down to $500k. 20% drop in 9 mos. seems significant!
What my husband and I still point out is he bought that place for $210k and added on about $100k in an addition. So he’s still way ahead considering that was only 5 years ago. One important point: he’s priced himself right out of the neighborhood which is why we never did the expansion ourselves.
Hurray Ben. I just woke up and got the Sarasota Paper. The front page headline said in big bold letters that HOME PRICES DROP 18 PERCENT.
I ran to the computer and logged on to the blog to tell Ben and I saw that Ben allready had the story up and posted. Hurray for Ben.
Today will be a fun day here in sarasota because I may see a lot of people with dazed looks on their faces.
Happy holidays this is great.
Captain Jack, some have dazed looks on their faces, but others may turn to crime. I’m a little scared right now.
Those numbers are misleading. Hurricane Wilma seriously skewed the Oct. 05 numbers. House sales were unable to close near the end of the month due to the storm. So It’s not really comparing apples to apples. But even with that said, we are still seeing huge drops in prices, and will continue to see those drops for some time.
bahhahhhhhahhahHAHa
I’m not so sure about that. August’s SFH YOY prices for Sarasota were down 11%. And September was off 16%. So it appears that the 18% drop in October had little if anything to do with Wilma. For more details:
http://media.living.net/statistics/statisticsfull.htm
Edward - It appears that I misspoke. Looking back at the original post, I assume you were talking about Ft. Myers. If so, yes, you are correct. It appears that Wilma did skew those numbers. Sorry about that.
Yes, sorry about that. I was talking about Fort Myers.
i`ve been telling my i and her hubby for well over a year, dont do it, dont do it. sent them links galore to read . they never read a single article or blog i believe. jut last month plunked down 540k on a 5 acre parcel of land in ft,myers because of the “tax breaks”.
the seller came down from 750k asking price to 540k so they were convinced they got a good deal. they`ll be make payments without problem, so much for saving taxes when your investment is so sunk.
the stupid thing is they live in perfectly nice neighborhood now.
LOL. Jeff of the SDCIA forum owns 5 houses in the Fort Meyers-Cape Coral area, representing 40% (5/12) of his holdings. I wonder if he’s still in denial or if the scales have dropped at last.
A year ago, a troll here often used a train metaphor for the boom. Well, the locomotive has clearly derailed, and the rest of the train will soon follow. Look for massive price drops within 12 months, with only mild drops afterward to a bottom within 2-3 years, followed by a decade of stagnant nominal prices eroded by inflation. Cheers!
It’s getting more and more amusing lurking in the SDCIA. They try to affect an air of bravado and confidence, but underneath it all you can sense that they’re as nervous as a priest in a room full of cub scouts.
‘Sales in the Tampa Bay area fell more than anywhere else in the state,35 percent, down to 2,419 homes. Still, that’s an improvement over the bay area’s 42 percent drop in homes sold in September compared with the previous year. Monroe said the decline is a correction over last year’s unsustainable gains, not a slump. ‘Truly,’ he said, ‘it’s the third best year on record.’
‘Existing single-family home sales in Palm Beach County and the Treasure Coast were hardly on steroids last month but they still earned an asterisk. That’s because Hurricane Wilma struck in October of 2005, bringing real estate activity to a halt - and making any housing market comparisons problematic.’
I would sure hate to see what a slump would look like.
WOW!! 44% decline is crazy!!!
That is a big wow for such a short period of time . Florida increased 39% average in 2005 so I guess those speculative gains just went out the window and than some .
Can anybody say that high speculation/flipper markets are stable regarding prices ?
I think back about how the real estate industry was cheerleading and applauding the bizarre yearly appreciation that Florida got in 2005 .
My co-worker just got her offer accepted on a house (Hialeah) for $370K, which was listed earlier in the year for $500K. The seller is still doubling what they paid for it about 6 years ago…but the pricing is definately comming down from the infated values of last year. I used all the common rationale to convince her to wait, but she has house fever. After all, at 27 years old, she told me she was sick of renting which she has been doing since she was 19 (college included)! At least she has a great income and intends to stay put for a long, long, time.
who in there right mind buys a house at 370k in hialeah?
burnt like toast
apple to apple is NOT. Probably in ~15-20% range.
The runup was not apple-to-apple, either. When prices are rising, GFs buy bigger and still bigger homes — more house, more home equity gains.
Really. I thought it was ashes to ashes.
… and dust to dust.
bust to bust
I remember speaking with an AE about Cape Coral about this time last year. She said her company would not finance properties in that area due to concerns about fraud. At least one lender could read the tea leaves.
Tampa realtors insist that business is booming, and that this is a GREAT time to buy–how about that nondescript townhouse there starting at on $749,000.00? And when I say nondescript, I mean particle board, stucco, plastic “crown moldings,” the works. Garage doors taking up the entire front of the building.
Sales may be off, but prices have not dropped in my neighborhood. If anything, they’re worse. A stead influx of wealthy New Yorkers has turned this once quiet dull area into an astoundingly expensive, crowded, ugly, and yet still dull area. These usurpers are shameless and obsessed with showing off their money–or rather what seems to be a fortune away from New York. Big fish in a little pond that they are destroying, and they couldn’t care less.
I see that Greenspan et all are now saying the worst of the housing “correction” may be over, and many analysists are jumping for joy, telling investors to start buying again.
Does all of this seem to surreal to BE real? It’s as if the entire planet has been drugged. Yesterday I heard a realtor yapping on her cell phone about a client cashing in her 80k retirement fund to put 10% down on a new house with an Option ARM. So this idiot is buying an $800,000.00 house (or something in that price range) and has to use hinky financing to pay the monthly bill?
As long as there are stupid pretentious people trying to impress one another, I don’t think anything much will change.
I think quite a bit has changed. Most of the lies Realtors (TM) are telling these days to encourage buyers to come back into the water does not square very well with the data, which suggests knives falling at 40%+ YOY rates.
I responded to a craigslist posting the other day that confidently proclaimed that “now is a great time to buy. Do not believe the media hype.” It wasn’t an unusual claim but I wanted to see how they respond to a little prodding.
Her response, via email, was that I should ignore the “hype of gloom” because it is a good time to buy (tautology, not an argument). She cc’ed her lender from Signature Mortgage who would be happy to go over the different lending options.
My response was that the media is full of talk about falling prices. What hype of gloom? This is GREAT news for buyers. All I have to do is wait a week, month, or year and I’ll get an even better price for the same property.
No response from her.
Mass media is a means for spreading information. There is a low signal to noise ratio in the mass media, but regardless the mass media does spread information and facts. When realtors complain about the media hype, they are indeed complaining that information and facts are interfering with the housing market.
Truly a sad story when information and facts get in the way of your scam.
Could not agree with you more. These people infect other places I like too. New Yorkers and Californians. Dump them all in the drink (although I was born in NYC myself - oops).
Are you in the Tampa Bay area, Incredulous? If so, what part? I didn’t know we had that many New Yorkers coming to this part of Florida, used to be Mid-Westerners, most of them good folks. New Yorkers used to go to South Florida. Although, after reading yesterday’s comments by Tom Tancredo, the Rep from Colorado, that Miami is a third world country and all the responses from people living in that area agreeing with his assessment, I can understand why New Yorkers might shift their attention to this area. I left South Florida in 2000 and never looked back, haven’t even been to SoFlo for a visit. But reading some of the responses to Tancredo’s statement, I was shocked, I tell you, shocked! There were some real horror stories about robberies, home invasions, rapes and beatings. I had no idea it was that bad. It seems that Miami has now morphed into one of those cities where the middle class is all but wiped out. Because from what I read, you’d better have the money to live in a secure, gated community if you want to be safe. Is this true, I wonder? Or exaggeration.
Tons of New Yorkers are and have been coming to Sarasota in past years. They use their equity locust long island home sales to buy here.
Hey, captain, I’ve heard about this from a friend who has a business in Sarasota that caters to the high end. Can’t stand the nouveau riche New Yorkers that invaded the area.
The trashy New Yorkers first destroyed Miami, then Boca Raton, then Naples, then Sarasota, and now they’re destroying St. Petersburg and Tampa. They act as if we, who grew up here, are scum, and that they have a perfect right to take everything for themselves. They inflict Yankee architecture on a very Southern state, in which it doesn’t work; insist on “Northern” style food in restaurants, and have even tortured us with New York stores, with New York prices.
Naples, once the most beautiful town in Florida, is now one of the ugliest, and downtown St. Petersburg, just three short years ago turning into a gem, has now been destroyed with massive high rise condo structures filled or filling-up with New Yorkers. These buildings don’t fit, look ludicrous, and block out everyone else’s views of the bay.
After 9/11, tons of New Yorkers fled to Tampa, and they’re still coming. The population is appalling, and the traffic mind-boggling. It used to take me five minutes to drive from Bayshore to Ybor City, where I worked. Now it takes twenty or more, bumper-to-bumper, and every day it’s worse.
I hear you, Incredulous. It is sad, but true. And I can say this, because I was born right in mid-town Manhattan. I lived the first four years of my life in Peter Cooper Village/Peter Stuyvesant Town, an affordable and nice development by Met-Life for WW2 vets and their families and other younger New York professionals. Robert Moses convinced Met-Life to do this so that there would be housing for a middle class in New York. Sadly, that development was just recently sold to Tishman/Speyer and another real estate firm. It seems that not only do New Yorkers want to foul their own nest, but they are not happy until they’ve fouled the nests of others as well.
In the past year, we sold several apartment complexes in dicey areas of North Tampa for ludicrous prices to groups of doctors from L.A. I guess prices seem “cheap” compared to California. These guys are in for a reaming when all is said and done.
LOL, stickman, good for you! We Floridians need to teach these out of stater locusts a lesson they’ll never forget. I hope these doctors were plastic surgeons. LMAO!
A friend of mine owns a restaurant in Harrisonburg, VA, in the Shenandoah Valley region. New Yawkers have been flocking down to that area since the early 1990s, and they are universally hated. The area has a lot of Mennonites, who are polite, humble, salt-of-the-earth type people. The New Yorkers, by contrast, are pushy and obnoxious, and on busy nights will try to march straight to the head of the line and cut in front of the locals, especially the Mennonites. If New Yorkers have any redeeming value, it’s that they make the Californicators look good in comparison.
I miss the Lingus, with his rants about New Yorkers and MASSholes.
South Florida has become both undesirable and unaffordable. The area is finished. There are NO compelling reasons to move/stay/live here. There are lots of reasons to go elsewhere.
Greed, fraud and incompetence by local politicians, developers and corporations are to blame, in addition to the brain-dead citizens and the media who put up with it all, or are unable and unwilling to look the facts straight in the eyes.
Broward and Dade have become a SEWER. Palm Beach is next as all the problems continue to migrate up the coast.
See and read:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9...
For some reason, the link won’t work for me, but I get the idea. In the past couple of days, there seem to have been a number of very negative articles on South Florida I’ve picked up just from surfing the net. Quality of life seems to be all but destroyed, and so fast!
Corrected URL for above: Florida article link
This article is from 1981, back in the Miami Vice days…
OK, prices had gone too high, but South Florida is still great. especially if you love the ocean. The high temperature for the next week will be about 81-82, lows around 70. I’m going to go for a bike ride along the Ocean during lunch. Saturday we’ll be out fishing for Sailfish, which you can catch only a mile offshore, in beautiful blue-green water. After than, we’ll be watching the Gator game at an outdoor sports bar on the water. Sunday we’ll be at the beach, where the water temperature is about 78. Maybe next weekend we’ll head to the keys, about an hour away. Gee, that all sounds really undesirable!
Description sounds similar to Tijuana, Mexico. But at the end of the day, like Miami, it’s a real sh@thole.
Florida’s water isn’t what it used to be, and it’s getting worse at an alarming rate.
Don’t forget the cyanobacteria in the water.
Florida’s rivers, streams, lakes and the intercoastal are always green these days and very toxic.
Saying South Florida is undesirable because one doesn’t like Miami makes no sense, it’s a very small part of South Florida. I live 50 miles North of Miami, and it’s beautiful. Jupiter is in South Florida, and is almost 100 miles from Miami.
We lived in Sarasota and my husband did research on the red tide there. It gets so bad you just can’t even go to the beach or you will hack up your lung. There is also problems with sewage leakage into the water. They have to shut down the beaches and boil water every once and a while. Much of the county isn’t even on public sewer and water and will be waiting years for that to come around.
Take it from someone who used to live there, before they wised up and moved to Tampa. Here’s what it’S REALLY like: OK, so you’re biking along the ocean. Look out for unruly New York drivers, who serve, honk, crowd the road and throw stuff at bikers. (The newspapers have documented this.) Fishign you, say? Since it’s the Ocean (as opposed to Tampa Bay or the Gulf), you’ll need a sturdy, 20-foot plus boat that will run you, oh, $20,000 used. Or, for more fun, pack onto one of the drift-fishing boats with 50 people. The beach, you say? In season, you’ll have to go WAY early to battle for a parking space. And, in Boca Raton, you can go to the beach but they don’t let you park there unless you’re a resident — or unless you pay $16 A DAY for parking. Yeah, that’s paradise.
Tampa is nice too. It’s a lot further to deep water sportfishing, maybe 18 miles. I sure wouldn’t go 18 miles into the gulf in a boat worth less than $20K. The beach in Fort lauderdale, Delray, or Boyton is 75 cents an hour, plenty of parking. I ride my bike 6,000 miles a year, and have never had anything thrown at me. We don’t have red tide in South Florida, the water moves too quickly. The gulf stream comes very close, one of the reasons it’s so nice here during the winter, and cooler than many parts of the US during the Summer. I’m not saying it’s for everybody, but almost everyone I know wouldn’t live anywhere else.
South Florida is still great. especially if you love the ocean.
Too bad most of South Fla. will be below sea level before mid-century. I really enjoyed living in Ft. Lauderdale in my waterfront condo near the beach, but still glad I sold in 2004 and moved away. The combination of global warming, peak oil and economic collapse does not bode well for South Florida!
Less than 44 years from now South Florida will be under water? Did you get that from your mothership, through your tinfoil hat?
No, that’s the rise in sea levels predicted by several of the most recent NASA global warming models. You may want to educate yourself before making pointless ad hominem comments.
My brother is a former government agent who worked in the FL keys for 15 years. He was hardly the protective type towards me but did everything in his power to keep me out of Miami (due to fear) That was in the 80s/90s. I’ve got some interesting stories from my jaunts in the Keys. You definitely need your street smarts in that area too.
Isn’t most of Florida turning into that?
Miami’s been like that since the 80s, when it was completely rehabbed with drug money from South and Central America. That’s why the show Miami Vice was created.
Any of you who read this blog regularly and closely may recognize my comments. I am taking early retirement next summer at a substantial personal cost to get the heck out of South Florida as fast as possible. I live in South Broward and work in Miami (Doral to be exact). I got here about 16 months ago and we hate living here. Everything Tom Tacredo stated is absolutely true. The Time article mentioned above describes it perfectly where they imply that a few jewels (i.e. the beaches etc) are used to mask the enormous problems here. You have to come from somewhere else (recently) and live here to fully understand and appreciate how Fuc#ed up South Florida is (everything from the schools, to infrastructure, corrupt local government agencies and officials, crime, …). The natives don’t get it, because it is what they are used to and they assume that it is no different than anywhere else. I use the analogy that it is like standing in a pile of crap, but not caring because you know that your neighbor is standing in a bigger pile (i.e. in Dom Rep, Haiti, Venezuela, etc.). Another analogy of this area is using the real estate jargon of “putting lipstick on a pig”. The Miami area is a big dirty pig with a little bit of lipstick on it. I read some letters from city leaders and the Gov. Bush who rebutted Tancredos statements, and truly wonder if they believe their own words when they defend Miami as a great place, or if they are just towing the party line in accordance with their positions. If you have a lot of money and insulate your self from real life, you can have a nice time in Miami on a vacation (especiallly if you are a deviant…i.e. fully open and advertised Sex Clubs, etc.). I am from Southern California (but have lived all over the U.S. and even abroad in South America) and am shocked at what goes on around here. My wife scans the Miami Herald everyday and highlights the “routine” shocking stories that would be an infrequent event in other Metropolitan areas, but are commonplace in Miami-Dade / Broward. The happiest day we will have in the last 24 months will be as we drive north (pay our last turnpike toll) and see South Florida disappearing in our rearview mirror. We are doing as much tourist stuff before we leave, because we NEVER want to come back. In all deference to those bloggers from Tampa, my comments ONLY apply to the Miami-Dade / Broward areas. There is a complete different feel (much better) to the state as you head north out of this area!
Outof, ROTFLMAO. I used to live in South Broward and work in North Miami. It sucked when we left in 2000, although I will admit I enjoyed myself in the 80s through the mid-90s. Sorry you’ve had a horrific time. You are right, other parts of the state aren’t so bad.
My sides are still hurting from laughing over that post. How could you leave San Diego for South Florida? God, that must really hurt. Where to next? Look, as awful as it is, maybe you can hang on until San Diego is halfway affordable again.
aint california one shake away from total destruction
south florida is a mess, but i like winter here! a good argentina steak and them ladies on south beach. a place to party not to raise a child. when i get married, i will leave.
tampa is just other dump like anywhere else, without pretty ladies. florida is a redneck dump that just got taken over and everyone is crying.
Excellent post. Where in Tampa do you live? We still have a lot of “quiet, dull areas,” but that’s why some of us like it here.
Last month I drove up a short stretch of South MacDill Avenue and counted sixty-three houses for sale or for rent, not including the five condominium/townhouse complexes under construction. This was probably an undercount, since I only could sneak a glance in one direction down each side street. No one currently seems to understand that overbuilding a nice place has the tendency to severely degrade that place, aesthetically and otherwise, but people will find out soon enough.
snake, every time it so much as sprinkles rain, the local news is full of clips of all the street flooding in South Tampa. It just boggles the mind that this can be an ongoing problem, and yet they approved new construction throughout the area.
I live in Hyde Park
Hyde Park is or was the nicest part of Tampa. Old money, old charm. It was being hyped as the place to be when I moved to the Bay area in 2000. All the young professionals aspired to live there. Now I understand what you are talking about, that is indeed where Northeasterners wanted to go. I’m sorry to hear it has been turned into cookie cutter crap.
I always preferred Beach Park and Golf View. When the Yuppies took over Hyde Park, it immediately went down hill. The Hyde Park Garden Club puts out a stupid newspaper. In one issue, it asked residents not to let their dogs outside on their lawns, because this “spoiled the ambience.” The Kash n’ Karry on Swann had wine and cheese tasting parties every month or so for fools to pretend they were upper class and pick up sexually transmitted diseases.
A few months ago an old crappy diner on South Howard (the area now calls itself SoHo) was replaced with a new crappy Yuppie diner in the same building. The only difference is that the new crappy Yuppie diner charges three times as much for the same revolting, greesy food. The old place couldn’t make any money, but the new one is packed day and night with Yuppies gobbling the chow and flashing their Diner cards. When one sees hundreds of 20 somethings driving leased BMWs and Mercedes, and pretending to prosper, one can become a bit negative fairly fast.
I remember when you couldn’t GIVE away a house in Hyde Park, and now everybody thinks its wonderful. Does anybody actually think for himself anymore, or do people simply accept the most recent propaganda and act accordingly?
LOL regarding that Kash n’ Karry! As for other overdevelopment-related changes in that area, I heard several people the other day lamenting the loss of the Chatterbox bar.
Are you talking about MacDill south of Gandy? I’m totally with you on the overbuilding. Plus, the idea of $400K condos down in that no-man’s land is mind-boggling.
That was part of my drive. I call that area “sh_tbox row.” Some of the buildings literally went up overnight. I wouldn’t even pay 30% of what some condos and houses there are being offered for.
The Category 5 “neutron hurricane” (which leaves the properties untouched but devastates peoples’ financial lives) has come ashore in Florida. Before it’s over, the dollar losses will likely exceed all of the 2004 and 2005 losses from real hurricanes.
“The Butlers have dropped their price $12,900 in seven months. They started out asking $289,900, and now are asking $277,000 for their three-bedroom, two-bath, lakefront home in the Cypress Cove subdivision. ‘We’ve had people look and even a few really low offers,’ Butler said, admitting she feels discouraged.”
Umm, they must have the worst realtor in the world, or more likely no realtor. A 4% drop in 7 months is not how to sell a house.
Yeah, I was going to highlight that pathetic set of price drops, but you got there first! What a bunch of numbskulls. Kind of reminds me of the FSBO in my neighborhood who listed his house at $589,900 and after a year is all the way down to $584,900.
Now on a $290k house, their $12k+ price drop might have attracted some attention, though still perhaps not a buyer, had they done it on one fell swoop (early on), but to parcel it out in dribs and drabs over seven months! Oh my. What a bunch of cheapskates.
I hope they like their house, since they’ll probably be in it for quite a while, with their marketing skills.
This is old school mentality. He is saying this thing has bottomed. If you otice, he is probably also a flipper. He needs prices to stabilize but he also needs to make sales. He has the stubborn sellers and is not making the sales to pay his bills. He is surely hurting.
I love this! It is the inverse of buy now or be priced out forever. He is essentially saying, “sell now, or lose your shirt forever.” Either way, he is probably making sells because he is embedding in the mindset of his clients that things are moving and you better get off before it hurts so cut your prces and make the sell! The funny thing is, there is truth to his argument.
It’s in a broker’s best interest to sell a house. read Freakanomics to read how on a $300k house, a realtor only stands to gain or lose $150 dollars extra on a $10K price change. 3% of 300K is 9000K. Kick 50% back to the realtor’s office. That leaves $4500. If the house sells for $290K, the realtor pockets $4350 (before taxes & expenses). So the incentive is minimal for a realtor to go for that extra $10K. Rather, they would like to see you drop $30K at a loss to their commission of only $450 dollars.
Yes, somehow the NAR would not be happy if everyone that wanted a house has one now. They are taking up the cause for sellers? This looks like Kevin Bacon wailing his arms.
Roffers has two properties in Sarasota county
216 Osprey Point, Osprey a lot purchased in 2005
222 Osprey Point, Osprey a million dollar house purchased in 2004
Huskey also has a house at 259 Osprey Point, that he bought for over a million in 2004.
Osprey is so podunk, why anyone would have a million dollar house there is beyond me. They were talking about how the town would finally get some people stopping by when they built a Walmart the next town over.
Osprey actually got a Super Walmart recently. I was there. It is huge. It got built after all the homes got built.
Roffers and some many others in this market are newbies. they have never seen a normal market. He is also on record saying that the downtown Sarasota condo market is healty.
But, the largest broker in town is telling people it is a “disaster” in private.
Realtors kill me.
(I am a commerical broker and the commercial market is getting ready to crash too.)
“The median sales price dropped 27 percent, from $294,000 to $216,000. ‘Condos always go belly up when economy gets sluggish,’ said (realtor) Barbara Anson.”
What sluggish economy? The NAR led me to believe economic fundamentals were solid — low interest rates and low unemployment rates. Are they not the most important fundamentals? Maybe it’s different this time.
Did Barbara Anson ,(realtor),tell buyers in 2004 and 2005 that condos always go belly-up when the economy gets sluggish ,or was it “real estate always goes up “.
“Real estate always goes up, until the condos go belly-up.”
HW,
That’s what I thought when I read it.
Bernanke’s speech yesterday gave an “upbeat assessment of the nation’s economy, warning that tight labor markets could put more pressure on wages and prices.” (Today’s WSJ, p. A1, right column)
Complete and total obfuscation of the real reasons why prices may go up. Wage inflation is minimal in inducing inflationary pressures these days. It’s credit expansion to the point of insanity. He knows there is gonna be a massive inflation but he has to point the finger at an effect and not a cause. But no, can’t blame the moneylenders can ya, since they are the main drivers of the financial economy.
Tight labor markets? Then why the hell is the Undersecretary for Commerce clamoring for more H1-B visas to be issued. These bastards don’t give a crap about Joe Sixpack or even Wendy Wineglass.
Don’t here much about America being touted as a service economy anymore do you? You want fries with that?
I meant to add in the second paragraph that the H1-B visas expansion is not because of tight labor markets, but to keep corp expenses lower. The general economy hasn’t seen a real rise in wages so the effect of so-called tight labor markets is a phantasm.
Here is a good example
9441 Hawksmoor Ln Sarasota, Fl
4 bd about 3000 sq ft
Zestimate $465,204
Recent Sales
10/2006 $340,000
10/2003 $308,000
5/2001 $265,000
“Prices actually have fallen even more than that because sellers are giving buyers lucrative incentives, that aren’t reflected in the sales prices, analyst Jack McCabe said. ‘Sellers are not getting all that money in value for their properties because they’re having to pay a big chunk of that out as concessions,’ he said.”
Finally, this is beginning to be acknowledged, even if anecdotally.
Just wait until the reasons for builders to give discounts go stale…
I hope the TV show “What you get for the Money” didn’t shoot a segment for a Palm Beach County home. It’s got to be hard enough in the writing room without changes coming this quickly.
May be easier to just change the show title to, “What you got yesterday for the Money”, and save themselves a lot of work.
Yes, the numbers are striking. Still, more evidence is needed as RE boosters can (will) still dismiss the figures cited here as being abberations, or as localized phonomena. As many here have already said, if this magnitude of plummeting prices and sales volume persists into 2Q 2007 then we’re done for.
That said, numbers this big this early on should be making a whole lot of folks very nervous. (but its not - because this is a great time to buy, eh NAR?)
“In Broward, prices went down to $349,400, the lowest since April last year…and…Palm Beach County’s October median declined $50,900, or 12 percent, on an annual basis….”
It’s just a little froth, right?
Haven’t been to Broward since 2000. It must really be horrible to live there now. I can’t wrap my mind around a $349,000 median for Broward.
And for some of the shoddiest, ugliest junk you’ve ever seen. I was in Coral Springs not too long ago and was shocked at the prices for poorly constructed crap.
Coral Springs was that way in the 80s and 90s. Hard to believe it could be even worse.
“Prices actually have fallen even more than that because sellers are giving buyers lucrative incentives, that aren’t reflected in the sales prices, analyst Jack McCabe said. ‘Sellers are not getting all that money in value for their properties because they’re having to pay a big chunk of that out as concessions,’ he said.”
If this guy keeps telling the truth he’s going to end up with radioactive sushi for lunch!
Yes yes.. there are a lot of Russian flippers buying property. THe Mafia won’t like this.
This question is off topic, but I need advice. What is the best tactic for low balling these sellers? Should I use the listing agent or should I go through one of the agents at their office? I’ve noticed when low balling the listing agent, some insist their listing is “priced right” which is BS. I know these greedy Brokers and agents want all the comission off the sale. I’ve done okay going directly through the listing agent, but not good enough..no deal. Any ideas or tactics?
Use the county records to find out what the owner paid and owes on the place for starters. You can insinuate that you will make an offer contingent on your inspection report.
If you see something you like, hire an inspector and tell him to find everything he can that’s wrong with the place or needs fixing.
Present said list to seller with your offer.
This worked with distressed sellers and REOs during the last bust.
Hey,
not using a buyer’s agent may be a viable choice if you know what you are doing, i.e you have closed on real estate deals before. The services you get from a ‘good/decent’ buyer’s agent are invaluable, now don’t read into this as a blanket endorsement of realtwhores, but there are .01% of them who are honest. if you are lucky enough to find one, its well worth your dime to use their services. My current agent actually adviced me a few months ago to wait 90-120 days and observe the market.
While low balling a offer through my buyer’s agent i usually set a incentive above the regular commission for my agent so he doesn’ feel like he’s loosing out if my offer is accepted.
If making a direct offer to the listing agent, have your pre-qual ready, and always make it contingent on inspection. also, before actually faxing in the offer you might want to test the waters with the agent as to how low an offer the buyer will accept, here again having a buyer’s agent to test the waters lends you some credibility in the eyes of the listing agent.
The listing agent is compelled by law to present the offer no matter how low to the owner, so make a offer that you think is fair and move on to the next property, and always have fun!
Unless you REALLY need to buy a house, WAIT. Most of the sellers are full of the Kool-AId. They refuse to budge and are either holding out for 2005 prices or are pulling their listing. We are not at panic stage yet. Only the truly FB’s are selling now. Wait until the comps start rolling in with 20 % YOY declines. That will get the ball rolling. I think sometime around feb. to March of 2007.
“‘We’d had it for sale since February,’ he said, but at the initial asking price of more than $400,000 there were no takers….it finally sold for $289,000. The Pearces paid $170,000 for the house 31/2 years ago.”
Wow! These guys are in a world of pain now! They only made 120k instead of the 230k they deserved for 3.5 yrs of hard work. Oh — the humanity.
“Daryl Adkins of Indialantic has been trying to sell his three-bedroom home for more than a year and has dropped his original asking price of $325,000 to $238,500 … ‘It’s slow all over the county because there is so much on the market,’ Adkins said, adding higher taxes and insurance costs ‘aren’t doing us any justice either.’”
There is justice. No one is paying 325k for your little sh!tBox.
NAR’s Anti Bubble Predictions For Sarasota Bradenton Proven Wrong
http://tinyurl.com/y25bky
David
Bubble Meter Blog
Now that the predictions proved disastrously wrong, it is time to start lobbying the new Democratic Congress for housing collapse disaster assistance…
Good work, David. Of course, we knew the NAR was full of it, but who knew they’d need this much of an enema?
Thanks.
“NAR’s Anti Bubble Predictions For Sarasota Bradenton Proven Wrong” Has David Leaher told me to cross my fingers and toes, that the bottom was reach yesterday, and today we get more bubble news. Where in the world is David Liar?
“They started out asking $289,900, and now are asking $277,000… ‘We’ve had people look and even a few really low offers,’ Butler said, admitting she feels discouraged.”
Hehehe. LMAO. Too funny. ROTF now. Hehehe. Comedians — the Butler’s.
Further ” He’s now offering it for sale below its appraised value.” I think that appraisal needs to be updated. He may find his “low ball offers” are actually right on the money!
Does anybody think that some of these declines in Florida that Ben has posted about today should be headline news ? Should the news media ask some questions about how a area could get this much of a crash in such a short timespan ? Do the people deserve to know why ?
Well, the Sarasota/Bradenton decline apparently IS headline news, today. The news media should ask questions how this crash could come about, but I’d just bet we’d get the usual spew about insurance and taxes, etc. People may deserve to know why, but that’s never been much of a motivation for telling the truth. I’m going to be very interested to see if our governor-elect acknowledges any of this. My prediction is, good time Charlie will be all moist brown eyes and sympathy, no action.
I don’t like to reply to my own comments, but I was just thinking, since we still have a Bush for governor, if the Bush family retainers could put together a “Florida Study Group”, like the Iraq Study Group they put together for little Georgie.
Wait, that’s IT! You have a Bush for governor! It’s HIS fault! Gotta be!
NoVa, in the interest of full disclosure, I am a “recovering Republican”, and voted for both Bushes the first time around, mea culpa. Jeb was a developer before he became governor, so it doesn’t surprise me that Florida opened its butt-cheeks to that industry. I just thank God he wasn’t a plumber (no insult meant to plumbers). On the plus side, Florida has been very fortunate to have had Jeb during his brother’s regime. We got special favors during hurricanes that no other states got, otherwise we’d be looking a lot like Louisiana or Mississippi right now.
As to laying blame or fault at the door of a Bush, in any organization, whether that be a company, charity, civic group, state or country, s**t or manna flows downhill from the top. That’s a fact of life and is reflected in the success or failures of an organization and it is the reason why boards remove presidents and management from a failing organization.
I see no mention of the Florida price declines in my Ca. local paper .In fact ,in Yahoo News one of the headlines is about new home sales on the rise .
While the crash in some areas of Florida might of made it to the Florida newspapers I think it should be big National news .
I don’t think the public understands what drives markets and the Florida market is a great lesson in hype at it’s worst .
Don’t get me wrong ,I think the whole Nation has been running on spin and hype ,but Florida seems to be the area were everything is showing up first .
This is the analysis I wrote up for my blog yesterday — given that I’m a South Floridian, I figured it made sense to tackle the local numbers. Enjoy …
http://interestrateroundup.blogspot.com
Home sales in my neck of the woods
Lots of you gentle readers don’t live in Florida. You could probably care less about what’s going on in our housing market. That’s cool — I’m not offended! But since I live here, I thought I’d summarize what I’m seeing in the latest October sales figures, just released by the Florida Association of Realtors …
First, as the FAR points out, the year-over-year change in Southeast Florida doesn’t look too bad in October because we had Hurricane Wilma a year ago. That led to a 44% YOY decline in sales in Fort Lauderdale in October 2005 vs. October 2004, for example, with like declines in Miami and West Palm Beach. The STATE saw only a 5% drop that same month (10/2005). Clearly, you could say the hurricane had an impact on closings.
This past month, sales in Fort Lauderdale, Miami, and West Palm Beach actually rose or declined just slightly from 10/2005 levels. But the STATE saw a much bigger 22% drop (using single family homes), with declines spread geographically throughout north and central Florida. So it seems to me that the broad trend remains weak, once you strip out the hurricane impact.
Second, the pricing data doesn’t look so good across the state, or in our area. Median single-family home prices dropped 12% year-over-year, for instance, in the West Palm Beach-Boca Raton metro area, with declines popping up also in Fort Lauderdale (-5%) and Miami (-3%). Again, this may be skewed by the hurricane to some degree. But in the case of prices, these numbers are also consistent with what we’ve seen in recent months – first, a deceleration in the rate of price increases, and now actual declines.
So what about inventory? Well, there’s a website run by the real estate brokerage firm Illustrated Properties. It shows the number of properties for sale in its database. The link is here: http://www.ipre.com/trendg/images/palsld.PNG You can see that inventory took a pretty big dive from September – down 9.6%.
But the key question is this: Are we really working through inventory? Or are sellers just giving up and pulling their listings to wait out the holidays, then re-list in time for the proverbial spring selling season. I’d be more encouraged on that front if sales shot up along with the decline in inventory. Since they didn’t, it may just be a seasonal thing.
If you’re an optimist, you could say things aren’t getting much worse. If you’re a pessimist, you could say: “Sure, but the numbers still stink.” I’ll go back to what I’ve been saying for a long time: Real estate downturns are long, drawn-out affairs measured in quarters and years, not weeks and months. We have tons of inventory to work through. To stem the slow bleed in prices, we’ll need that to come down substantially. That, in turn, will require even lower interest rates, the restoration of buyer confidence and ongoing strength in the employment market.
Can the stars align just right for the housing market? We’ll see. But my expectation is that 2007 will prove to be another weak year for sales and prices, and we’ll likely see mortgage delinquencies and foreclosures continue to rise.
I draw attention to a Miami craiglist ad, a woman offering to sell his 3/2 west Kendall townhouse for $234,000 on the condition that it be leased back to her for 3-5 years, certainly testimony to the fact that it is much more convenient to rent than to buy right now.
Is anyone seen a similar offer elsewhere? Would anyone be dumb enough to go for it taking into account mortgage payments, taxes, and insurance?
You might remember my story of the 1st time NJ buyers purchasing the contractor’s 3 year old $700k home (outside of Syracuse)? It’s being rented back to the sellers until seller finishes building their new home which at the time of sale was a treed lot. BTW, rumor has it the new home will be much smaller and much less ostentacious.
Sounds like the NJ buyers aren’t planning to move in for at least a year. I’m wondering if they bought for “investment” purposes. Or maybe they’re Wall Streeters planning on using it as their summer home.
I don’t know , the 1926 Florida real estate crash was rather quick and brutal .Again there was alot of margin buying with people not able to make the payments when due back in 1926.
I really think it depends on how crazy the lending was . If the loans aren’t stable the crash will be quicker and more brutal .
I think we are due for an earth quake and perhaps a couple of riots here in LA. Illegals or earthquake…. mmmm. Perhaps social unrest about that shooting in NYC.
Those will be the shocks that get blamed for the real estate collapse here.
In Florida it will be another BAD hurricane.
So I was watching HGTV’s “My house is worth what?” the other day about a house on Key Biscayne, Florida (Miami area). The couple bought the house 15 months prior for $1.4 m, put in $250k in upgrades, and wanted to sell their “dream home” to “secure the financial future of their kids” (ie, flip this overpriced home).
Surprisingly, the husband admitted the reason they wanted to sell was because their carrying costs were $13,000 a month (including $1,300 a month for hurricane insurance [holy crap!!!]) and they cold rent a comparable home on the Key for about $4,500 a month (including hurricane insurance). Can we say home price bubble?
Unsurprisingly, the realtor comes in, takes a look around, compliments them on their improvements, and quickly assesses the homes new value as $2,100,000.
So a $2,100,000 home can be rented for $4,500 a month and people down there don’t think something is seriously wrong?
Saying that Key Biscayne is in the Miami area is like saying that Central Park West is in the New York City area. It’s always been really expensive, as the location is amazing. It’s an island with the Atlantic on one side Biscayne Bay on the other. Anything that sold for only $1.4 million 15 months ago must have been pretty crappy, as the land would be worth that.
idiot sfc dont realize that key biscayne was completely flooded during hurricane andrew. it cost so much more, because of infrastructural needs and the rich folks pushed out the boat people about 20 years ago. it is key, and if you invest on a key, you should pay insurance on a key. the insurance company needs its money back from the properties that will get wiped out of the map with other cat 5.
I rent in Naples a home purchased for 2.6 million in 2005 for $4,500. a month. The greedy owner wants to sell it for 3.5 million. It may be worth 1.3 million. Simply insane.
Yeah something is wrong!! I am moving to a 600K home and paying 2K a month in rent! I am getting ripped off!!!
Very similar ratio to the unsold spec house for which I am paying $1000/mo rent … the builder wants $575K for the house. Not too likely. The main problem though is that it’s the wrong design for the likely looky-loos. Immigrants to Maine coast tend to be retirees, and this thing has steep stairs both 1st-to-2nd floor and 2nd-to-3rd. Suitable for childless yuppies from NYC. (No jobs here !!)
Pushed wrong button, meant this as a comment on John Fontain’s story of $2.1M house rentable for $4500/mo.
“This week it’s down to $225,000, he said. ‘I’m not going too much below $225,000. At that point, I still make money,’ he said.”
greed.
“Ronald Shuffield, president of Esslinger Wooten Maxwell, contends that people who buy now may still see prices go down in 2007.”
THE Ronald Shuffield?!
A new model indeed…