Builder ‘Awash With Completed Homes’ In Florida
The Daytona Beach News Journal has this from Florida. “Skittish investors, leery of the air seeping out of the housing bubble, have left at least one area home builder awash with completed homes and no buyers in sight. Holiday Builders, the 30th largest builder in the nation, is hoping to turn the situation around by selling homes at what the company says are ‘builder’s cost’ this weekend.”
“The company is staging a special sales event in an attempt to sell about 40 new homes that had been ordered by investors. Consumers should be prepared to put down $5,000 and close on the property in 45 days. Changes in the market, including rising interest rates and an abundance of inventory, apparently caused some buyers who hoped to profit from the boom in area housing prices to walk away from the idea.”
“‘We found ourselves in a unique situation,’ Jennifer Youngblood, a spokeswoman for the builder said. ‘This is the first time that we have done something like this.’”
“‘Charles Rinek, president of the Flagler/Palm Coast Home Builders Association, said he has heard of similar situations in which buyers forfeited their deposits and walked away from contracts. ‘I don’t know how widespread it is,’ said Rinek.”
“Most investors look for a quick turnaround, he said. The general slowdown in the market in recent months is an indicator they won’t be able to proceed as planned.”
“Kevin Kronk, president of the Volusia Home Builders Association, said there are pockets of excess inventory in parts of the state, he said. But, the problem is more likely to be found in large cities such as Miami and even Orlando, especially in condo developments.”
And the Wall Street Journal has this report on Naples. “The vacation-home market certainly has changed since I dove into it not that long ago. On Aug. 30, 2004 I wound up making an offer on a second home in Naples, Fla. Buyer mania was so strong that I drove from the airport to my first walk-through inspection of the home in the furious rain and whipping winds of Hurricane Jeanne; at one point, I raced my rental car past a palm tree leaning over the road at an alarming angle and watched in my rear-view mirror as it crashed to the ground. I felt pressure to close the sale quickly.”
“But there are clear signs that the tide is turning in Naples. Inventory levels now are four times as high as they were a year ago, largely because nervous investors are trying to cash out their gains before rising mortgage interest rates topple the market. ‘Big price reduction’ ads are starting to pop up in the thick weekly real-estate sections of the Naples Daily News.”
“So, vacation-home buyers, take heed: The days when you could flip a beach house or ski place for fun and profit are probably over.”
Well it’s official.
CNN’s “Open House”: 9:30Am EST this morning (Saturday).
Those of you to the West can maybe still tune in.
Segment 1: Condos in S-Florida and elsewhere.
Message: “Crash is imminent!”
(Good footage of f@cked flipper, quote: “I’ve had enough, I want out.”)
Segment 2: Appraisal fraud/financing.
Message: “Buyers be aware!”
Segment 3: Rising rates.
Message: “People with ARM’s are going to be f@cked in a BIG way”
“I love the smell of napalm in the morning.”
Lt. Col. William Kilgore, Apocalypse Now — 1979
Well don’t sell those HB shares just yet, because the builders can make money until they have squeezed the last penny of profit out of the market; that is, unless buyers stop buying because of a growing awareness that prices are in a freefall…
I may revisit my “friend” in Naples. Amazingly enough, his house is still for sale, 3 months later! Only this time my offer would be a lot lower.
Be pateint Chick. Forget this year.
Buyer’s need to be aware of the mortgage racketeering game and get their own independant appraiser, who is WORKING FOR THEM and not the dirtbags lending the money.
BUYERS-GET YOUR OWN APPRAISER!!! DO NOT ACCEPT THE NUMBER HITTER IN THE HIP POCKET OF THE LENDER!!!! DO NOT PAY FOR THEIR HACK IN YOUR CLOSING COSTS!!!
Hire an honest and ethical appraiser and you will be OK.
Believe it or not there are some to be found!!!!!!!
Builders Cost: “…previously priced between $219,000 and $276,000 will be sold at rates ranging from $204,000 to $249,000.”
Come on. Look at the net margins olther builders report. Does anyone believe 7%-10% gross margins? Complete bull. Then the jerk has the nerve to claim; ‘I don’t know how widespread it is.’ It’s his JOB to know and he knows to the stick and swamp how widespread it is.
Recall we are told the homebuilders learned their lesson on overbuilding in the 80’s:
‘We found ourselves in a unique situation,’ Jennifer Youngblood, a spokeswoman for the builder said. ‘This is the first time that we have done something like this.’
I bet Ms. Youngblood was in Junior High when the last bust occurred.
You should see them STILL here in Dallas scraping the old 40s cottages from the lots in the Lower Greenville area and putting up enormous zero lot McMansions. I still wonder who is buying them. For what they’re asking for these ugly crappers, you could buy in the Park Cities and get much better schools.
“I bet Ms. Youngblood was in Junior High when the last bust occurred.”
that hits a little close to home!
It is called cookie jar accounting.
Save for earning for a future rainy day.
It is illegal but common practice.
I agree Robert, the tre costs are much lower than they are advertising.
Could they be hit for false advertising if someone could prove that builder costs are in fact much lower than they claim to be?
Anyone?
I think that might be a good point concerning false advertising by this builder . He could be putting a 50% mark up above buildings costs and saying his mark up of profit is part of the building costs . Its tricky . The impression this builder is giving is that he is not making a profit and the buyer is getting it at raw building costs .
“It didn’t even matter that hurricanes were blasting through the gulf almost weekly. Buyer mania was so strong that I drove from the airport to my first walk-through inspection of the home in the furious rain and whipping winds of Hurricane Jeanne; at one point, I raced my rental car past a palm tree leaning over the road at an alarming angle and watched in my rear-view mirror as it crashed to the ground. I felt pressure to close the sale quickly, since would-be buyers started putting backup offers on the home almost from the moment my full-price offer of $225,000 was accepted. I didn’t want the sellers to look for reasons to back out of the deal.”
This paragraph captures the essence of a mania — she was in such a hurry to buy that second home in Florida that she ignored the hurricane in progress while she raced in her rental car to seal the deal.
I was stunned by this paragraph. Fletcher is among the most level-headed real estate commentators. Goes to show how powerful and ephemeral investor psychology can be.
But then she goes on to quote without question an economist: “That shouldn’t matter to people who are buying in an overvalued spot for the long term”. Huh?? Why should I buy a house today if it’s going to be less tomorrow?
OT…Stucco; I responded to your question on the oher site….
It is starting to get ugly … fast. The summer is here & a bunch of the FBers will be roasted.
“Holiday Builders ,the 30th largest builder in the nation is hoping to turn the situation around by selling homes at what the company says are ‘builders cost’ this weekend.”
What do they mean by ‘builders cost”? I find this hard to believe . Are they going to prove that the price is at ‘builders cost”
“Builders cost” could mean with a 25% builders profit margin built in .
If you look at insurance bids they always add the builders profit margin after cost to build. I’m just thinking this is a misleading statement that makes people think they are paying raw building costs only .
I am doing a construction loan. The cost to build from all estimates is ~500K (incl land), the bank is looking at the value completed (their estimate not mine) of 750K. Is that builders cost? I do not think so!
OT:
Dean Baker on why the government should burst the housing bubble ASAP.
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2006/03/baker_governmen.html
Another weekend topic suggestion…
What is the best one page argument for Joe Sixpack that a bubble exists and most people should avoid purchasing or divest if personal circumstances allow.
Here is my entry sent to a lukewarm bubble believer.
Here are some housing bubble reference materials.
Best Primer on the web.
http://piggington.com/bubble
MSA data population growth and housing growth.
http://www.housingbubblebust.com/PopHsgRates/MajorMetrosPopHsgRates.html
Inventory tracking for bubbly cities, check out the quadrupling of inventory for sale in Phoenix. And the doubling of OC.
http://bubbletracking.blogspot.com/
Housing asking price tracker
http://www.benengebreth.org/housingtracker/location/California/LosAngeles/
Blog with all bubble news all the time.
http://thehousingbubbleblog.com/
OC Register reports over 10 months of inventory in OC.
http://blogs.ocregister.com/lansner/archives/2006/03/selling_a_home_youre_not_alone.html#comments
National bubble info
http://www.cepr.net/publications/housing_fact_2005_07.pdf
http://www.cepr.net/pages/housing_bubble.htm
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4679264
Lastly, the funny ones. Read there is no housing bubble from the bottom to the top.
http://thereisnohousingbubble.blogspot.com/
http://www.fantasylandmortgage.com/pages/944526/index.htm
http://www.housingbubblecasualty.com/
There are 6 teardown and build 2 spec homes within 2 blocks of us right now.
Spread the word about the housing bubble.
I also attached the OFHEO charts for OC and LA and the Barron’s Shiller Chart.
Other Ideas?
Hey, wonderful resource of links. Thanks.
I hadn’t seen some of the funny ones. Nice to have a balance in my daily bubble reading diet.
Thiese all nourish my soul.
Simmsays…
http://www.AmericanInventorSpot.com
AmericanInventorSpot.com
Wow, thanks for all the great links.
sunset, my co-worker lives in downtown HB (off Goldenwest 2 blocks from the beach) and right across the street this crack-shack sold for 800k…he said you could blow on it and it would have fallen down it was that old. And the current tenant is a stripper who put a dancing pole in the living room…lol
I guess a couple of Rolls Royce cars pulled up one day, looked around the property for 10 min. then bought the place. Crazy.
“And the current tenant is a stripper who put a dancing pole in the living room…lol”
I wonder if she could get a business writeoff for that.. hmm?
Hey she is probably have cash only house parties with a bit of whoring on the side to pay for it.
It happens in HB.
“‘The Company is staging a special sales event in an attempt to sell about 40 new homes that had been ordered by investors.”‘
This shows you how many flipper/investors were buying up new home releases . For this many gamblers to drop out shows you how little the potential for gain is .In this case I hope the flippers lost their deposits to the builder. See what the builder has to do to attract real demand ……if there is any .
So these homes are from flipper bail-outs. Factor in the flipper all or nothing players, you know the gamers that are going to tough-it-out. How much inventory does this class hold?
Big
I was out last night (Orlando) and in the bar area was a group of people with name tags, they had just broken from their meeting. They were realtors there for a regional meeting. I inquired about the market. Even though I know my numbers I kept my mouth shut.
The woman I spoke to when I inquired about the market. “Better than last year”. Followed by:
“It’s always a good time to buy in Florida.”
“Florida is not like the rest of the country.” This was the response when I inquired about national news starting to cover the declining housing market.
“Yes some markets are softening but not Central Florida.”
“We expect home values to increase 8-10% this year”.
“You’re not renting are you?” I LIED.
I couldn’t decide if she believed what she was saying or not?
A reader sent in this related article.
‘The softening of the real estate market locally and nationally is not deterring developers from going forward with plans for adding new rooftops in Four Corners and throughout Central Florida. Scott Laucombe, executive director of the Polk County Builders Association, said those two factors have definitely altered the marketplace because they have chased off the investor looking to turn over property in a hurry. ‘They’re called dolphins,’ he said. ‘They’re flippers wanting to flip the property.’
‘But the fast in-fast out opportunity has all but disappeared. Where a few months ago the demand for houses was so great that sales contracts were often written within a day or two of the For Sale sign going up, homes are now often on the market for weeks, and even months. DeVuyst said that while the change will not keep developers like himself from building houses, it will have a definite effect on the business. He thinks that effect will be a positive one. ‘Builders will build a good home because there is no feeding frenzy of buyers,’ he said. ‘Land prices will come back to reality.’
Can we differentiate between “Big” builders and start useing “Biggest” builders….”Holiday Builders” who the heck are they..???…My bet is they speculated and leveraged themselves just like the flippers…The “Biggest” builders (Lenar,Pulte etc) will “Eat” these guys for lunch….
Considering some areas in LV are seeing 50% land price drop from last quarter, I think even ‘builder’s cost’ are too high if builders overpaid for the land. The price of lands in FL will likely drop over 70% during the next 5 years and we know the lumber market will crash by the end of this year, so ‘builder’s cost’ are still way over bloated.
I think the lumber market will stay high for a long time due to all the US lumber being sent to rebuild Iraq. Concrete will stay high too, because China keeps buying all of it. Anything made of oil like shingles will stay high due to the cost of oil.
“Are homes selling mostly to investors, part-time owners or permanent residents? Too many investors can leave a market vulnerable to substantial price swings”.
If you look at the ski areas in northern New England they are riddled with lots owned by investors. Go to an agent at say Sunday River (in Maine) and she will show you a map where 90% of all lots have been sold, with the implication that you will be closed out if you don’t move fast. Well guess what, they indeed have been sold, but not to people who plan to live there. Rather they have been sold to investors. The amount of such HIDDEN INVENTORY is overwhelming but the agents never talk about it.
About three years ago you could buy lots for $25,000 in some of these ski areas. Now they are on sale for $100,000. There’s nothing to drive this crazy appreciation except greed, stupidity and the basic human laziness that tempts people to believe they don’t have to work or save i8f they just buy houses.
Beyond the out and out investors, there are also large numbers of ski area lots bought with the idea that a home can be built at anytime, but now’s the time to get the land. Well, in many such cases, things aren’t quite that easy, the cost of construction gets prohibitive, nothing is ever built and the lot is eventually put back on the market.
As for all the supposed boomer retirees - if you haven’t noticed, most of them can barely afford the bare necessities in retirement and others simply can’t retire. The generation blew it - they didn’t save, they lost their jobs, they got burnt in the stock market and they are now getting crisped with housing. And some will get further immolated with vacation homes.
I can’t wait to buy a place at one of these areas when it drops back down to $25,000.
I honestly think that issue…the boomer retirees, is going to be huge in this whole scene. It seems to me to be relevant for calculating the bottom in all this. If there are indeed something like 8 million millionaires in the US right now, as is claimed, and that many of these are boomers nearing retirement, then that’s a big pool of assets to keep this craziness up to some extent. Some figures I see calculate that worth as including non-primary residence RE, so if a lot of it is based on that then of course it’s ridiculously inflated. I can’t find good sources on actual money saved or assets breakdowns for the boomers.
Boomers are largely VERY unprepared for retirement. For a good read on the financial challenges facing the boomers, and our nation, read Peter Peterson’s (former NY fed governor) “Running on Empty”. The boomers do not have anywhere near the necessary assets to sustain their retirement. I wish I had the book to quote some numbers, they are quite shocking and much worse than I had ever imagined.
Shel, you have to remember that the reason there is supposedly 8 million millionaires is because they are using inflated real estate values to calculate their net worth.
I’m sure there are tons of paper millionaires around me. Their mid-quality tract homes are appraised at $700,000 to $800,000 when they are probably only “worth” $300,000. In addition I’m sure many of them have 2nd or 3rd “investment” homes.
Wait until the real estate induced hard recession shakes out. Then lets see how many real millionaires we have.
yes, your point about inflated RE values factoring into those estimates of ‘millionaires’ numbers is so important…but when I looked into the estimates a little it seems that they were calculated *minus* primary residences. It will be interesting to see how the figures change with the coming de-valuation of all those 2nd, 3rd, or 5th homes!
for example, check out this yahoo finance story:
http://biz.yahoo.com/weekend/suites_1.html
this guy owns 6 condotels to make him “worth” millions. Of course, none of them are actually finished yet…
The yahoo finance page also had a story on 10 fun ways to get rich, telling us we should skip the boring stocks and bonds and “invest” in champagne, ferraris, and rocknroll memorabilia. So fascinating how screwed our society is..
http://biz.yahoo.com/weekend/richfun_1.html
That’s hilarious. Makes my dull life seem sad. If only I knew that I just had to invest in Ferraris and Champagne. Not only would I have a bunch of Ferraris and Champagne but I would get rich and then richer. I’m such a sap for continuing to work. Lol.
LOL! That’s my business! I invest in “other stuff” and sell it for more! Unfortunately, I’ve never had a Ferrari to sell.
Think about the boomers you know and write down their names. How set are they? What lies ahed for them? I’ll bet some have shaky jobs in corporate America and after they can no longer hang on they’ll be climbing ladders at Home Depot and greeting you at Walmart. They may still have their kids to get through college and many are saddled with alimony, child support and tremendous credit card debt. They also took huge amounts of money out of their houses with Home Equity loans to finance those obligatory winter vacations in Cancun. Oh yeah, and those Mercedez Benz’s they drive - well they are leased.
They say you have to make hay when the sun is shining. Well, alot of boomers did, but they have frighteningly little to show for it. And those big inheritances coming from mummy and daddy? Well, guess what, the boomers have already gone through much of it.
These “Bourgeois Bohemians with Balsamic Dreams” (to name a couple of good books), are by and large irresponsible reckless squanderers who will get exactly what they deserve. And the best part - after they are all living in tiny little homes on postage stamp lots keeping the heat low and clipping supermarket coupons and using food stamps, they will praise the spartan lifestyle and be contemptuous of those of us who have saved who can afford to live better than they can.
The majority of boomer funds are in realestate and stocks. They have little cash. They are like a group of people at a table bidding up the price of napkins. As long as none of them sell and exit the market they are becoming rich. Once one of them understands that the napkins are only good for blowing your nose, they will try to unload. Have you ever seen a heard of elephants try too get out of a porthole in a sinking ship? In a short time there will be few millionaires When prices gap down wealth is destroyed. We are approaching the fear side of the cycle.
The amount of such HIDDEN INVENTORY …..
Good point Portland…..As the market softens, this inventory can accelerate the decline rapidly….
Also, the price of gas to get to these farflung ski areas and the cost to heat a second home in a cold climate and the energy-dependent price of lift tickets (snowmaking isn’t cheap) augurs poorly for home prices. Throw higher interest rates into this jambalaya and there’s trouble in paradise. Ignore the man behind the curtain you see at Mt. Snowjob.
just caught the last secs of that Fox News sat morning business show with Stuart Varney…his “prediction” at the end goin round the table was “The McMansion housing bubble will burst”. He said essentially ” look, we’ve *already seen it happen with the condo market* (hey! has that fact been widely publicized yet?!) and now I predict it will happen with all those McMansions. The last place you want to be right now is with one of those 3000SF 3 million-dollar homes to sell.”
Ben Stein, who apparently is incredibly bullish on RE (must be both his own poison and that he knows too many la-la-land folks lol), disagreed vehemently while the others sorta rolled their eyes silently and said oh, big prediction, the air is already seeping out of the balloon on that so not a big stretch, but we’ll just have to see. Ben Stein said in reply to Varney that he’d *like* to be holding lots of those McMansions right now…that people have been predicting the bubble bursting forever and it hasn’t happened.
I had a vision afterwards of Ben holding multiple McMansions saying “Does anybody want to buy these from me?! Anybody…anybody…anybody?!”
WHAT! Ben Stein is talking out of both sides of his mouth. Here is a quote from a Palm Beach Post interview with him:
“AI think the housing market will continue to decline. We’re coming off the biggest housing boom in 15 years. I think we’re way overbuilt and overpriced. Everything is ripe for a fall. There’s already been a substantial decline in many parts of the country and a dramatic rise in inventory, including in South Florida.”
Ben Stein, on the money
Uh, that should say “I think the housing market….”
This interview was just published 3/29/06, so he is really flip flopping all over the place!
that’s really weird! I swear I didn’t mishear Mr. Stein on FoxNews, seemed really a bubble-doubter, didn’t qualify it at all, said he’d love to be holding McMansions right now…
Fox and News dont belong in the same sentence.
The Simpsons……..ah the Simpsons …. they justify Fox’s existence.
During the summer of 2005 I saw another practice by realtors that pushed home prices higher . When ever a lower priced listing came on the market a realtor would buy it up and than relist it a month or two later at 5% to 15% higher than the prior listing price .(or they would do a double escrow).
IMO this was a dirty practice that made it impossible for the prices to level or go downward.Not only did the realtors fail the original seller that put the lower priced listing out ,but they screwed the next buyer and messed up the comps for the appraiser .I saw two cases whereby they did this price hussle with older people who were trusting . ( I only saw this happen after the fact or I would of told the old people .)One has to wonder why so many realtors are claiming the market will continue to rise .
ROTFLOL !!!! I have quite literally busted a gut over this quote
This is, my friends, is a hillarious sign that, indeed, the top has been reached in Naples.
Too many stupid people with too much money are running around like fools down here in FL. Soon, however, they will succumb to the heat, the mosquitoes, the bad people and the hurricanes…and will head the hell back to wherever it is they came from.
they sound like shipwrecked sailors from the 1600s.
Why is it that history always repeats itself? In 1926 Florida had one of the worst housing crash in this Nations history. Six years later you know what happened .
lot to chew on these NYT articles..
http://tinyurl.com/hwldy
http://tinyurl.com/hwldy
So this economist couple from pomona (not yale!) who bought their house w/ this reasoning “Mr. Smith said there are two risks to consider when buying a house. One is that you buy and the price goes down. The other is that you don’t buy and the price goes up. “The second is more scary,” he said. ” seems caught up rationalizing their decision thus:
One of the highlights..
“In our example provided by the Smiths, assuming (economists love to assume) the buyer makes a 20 percent down payment, secures a 30-year fixed mortgage at 5.7 percent, and spends about 2 percent of the price of the house each year on maintenance as rents rise 3 percent a year, you discover that with a 6 percent after-tax annual rate of return, the house price would be $696,000. That’s about 24 percent more than the actual selling price and 18 percent above Zillow’s estimate of $588,502.”
So assumptions of 3% rental increase (every year) and 2% maint costs seems rather presumptuous.
Besides, the eco couple got lost in equations and did not address many “variables” that impact the NPV. Affordability was not discussed. And merely presumed yield of 6-7% of this investment was considered a good deal.
Of course that may be if some one w/ 1-2 mil assets buying up 0.5-1mil house and plainly looking for ROI. Even in this case, many votaries of stock market will vouch for much higher (~10%) return in the stock market w/ a much higher liquidity.
Tell that to the sweating seller, spending countless months, thinking about ways to sell the goddamn thing
Love the new photos Ben! Escpecially the one with the For Rent sign on the Realtor/Brokers former office. LOL
We’re just getting started. I especially liked the psychic with the for sale sign. Carry those digital cameras with you folks and someone please send in some snaps from Queen Creek.
If you can buy land, there are ways to build homes much cheaper then what the contractors are charging. Totally of the grid or grid tied homes, much stronger then the chicken wire and stucco we see now. These homes have all the amenities for a fraction of the cost. The resources and materials are not marked up beyond there cost. Strawbale with renewable energy (solar,wind,geothermal). Approx. cost for a 2,000 st. ft. home is 140,000 (including solar and geothermal). Add in extras stainless steel counter tops or granite and amenities an additonal 20,000.
Interesting story on Naples. I like to ask FL people what’s going on there every now and then because my old co-worker and her hubby bought a condo there a couple of years back. I think it was like 1500 sq. ft. and they paid about 300k for it (she claims). I think they have some property mgmt. company renting it out for them (she claims) as well. I’m sure it’s worth more on paper right now, but with all that inventory on the market there I wonder what they could realistically get for it? They claim to be keeping it for “retirement” but I wonder if a few storms and a 200k loss will make them change their minds about that.
The posturing in the follwing article makes me think that things may be getting a little bit shaky in the Maine coas vaction home market - at least the upper end:
Housing bubble on MDI shows no signs of bursting
Monday, March 27, 2006 - Bangor Daily News
Has anybody got a gauge on the builders materials costs? About 2 years ago drywall and lumber were over the top, according to a builder I talked to, because all the materials were going over to rebuild Iraq and Chinese buying all the concrete they can get(and I suspect that demand will continue). Now with fuel cost rising doubling over the past 2 years, I suspect the builders margins have got more and more squeezed, especially now with the housing bubble bursting.
Ahaha! We’re at “invoice” prices now!! Hold on for the 0 percent financing.
BTW: Those cost prices are complete bull. If a builder doesn’t make atleast $50k in clean profit, it’s not worth the endeavor.
I feel sorry for the people who think they are getting a good deal.
If buyers keep their wits about them, and don’t panic as a herd, there is no reason, not to be picking up homes for 50-75% off current valuations within approximately 12 months. The real crash will start in the latter part of Sept. ‘06 when the weather changes. As one poster on another thread accurately noted-prices are headed back to pre-1999 levels.
I was looking in my local morning paper and noticed that the realtors did’t have alot of adds regarding the massive inventory they have. Instead they had a big two page showing big pictures of the realtors in the office .This tells me they don’t want to waste money on advertising but just want buyers to call and not see what a massive amount of inventory there is out there .Can you imagine a realtor saying “Well now we have 2 thousand homes in your price range , which one do you want to see first “
Don’t you think the lack ads reflects the fact that they can’t afford to advertise everything available?
Than they shouldn’t be taking the listing . The seller could just sell FOR SALE BY OWNER and get has much action .
Rode through another comunity in progress in the Sarasota/Bradenton area yesterday and was even more shocked than what I saw a few weeks ago. I counted 18 ‘For Sale’ signs in one block of 28 houses (mid 300’s-mid 400’s). Some were not done so I’m sure they were also available. Still a lot of new construction but nearly all of the completed houses have signs, and there were a lot of FSBO signs so you know these were people that bought pre-construction. I saw a few houses that appeared to have people living there and couldn’t imagine what is going through their heads about now with every other house for sale. Oh…and the sales office parking lot was vacant. I’m now predicting an all out implosion in Sarasota.
Sarasota/Bradenton 3bed/2bath ($300k-$400k) inventory:
07/22/05 234
07/26/05 258
08/03/05 260
08/11/05 293
08/14/05 304
08/21/05 333
08/26/05 347
09/03/05 370
09/09/05 415
09/15/05 435
09/25/05 534
09/30/05 582
10/05/05 605
10/09/05 617
10/17/05 683
10/26/05 709
11/06/05 842
11/12/05 850
11/20/05 891
11/26/05 920
12/03/05 939
12/08/05 949
12/15/05 999
01/06/06 1043
01/10/06 1081
01/13/06 1126
01/17/06 1140
01/19/06 1167
01/24/06 1204
01/27/06 1224
02/02/06 1237
02/06/06 1292
02/10/06 1318
02/19/06 1401
02/28/06 1465
03/06/06 1483
03/09/06 1538
03/15/06 1568
03/19/06 1584
03/22/06 1602
03/27/06 1662
03/31/06 1670
I wouldn’t mind living in Sarasota downtown on the water or elsewhere on the Gulf, but at present the prices are outlandish (about 4-5x what they should be), and the place is way too crowded with New Yorkers driving 60 mph downtown and on little, once quiet, side streets. Still, parts of Sarasota are beautiful, though it does seem to have a lot of problems with water contamination.
Are prices falling at all? They aren’t in St. Petersburg, Tampa, or Clearwater than I can detect. If anything, things there seem to be getting worse.
I thought New Yorkers were in Palm Beach, and Chicagoans were in Sarasota?
Thank you. Those statistics are incredible. I’m also a little afraid the areas have become too crowded. Streets crowded with New York drivers scares the hell out of me. Not exactly a retirement ideal.
Does anyone know if the Tampa market is in a bubble? I know someone who wants to buy investment/rental condos there, saying there has not been a runup in Tampa.
Yes, there is a bubble In Tampa-St. Petersburg. Prices have doubled and tripled over the past four years, cheered on by our idiot County Commissioners and City Council members, and the disgusting developers who apparently give them lots and lots of money, freebies, and what-have-you. Shacks go for a half million, and investment condos for way more than that. But, there are already far too many condos, so I don’t think they can be a wise investment. Prices haven’t fallen yet, but inventory is skyrocketing, and property taxes are extremely high. Investors better have plenty of cash on hand.
I was in St. Pete a few weeks ago and a young lady there told me her young friend needs to sell her one bedroom condo to relocate out of state. She just found out there are 11 others listed for sale in her building, with sellers reducing prices. Oops, not going to be easy getting out for the price she could have gotten a few months ago.
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