I've lived 10 minutes from this house. I remember when I thought 250K was expensive. They were going for 180K when I moved there in 2000-01 and you could buy a condo for less than 90K. Those were the days! http://www.naplesarea.com/home-profile.asp?MLNum=205111497&PropertyClass=RES&AgentID=601500
Looks like things are starting to crumble. Fleck's rap today stated that the cost of buying protection on sub prime home equity loans jumped 20% in two days. http://www.ajc.com/business/content/business/stories/2006/12/05/1206bizforeclose.html
Subprime lender Ownit Mortgage shuts down http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Sto...-4DE6-8471-197B09864C5C}&dist=rss&siteid=mktw
i live in FL and i'll tell you things are not too pretty, a few of the newly built condos in downtown orlando are pretty dark every night, a lot of the spec areas on the fringes of tampa and orlando are empty houses/lots, only things selling ok are premium properties, inventory isn't skyrocketing as it was over the summer but the days on market is still moving pretty north at around 70 days(last yr it was around 30 days this time)
I am not far from you - east on the Atlantic coast here in the Cape Canaveral area. Our county relative to the rest of FL is much better off but our absolute sales numbers are way way down. We lost 200 Realtors who are dropping out of the profession for 2007 - which is very good news for me personally. Many Realtors have completely shut down all newspaper advertising since its not effective and a low probability payback. Newspapers have been asking for this abandonment for a long time as reward for giving for sale by owners BETTER advertising line rates than professionals. I am loving to see them begging now for business - wonderful attitude adjustment and justice (short all newspaper stocks since its a national phenomena). High end waterfront luxury condo sales are off a whopping 85% and this is candy land over here now for buyers. Days on market use to be measured in days 2 years ago but we are currently more like 9-14 months now. But I see a sharp increase in call volume now. A few stretched sellers are now starting to panic and give them away for below cost now. What is amazing to me is that 2-3 year old condos (essentially new) are now so discounted that they are way BELOW replacement/building costs. Builders will never again be able to build and sell these for the original retail level of $210-$265 sq-ft. Current costs are well over $300 sq-ft to rebuild these today. I am just amazed no large corp or even a large home builder has not come in and sucked these up to get them off the market and control new home price structures and slowly sell them back to control inventory and skim profits. These homebuilders could NEVER build these for these low costs and they would do better to buy them and resell them by controlling local market price structures. I just can't imagine why a developer would take on the risk of new construction when he can buy up excess and slowly resell for much higher profit-risk reward. A few hundred million of leveraged investment financing could easily control the local market price structure. The situation is ripe for someone cornering the local markets. We still have not reabsorbed the speculative condos that were built 2 years ago and many are empty and dark at night. But that is not as bad as it sounds since many are 2nd or seasonal homes for out of state owners who could care less that they are empty. But what IS interesting is that builders are now bumping up against their old inventory and are having to cancel new projects since they can not get anywhere near the $320-$375 sq-ft they attempted on pre-construction on new condos. The bottom line is that this is one of the best high-quality low cost lifestyle areas left in the country that is still undiscovered. You can get a luxurious 3 BR /2bth 2,100 sq-ft direct waterfront condo with private garage and amazing amenities adjacent to a marina (for your yacht) for $470K RIGHT NOW! Its unreal value and local buyers are just stupidly shrugging their shoulders. In 2 years these same properties will be selling for $600K minimum as soon as excess inventory is sucked up and developers crank up the moth balled projects. Material, land and labor costs will guarantee that level of price structure. Demographics here in FL are still highly favorable with over 400K new people coming to the state per year. We are projecting a doubling of the state population by 2070 and OMG I can't imagine how expensive these properties are going to get in 5-10 years. The key to this market for buyers is buying all the quality and value you can possibly afford since those are going to come soaring back. That means waterfront since its a scarce commodity and building & environmental regulations are making it extremely hard to find new build-able lots and the older property owners won't sell out since they know can't possibly replace the same lifestyle at the low costs the locked in years ago. TS
Sale VOLUME are off 85%. Prices are off about 15-20%. I have a brokers license and as a personal investor in this market am extremely competent in gaging relative worth. I'd be very happy to give you a list of properties that I think could cherry pick the best of the best. In my opinion, if somone bought up only 5-6 of the very best deals then price confidence would then soar and structure would improve sentiment and we would get an immediate cascade up effect in prices. The only thing driving prices down right now is that buyers have no sense of "urgency". As soon as the low hanging fruit is taken the hoard mentality will rapidly come back in with buying. I know the physchology - prices will immediately pump up at least 8-10% if the best deals suddenly are sucked up off the market. TS
oh ok, I thought u were talking about prices dropping 85% similar situation in South Florida-Palm Beach County, prices down about 10-15% stabilizing in mid price level new construction with virtually every major new project halted.
I'm curious to see what the condos with no reserve go for. http://www.tbo.com/news/money/MGB59AUHEVE.html "Of the 100 units Bay Communities will auction off, 40 will have no reserve price, which means there's no minimum price for bidders. The Hamptons has sold only about 56 units, which means about 260 remain on the market."
cool actually you can check it out here http://www.jpking.com/default.asp?page=auctions&nauctionid=2500