Each Saturday morning I take a look at the past week’s local real estate activity from Cape San Blas, the C-30 corridor, and Indian Pass.
The inventory remains large with a total of 555 active listings, 200 residential units (36%) and 355 lots (64%).
One sign I like is that we had more solds and under contracts this week than new listings – a pleasant change – with 2 homes sold in Sea Cliffs, and one Cape Shoals townhouse and one lot at the north end of the Cape going under contract. The only new addition to the inventory was this townhouse on the Cape.
Let’s take a little closer look at one of the Solds. The townhouse at 626 Sea Cliffs Drive has been listed, expired and renewed several times since November of 2005, beginning with an original list price of $489,000, and ending with an eventual list price of $379,000. This week it closed for $378,000, or 77% of the original list price of 2005, or 99.7% of current listing price. This Seller wisely kept tweaking his asking price until he found what the current market will bear, and he went to closing.
Now before you cry “Oh my god, prices are falling – he had to take a loss of 33% to sell it – Not So Fast. According to the tax rolls, the seller purchased this home in March of 2004 for $269,000. He held it for 3 1/2 years and made himself a nice little 40% return on investment, which doesn’t include the fact that this little rental property also produced an average $30,000 per year in gross rental income. Are you still feeeling sorry for the guy? Didn’t think so.
The moral of this story is: if you price it right, they will buy, and you can still turn a profit.
As for listings which expired without yet being renewed, there were 9 homes and 13 lots.
Let me know what data you would like to see included in or expounded upon in this weekly post.