April showers bring May flowers and this week it brought the most buyers and sales activity we’ve seen since I started this blog back in September. Lots to cover (about time!) so let’s just jump right in.
Inventory is holding steady for the third week in a row, completely unchanged from last week with a total of 458 properties for sale in the Cape San Blas market with 171 homes and 287 lots. The best news is we had a record 4 closings, 3 new contracts, 19 new listings, 12 prices changes and 16 expired unsold.
Our four sales this week consisted of three homes (two gulf front, one interior) and a 100′ by roughly 1,000′ deep gulf to lagoon lot on Indian Pass. Since lot sales have been so rare we’ll begin with that.
Camp Palms is the original subdivision on the Pass and it consisted of a series of 100′ wide lots which stretched from the Lagoon to the Gulf. The old Indian Pass Road used to run along the lagoon front but was later relocated to its current position when the owners agreed to grant the government an easement to run across their lawns resulting in what appears to be gulf front lots and lagoon front lots. Unfortunately, some owners have subdivided their lots in just that manner and these full size lots are becoming rarer.
This seller had originally listed this as three parcels: 2 50′ gulf front lots and one 100′ wide lagoon, so I was glad to see this sale close as one intact lot. The seller purchased the lot in 1995 for $115,000 so with a closing price of $850,000 it earned him about $56K per year. Nice ROI.
The highest priced of our three home sales this week is this beauty on Haven Road on the Cape which was listed for $1.95M and sold on Tuesday for $1.6M, or 82% of list. This was a bit of a complicated transaction as noted in the MLS:
Total sale consists of 4 parcel sales, one with conventional financing, one with an owner note, and two cash transactions. For comp purposes you may want to go to property appraiser’s site which will show three gulf front lot sales at $525K, 550K and 575K.
The second gulf front home sold on the Cape was listed at $989,000 and sold for $940,000. This 5-bedroom, 5-bath home is located just past the rocks at Stumphole, and was purchased by the Seller in 2002 for $719,900, so he had about a 23% ROI or about $36+K per year for the past 6 years. Not bad at all.
Our fourth and final sale this week was our on-again/off-again contract on this interior home in Boardwalk on the Cape, listed at $290,000 and sold on Tuesday for $272,500, or a very respectable 94% of list. The Seller bought the home back in ’01 for $150K, so he essentially got paid $17,500 per year to live at the Cape. That’s good work if you can find it!
So much to look at this week I just want to savor it. Tomorrow: what went under contract this week, and what didn’t. Also, my picks of the week for best new deals on the market. See you then!