Had a really full day yesterday showing property to several parties all day long and into the evening hours but it ended with writing an offer and getting verbal acceptance so that always makes the day feel worthwhile. Unfortunately, overnight, my buyers suffered an early onset of buyers remorse and this morning called and said they had concluded they really aren’t ready to commit to managing a second home, and so withdrew. Better now than after the contract is signed and everyone’s headed to the closing table. It’s the nature of this business, long hours and zero compensation unless you successfully manage a transaction all the way to closing.
Several agents did just that this week as we had a total of three closings. I had a lot of good company as far as writing new contracts as none were completed. Just a handful of new listings, seven in all, and even fewer price changes, only five. Not surprisingly, our MLS inventory of active listings remains virtually unchanged at 402, with 155 homes and 247 lots listed for sale in the Cape San Blas, Indian Pass and C-30 Corridor market. Let’s see what generated paychecks for a few lucky folks.
The first of our three sales is a bank-owned gulf-front home on Cape San Blas, located almost directly across the street from Scallop Cove. It’s a large 4-bedroom, 4-bath, 2,475 square foot beach home built in 2001 which needed some TLC despite its relatively young age. She first sold in late 2002 for $749,000 but a mortgage for $946,000 was taken out in 2005. The owners started trying to sell it in early 2006 when they listed it for $1.89M but found no takers, and eventually the bank ended up with it. They listed for $428,868 and sold it Tuesday for $410,000 cash.
Here’s a sale that went quickly as it was featured as my New Listing Pick of the Week just a short while ago. It’s a bank-owned interior lot in the Jubilation development on the south side of the Cape which the bank tossed on the market with a red-meat price tag of merely $39,000. That had the predictable effect of inciting an absolute feeding frenzy and they were soon juggling mulitple offers. One lucky winner emerged from the heap victorious on Monday and took the title for $50,000 even. Well done, especially considering it sold in mid-2004 for $273,000, and even the county thought it should go for more like $85,000.
Our third and final sale was a short sale on a lovely first tier home out along C-30 on which the price tag had been lowered to an unbelievable $300,000. This is a lot of house for that price. It is a 4-bedroom, 3 1/2 bath, 1,884 square foot high-end home with a pleasing floor plan, large decks on both levels, and wonderful gulf views as you can see in this photo.
Not too shabby. It was built as a spec home in 2008 when it debuted with a $739,900 price tag but just missed the market for attracting a buyer. The county now has it assessed at $240,349 which is pretty darn close to the $285,000 it sold for on Friday.
There are several attractively priced lots among our seven new listings, but no one clear winner towers over the rest so I’ll move on to our price changes where I’m going with this 50′ wide gulf front lot up in Secluded Dunes as my Price Change Pick of the Week as it now touts a new price tag of just $279,000. This lot has a fascinating history in that when I went back and looked at the history of sales, I saw that between 1994 and 2005 it basically had doubled in value every three years. In ’94 it sold for $125,000. In ’97 it went for $249,000. In 2000 it sold again for $465,000, and then again in ’03 for $973,000. That’s pretty good work if you can get it, “earning” roughly $170,000 just for signing a note and making mortgage payments. No wonder people were going nuts. Its last sale in 2005 was at the two-year mark from its previous sale when it went for $$1.362M, so it was still tracking to be close to doubling in that 3-year span even then. Only problem was there was no one waiting in line to be next by the time it got to that price. If past is prelude, then this property’s now listed at 1997 prices. The county has it at roughly 1995 prices, having it assessed at just $177,030.
That’s wrap for this week. So glad you took time to stop by. I’m enjoying hearing from so many of my readers, and if you have questions on either buying or selling coastal property, I’d love to hear from you. You can always call me on my cell, 850-227-5197 or send me an email to [email protected]. Thanks for checking out my blog today.