Forget the Year of the Snake – 2013 is shaping up to be the Year of the Real Estate Rebound, as we continued with another week of serious sales activity. We closed six more sales, wrote six new contracts, added five new listings, and changed prices on six others, half of them price increases. With all that, we trimmed our inventory by four, closing the week at 262, with 86 homes and 176 lots listed for sale in the Cape San Blas, Indian Pass and C-30 Corridor market. Let’s see what’s catching buyers’ attention.
We’ll begin our review of this week’s six sales about a quarter-mile south of the state park entrance on the Cape with an irregularly shaped gulf front lot adjacent to the north side of Peninsula Estates. It’s about 1.74 acres of a larger parcel in the process of being re-platted into two smaller ones. The seller has it listed for $439,900, and agreed to take $369,000 for it on Thursday.
Our next sale is a bank-owned home on White Sands Drive in San Blas Shores, the oldest subdivision on the Cape located adjacent to the north side of Ovation. This 3-bedroom, 2-bath, 1,208 home was built in 1985, has pleasant gulf views and a pool. It needs a little TLC at this point. The last time this one was on the market was in early 2005 when it sold for $680,000. Today the bank has it essentially right at the county’s assessed value of $195,700, and on Valentine’s Day it sold for just shy of that, $193,700.
About two miles down the road our next sale is a 3-bedroom, 4-bath, 1,904 square foot home situated on a St. Joe Bay with 103′ of waterfront. It was built in 1975, and so is grandfathered in for FEMA flood insurance coverage. The sellers bought it in 1997 for $110,000, it went under contract in mid-January with a list price of $299,000, and on Friday it closed for $290,000.
The remaining sales were all off of the Cape, so we’ll head out onto the C-30 Corridor heading first towards town, stopping first at this bay view lot located shortly past the bay side subdivision of Treasure Bay. This is a half-acre lot measuring 103′ by 217′ listed for $22,900. The sellers have owned it since 1990 when they bought it for $8,000, roughly $14,100 today in inflation-adjusted dollars, only a bit below its current assessed value of $18,000. On Monday it went for $11,000.
We’ll head the other direction now on C-30 Corridor for our next sale, a Key West style 3-bedroom, 4-bath, 1,702 square foot house on 27′ of gulf front listed for $315,900 in Brighton by the Sea. The sellers owned the home since 1999 when they purchased it from the developer for $269,900. This little community of eight homes was built in 1998. They share a community pool, and are located in a FEMA-eligible area. On Friday the buyers picked up the keys at closing for $280,000.
We’ll travel on over to Indian Pass Road for our next sale, a roughly half-acre lagoon view lot in Mystic Palms listed for $49,500. Street lights, central sewer and a gulf front pool with bath house are just a few of the amenities this subdivision has to offer. This is a developer sale so there’s no previous sales info. The county has it valued at $20,000, and on Monday it sold for $42,500.
All six of this week’s crop of new contracts are on lots, with five of them on the Cape, the first two of which are located up in Park Point, the northernmost interior subdivision on the peninsula. First up is this bank-owned quarter-acre lot listed for its county assessed value of $30,000. Classic real estate boom history on this one, having sold in September 2003 for $135,000 and then flipped just six months later in March 2004 for a $50,000 profit at $185,000. But now the bank has it and the contract has no contingencies so it should close pretty quickly.
The other Park Point lot is a short sale listed for $28,900. It has a similar history, selling in April 2004 for $225,000, and then flipped just six months later for $350,000.
Sunset Point is adjacent to Park Point, and here we have a 79′ wide gulf front lot under contract with a list price of $259,000, but not as a short sale despite the sellers having paid $836,000 for it in mid-2004. The county has it assessed for $250,000.
We only have to cruise about a half mile down the beach for our next two contracts, both of which are in Ovation, the first of which is a gulf-view, second tier lot under contract as a short sale with a list price of $55,000, having last sold in August 2005 for $500,000. Today the county has it assessed for $45,000. The views from this property when a house is built on it will be amazing. The lot is entirely in an “X” zone.
The other Ovation contract is on a lovely bank-owned bay front lot listed for just $78,000, a far cry from the $625,000 it fetched in late 2005, and well below the county’s assessed value of $115,000. It measures 45′ wide by 175′ deep, or roughly 0.2 acres.
We’re back over along the C-30 Corridor in Treasure Bay with a contract on another half-acre lot not far from the one that sold on Monday for $20,000 that we looked at earlier. This one is an at-arms-length sale with the seller having owned it since early 1990 when they picked it up for $9,200. They have it listed for $28,900, well above the county’s assessed value of $18,000.
That does it for today. Glad to see we’re whittling away at our inventory of lots which have been kind of stalled for some time. If you’re toying with the idea of purchasing some coastal property, let’s get started. Call or text me at 850-227-5197 or shoot me an email to [email protected] and I’ll be glad to help you find a good fit. Have a great week and thanks so much for taking time to stop by today.