Hard to believe but it was a year ago this week that I posted the first week in review and what a year it has been. In that time the MLS has recorded 56 sales in the Cape San Blas, Indian Pass and C-30 Corridor market, with 38 homes and 18 lots. Our overall inventory has come down by 26%, from 542 (194 homes and 350 lots) last September 29, to 398 this week (169 homes and 229 lots). This week is the lowest our inventory of homes has been since June 2005. All of these are indicators of a market which has seemingly weathered the worst and, barring Wall Street and the banking industry being sucked into a black hole next week, hopefully that light at the end of our tunnel isn’t an oncoming train.
Banking news didn’t bring activity to a halt locally as we managed to have a first tier lot go under contract and close within the week. There are four new listings, nine price changes and ten expired unsold.
Our one new contract and sale was on this gulf first tier lot in Ovation on Cape San Blas with a list and sale price of $535,000 although it isn’t clear from what data is available in the MLS if this price is reflective of the lot alone or whether it included some or all of a pre-construction price for a contract on a house. This property was owned and sold by owners of both a real estate brokerage and construction company and was advertised as preconstruction. I have placed a call to them o find out more details and will post them in an update when I hear back from them. The sellers paid $697,500 for the lot alone in August 2005 so it’s going to be hard to make the numbers work for this one.
There was nothing among this week’s four new listings priced attractively enough to merit a pick of the week. Note to Sellers: It is still a Buyers Market.
Sellers who have been on the market for a while tend to be more realistic and that’s certainly the case with our nine new price changes. From these, my pick of the week is for this great little bay front cottage with dock reduced from $279,000 to $269,000. Located just behind Scallop Cove, these little cottages are popular and rent like crazy. This one is a 2-bedroom, single bath, roughly 585 square foot get away with a screened porch and open deck. Sold fully furnished, it was totally renovated in 2003 with new windows, appliances, etc. With proper marketing, you can make the numbers work for this one as a rental property.
That does it for this week. We’ll all be glued to the news in the next few days to see if Congress manages to make a bad situation merely worse or whether they’ll go for broke, literally. Let me know if you have questions on these or other properties. Call me on my cell at 850-227-519 or shoot me an email to [email protected] . Thanks for stopping by today – hope to see you again.