I had a great week in Orlando at the Florida Realtors’ Convention, learned a lot and met Realtors from all over the state, who reported the same thing: their markets are going strong again, with inventories down significantly. It’s great to be back on the Cape and back to work. Our market shows no sign of slowing, this week closing five sales and adding two new contracts. Three sellers listed their properties and six others adjusted their prices. Since last we met, our inventory has slimmed down by four, closing at 279, with 95 homes and 184 lots listed for sale in the Cape San Blas, Indian Pass and C-30 Corridor MLS. Let’s catch up on what’s been going on.
We’ll start our review of this week’s five sales on the Cape in Ovation where on the gulf side of the subdivision, this second tier lot, number 26, was originally sold by the developer in August 2005 for $500,000. It sold twice after that before the current sellers acquired it in December 2010 for $100,000. The county has it assessed at $49,000. It went under contract July 1st and sold last Monday for $95,000.
Our next three sales are gulf front properties, beginning with this gulf front home on Haven Road. Built on a 55′-wide lot that sold in 2004 for $975,000, this 5-bedroom, 5 1/2-bath, 3,399 square foot beauty went under contract in mid-July for that same $975,000 price, but closed on Monday for $850,000.
Our next closing takes us to the south side of the Cape to Louisiana Lane where in early July one savvy shopper penned a contract on this 50′ wide by 505′ deep, 0.57-acre gulf front lot which had been listed just two days earlier for $169,000. The sellers bought it in the fall of 2003 for $460,000, quite a far cry from today’s county assessment of $125,000, and sold it for full list price this week.
Just a few hundred feet down the beach, our next sale is this 55′ by 600′, three-quarters of an acre beauty on Sail Away Drive in Pine Bluff, a little subdivision tucked away between Two Palms and Crescent Palms. In the summer of 2001 this one sold for $345,000, then re-sold to the current sellers in October 2003 for $428,000. They put it under contract in June with a list price of $270,000, which is a more realistic market value than the county’s assessed value of $175,000, and the title changed hands at the closing table on Monday for $230,000.
Our fifth and final sale is out along C-30; from the Cape you’d be heading towards Port St. Joe and it would be on your left hand side. It’s a little 864 square foot, 2-bedroom, 2-bath cottage with a view of the bay built in 1995 . It went under contract as a short sale in July 2012 but was withdrawn from the MLS this past January. It subsequently came back on the market shortly thereafter with a list price of $175,000. The seller bought it in late 2007 for $430,000; the county has it assessed at $143,676, and on Monday it sold for $160,000.
This week’s two new contracts bookend the pricing variance in undeveloped lots: a three-acre gulf front parcel for $1,049,000, and an interior lot for $13,000. We’ll start with the gulf front behemoth beauty on the Cape. Just south of Rish Park, the seller combined two lots. Offered as a single 3.15 acre parcel that features 180′ of gulf frontage, it runs all the way back to Cape San Blas Road. List price: $1,049,000.
We’re back out along the C-30 Corridor for our last contract, this time heading east almost to the Franklin County line. In Stillwater, a small subdivision with just a dozen lots, this bank owned piece went under contract Tuesday with a list price of $13,000, below the county’s assessed value of $15,000. The last time it sold was in September 2004 when it went for $100,000 even. Four years later it went back to the bank, who initially listed it in July 2008 for $88,500. It took them a long time to carve that price tag down to a level where someone was finally enticed to step up to the table and submit an offer.
That’s a wrap for this week. Now is the time to get in the game if you’re hoping to take advantage of today’s bottomed-out prices on prime coastal real estate. There are more and more buyers shopping for fewer and fewer properties so if that trend continues, the pressure will start pushing prices back up again. Great for sellers, not so great for buyers. If you’re ready to get started, call or text me at 850-227-5197 or shoot me an email to [email protected] and we’ll get to work. I hope you have a great week, and I really appreciate your taking time out to stop by today.