Headlines: Brisk
Sales Pace Keeping Inventory Low
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strong sales kept inventory at low levels (reaching a new 5-year
low January 1) and supported the continuing price rise that
started in March. Buyers continue having difficulty finding the
home they want, and pent-up demand seems to be building as buyers
wait for the right house to come on the market. Well-priced homes
get snapped up quickly.
Cash buyers still account for half of all Brevard sales. A rush of purchases under $50k dragged the Average-Sale statistic way down in Feb/March but July responded with 25 sales over $500k, counterbalanced by only 63 homes (100 is the norm) under $50k.July and August saw some extremely high-priced sales, but generally the prices are rising in response to lack of inventory. Jump on this opportunity now! Inventory is down, creating some price stability. CNN Money quotes our own Linda Schlitt Gonzalez. and named Palm Bay a BEST RECOVERY BET (click to view) forecasted to have the 2nd highest appreciation in the country in 2012. Anticipating soaring inflation, smart money is rushing to real estate. Home ownership could soon get very costly as mortgages rise from today's artificially low interest rates. Lock in that 30-year fixed rate mortgage NOW! Look at the chart on right. Will mortgage rates soon make ownership less affordable? During 3 weeks of mid-December, rates climbed 24% from their 4.2 low to 5.2. Wow! It could happen again without warning. Rises in interest rates will drive up your monthly payments. Don’t delay. Interest rates can only go up from here. Real inflation is climbing as bail-out costs work their way into the rest of the economy. Harness the destructive power of inflation as it eats away the principal of your mortgage. When in a Buyers Market - BUY. The real beneficiaries have been the smart buyers, buying while prices and mortgage rates are still low and everyone else was afraid to buy. Spurred by yet more government intervention, interest rates on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages now in the 4% range provide an unprecedented buying opportunity. The next major crisis in real estate will be interest rates skyrocketing like they did in the late 1970’s. You may not see interest rates this low for the next 10 years or more. Lock in these fixed-mortgage rates NOW! Investors Low interest rates, and a population moving to rentals, is finally making landlording feasible again. Brevard demand is driven by a high-tech jobs base PLUS vacation/retirement homes for baby boomers. Our embedded base of working renters makes Brevard a much better investment than retiree-dominated communities. Leading Housing Indicator Here are the most important two indicators to watch!
Months of Inventory, or absorption rate, shows how many months of sales it would take, at the current rate, to deplete the inventory. Sales are slowing due to lack of inventory. Buyers are waiting to find what they like.
Click for our proprietary Building Permits Graph and Statistics (Housing Starts) showing still-slow building activity. Brevard builders recognized an inventory buildup and severely curtailed construction activity in August 2005. Some builders seized an opportunity to get their crews working and permits increased from a record low 43 per month in April 2009, to a 2-year high of 130 in March 2010, but now, thankfully, permits are down again. Nicely crafted makeovers tend to raise prices in some resale segments (especially waterfront). What is this home worth? These graphs and charts reveal what's happened lately. If you'd like to know why, see my Real Estate eMagazine and call me for a discussion of solid economic fundamentals powering the move to the SpaceCoast, and various neighborhood lifestyles drawing people here.
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More graphs below
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The Best Information - Gives You a
Winning Edge. I
built these graphs to give us some perspective on market forces setting
the prices on homes, and to help our clients negotiate the best possible
deal. These Brevard county-wide residential sales, by fellow members of
both Boards of Realtors, chart the leading edge of Brevard's overall
real estate market.
Note: The following numbers include many distressed sales that push the
chart lower. Homes on navigable waterways will perform higher than these
averages.
When in a buyers market, smart people BUY
CAUTION: The major influence on average sale prices today is low-quality distressed properties (mostly bank foreclosures and short sales) pushing average sales prices down hard. Do NOT infer that your home value has decreased this much! Call or eMail the Webbmaster for details.
Buyers devoured 283 homes under
$50k in Feb/March pushing this average down.. We rank far below other
desirable markets and below the national Median Prices, (still a
bargain). Source Data: MLS.
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 Don't
Miss the Bargains!
Even without the exaggeration of an up-spike in Nov & Dec, condo prices are trending upward
Countywide volume averaging 100 sales/mo makes the Condo Graph erratic. |
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Sales Beat Prior Years Soaring sales reduced inventory and should lead to higher prices.
______________ When should I Buy/Sell? Buyers get serious from early January till just before school starts in late August. See Buyer Activity Graph. Timing can affect the price. Remember: settlements show on these charts 30 to 60 days from the time the deal was struck. See Buyer Activity Graph. Source Data: MLS. Graphs updated when data matures - approx 20th.
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 We sell details and additional data to financial institutions. Contact Richard Webb. |
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What
is the average sale?
Pick Your Home Averages are good for perspective, but can blur the picture. Focus on categories of homes you're interested in, then call me for help finding the specific one that fits your requirements.
Waterfront homes offer the best appreciation potential. Unlike continually expanding developments in former cow pastures, they're not making any more navigable waterfront. Including all the islands, we have 230 miles of coastline, and that's it, so prices get bid up faster on waterfront homes. In most areas we're seeing neighborhoods upgrade as investor-refurbishers buy homes built in the early days of the space program, and modernize them. Renovations push values higher.
Near-retirees establishing a beachhead for retirement, or beginning to move to Florida, want high-end homes and condos. They appreciate faster than blue-collar homes as a result.
Note: Some people mistakenly try to use the Tax Appraiser's values as a guide to home pricing. That will not work in Brevard. Neither the appraiser's Market Value nor Assessed Value offers predictable relationship to sales prices as evidenced by my Appraiser Ratios analysis (click to see).
Is Demand for Real Estate Recovering? Retirees are still moving to Florida, already the 4th most populous state. The baby boom started in 1946 -- add 65 years and we are seeing baby boomers (who for decades have dreamed of moving to Florida) begin to retire en masse in 2011. Many current home shoppers are early retirees, and those who plan ahead (a characteristic that made them successful in the first place) are purchasing now.
Brevard Outlook We
still launch rockets. Private manned launch preparations will also keep
us busy, but with 1/10 the labor force, making us more competitive. NASA
was preparing new facilities for
Constellation,
the next launch system after Shuttle; click
to watch an overview of that suspended bold step into space. There are
too many factors to predict what will happen to housing as a result of
the long-anticipated shuttle layoffs. Younger workers have already
moved, older ones planned to retire here, others will run-out
unemployment checks rather than move. Long-timers may stay because their
house is mortgage-free and job prospects here look better than
elsewhere.
Dec 2011 - Harris
Corporation creating $100 Million Hi-Tech Engineering Center –
100 new technical and support jobs and 300 construction jobs over the
three years as well. To read the full news release, please click here.
.
A new power plant is rising
in Port St John. We completed a $22million terminal for 2 new Disney
super-cruisers, and Royal Caribbean's Freedom of the Seas (world's
largest cruise ship) now calls Canaveral home. Companies in Melbourne
are desperately looking for engineers. We are replacing NASA jobs with
private-sector leadership in hi-tech industries.
Insiders know living on the SpaceCoast is warm and relaxing! Now everyone else is discovering the secret about favorable real estate values in Central Florida. This comprehensive monthly report shows you the investment potential that accompanies owning property in Brevard County.
Investor
Opportunity Other
than a 2-month up-spike, Condo Prices (see graph above) remained stable
since August 2010, even trending slightly higher. Last winter, sales
over $500k were 5% of the market compared to 11% of the market 6 months
prior, while sales of units under 1,000 sqFt remained constant. You can
see average price graphs are pushed down by lack of high-end sales.
Contrary to what you read in the
press, we studied premium waterfront home sales and discovered
that on Indian River, Banana River and Newfound Harbor, 2010 volume
beat all prior years. Oceanfront is excluded here because it overpowers
the data and skews the analysis.
| Year | Average Sale Price | Number of Sales | Over $1 Million |
| 2005 | 817,000 | 69 | 41 |
| 2006 | 895,000 | 32 | 27 |
| 2007 | 1,004,000 | 65 | 28 |
| 2008 | 839,000 | 63 | 16 |
| 2009 | 699,000 | 84 | 16 |
| 2010 | 678,000 | 101 | 16 |
Perspective It will take awhile until all the panicked sellers are out of the market. Although some had to sell immediately and pushed the market down hard, many sellers are unwilling to drop prices, seeing a renewed upward trend as retirees continue to move here.
Government bail-outs induced irresponsible lenders to give undeserved mortgages to irresponsible buyers who cannot, or will not, honor their commitments. Sales of those units are simultaneously pushing prices down. Take advantage while you can.
Our studies show homes are still selling at 95% of asking price. When the asking price is set realistically, a large number of homes have sold at full asking price or above.
New Economics Did you notice that the largest credit card issuers doubled their minimum monthly payment a few years ago? A brilliant new monetary strategy, but it triggered the downturn! That's one great way to curb inflation! It cuts consumer mis-spending, and it had to be done with quiet government approval; otherwise banks would have been in illegal collusion. This is a revolutionary method of reducing borrowing in precisely the sector that defaults on debt due to their irrational exuberance. It was more effective than the Fed increasing reserve requirements to curb lending. We've been watching its positive effect on inflation and interest rates, while the press whines about negative effect on credit card borrowers and how consumers are not spending enough.
Investors Call Richard Webb, a fellow investor, for expert help selecting properties with the highest total return in your portfolio. Sometimes half of my buyers and sellers hold real estate licenses in Florida or other states. I am a Realtor's Realtor backed by an office of 90 specially selected expert agents in 7 offices of the Coldwell Banker Ed Schlitt Realtors / Paradise team, the most respected professionals on the Space and Treasure coast. We're everywhere you want to be along the Indian River.
This article morphs slowly over time, but the statistics are updated approximately the 20th of each month.
Contact
the WEBBmaster for updated details, and help finding the perfect home or
business location. Meet