Florida Bouncing Back

[JLB Please excuse me, I'm a Dick. Not a moron just a Dick Find all posts View Profile Close JLB]

Improving Real Estate Markets Top 10 Turnaround Towns - AOL Real Estate

[riverdees05 Platinum Contributor Find all posts View Profile Close riverdees05]

Maybe I should buy a few of those houses for inverstment purposes.

[johnsorg Member Find all posts View Profile Close johnsorg]

I live in Florida and own investment property all over the State. Florida is NOT bouncing back. Real estate prices continue to drop and short sales abound. Luckily, my properties were purchased well before the boom and I keep them rented. However, it is virtually impossible to sell them. All of them have dropped in value at least 50% since the peak. Right now there is no end in sight. Don't believe these statistical anomalies that occasionally are in the news.

[chriskre Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close chriskre]

And try getting a mortgage in FL.
I've had clients turned down with 850 credit scores, hardly any debt and 50% LTV's with comfortable incomes DENIED!
It's pathetic. It's either cash for most properties or you can just fugggetaboutit.

[JLB Please excuse me, I'm a Dick. Not a moron just a Dick Find all posts View Profile Close JLB]

Things are not better than 2006.

Things are better than 2010.

From the article linked to:

After slipping out of Realtor.com's top 10 rankings for the third quarter of last year, Punta Gorda has reclaimed status as a town in the vanguard of real estate recovery. Home prices are reportedly just beginning to trend upward. But they still have a long way to go: home prices in town are 56.2 percent lower than they were in 2006, at the peak of the housing boom.

Land is being bought up for major projects in our area, we won't be skipped over for too much longer. The one I heard about today is 10,000 acres, and is slated to take 20 years.

When I was actively shopping, there were always 14,000 foreclosures in Florida on just Homepath (Fannie Mae). Right now there are 4000. Lee county used to have 800-1200 and right now there are 270.

All that being said, no, the end is not near . . . the Sarasota paper today said the end is not near, with 2,000,000 house now in the foreclosure process and that many again heading there. It said there end in sight.

But, again, it is better now than a year, or two years, ago.

[rapmarks Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close rapmarks]

looked at the solds in the neighborhood in today's paper. well below selling prices in 2003, but homes are selling quickly now.

[JLB Please excuse me, I'm a Dick. Not a moron just a Dick Find all posts View Profile Close JLB]

& . . . when the recession ends, or before, and folks buy winter or retirement homes, is there any reason it would not continue to be Florida?

[tonyg Goomba & Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close tonyg]

Last I heard, things sounded worse in Florida. Who really knows-so many numbers so many local stories. Some say the bottom there is still a little bit lower.

[JLB Please excuse me, I'm a Dick. Not a moron just a Dick Find all posts View Profile Close JLB]

The Fiserve/Case-Shiller report projects that of the 20 metro areas expected to appreciate the most through 2016, five will be located in Florida . But getting to that point remains a tenuous prospect. Stiff cautions that home prices in foreclosure-riddled housing markets like Florida’s will continue to fluctuate in both directions over the next one to two years. “In the markets that have a lot of foreclosure inventory, the recovery is going to be really choppy,” he says. “In fort Myers, for example, we saw this recent gain but there is a potential that prices may fall again.”

The Fiserv Case-Shiller Home Price Index: One More Reason Why Housing Is Forefront In Florida's GOP Primary Election - Forbes

One thing for certain, for now the deals are harder to find, a lot fewer, and not as low. The peak was in January, 2011, and the online auction than cleared a lot of stuff out, which has not been replaced.

No, the recent good economic, employment, and housing news is not good compared to the good before the bubble burst. It is good for the period since.

I'd be surprised to see pre-recession levels of good in the next 10-20 years. There's nothing to support that level of false prosperity. We would be wise to quit trying to compare now to then.

[JLB Please excuse me, I'm a Dick. Not a moron just a Dick Find all posts View Profile Close JLB]

There was another article in the Sarasota paper real estate section today, about all the angst/litigation/discontent over the way REO property has been handled.

The short of it is that the banks holding property, offering them as is, don't feel an obligation to disclose anything about them, which runs afoul of disclosure laws. They simply ignore and don't respond to problems with the properties that make them hard to insure and finance. The buyers can't handle the problems because they don't own the house.

We ran into that. DW says if it was not me, it would not have gotten closed. There were problens that no one was willing to address. The lisiting agent did not put in an appearance until a week before closing, and then just to make sure they got their cut.

[bravesfan Member Find all posts View Profile Close bravesfan]

congrats looks like you outfoxed them and got in at exactly the right time!

[JLB Please excuse me, I'm a Dick. Not a moron just a Dick Find all posts View Profile Close JLB]

congrats looks like you outfoxed them and got in at exactly the right time!

If you talking to me, thanks, but my true feeling is that it is a shame that a bank foreclosed a $165,000 loan to a nice couple of teachers who put a lot into this little house, then probably netted less than $20,000 marketing and reselling it, when they could have just renegotiated the loan and done much better.

That, and that the same thing has been repeated more than 2 million times, with that many left to go.

All that said, we have gotten compliments and comments of appreciation for what we have done to the place.

[JLB Please excuse me, I'm a Dick. Not a moron just a Dick Find all posts View Profile Close JLB]

Anyway, my firsthand report is that things have changed a lot in a year. All the talk about all the foreclosures has died down. There's new construction and plans for much more new construction.

There's the 10,000 acres around a golf course I already mentioned.

Then, the developer of the new villas development adjacent to the golf course where I'm at is in the process of purchasing the golf course, and the established gated community around it.

What few foreclosures that hit homepath are getting purchased, and distressed properties are getting fixed up. We've had many people stop by and say something like, "That was an auction house, wasn't it? We love what you've done with it."

People are happy and friendly. It's busy, busy, busy everywhere you go. Life is sweet.

The gloom and doom has up and gone.

[Ridewithme38 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Ridewithme38]

Meh, can't you still buy a house for the price of a pack of Gum in LeHigh Acres?

[tonyg Goomba & Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close tonyg]

Why buy when you can trade in.

I remember a trip there where we were subjected to the land sale come-on and the timeshare was an exit 2nd try. I didn't like the look of Ft. Myers-where the jobs were and really didn't care for the land plots or the road planning either. Lehigh and VV Bonaventure have for years been the most available timeshare exchanges.