Candler Hills Ocala FL home for sale
This is a home for sale in the exclusive Candler Hills part of the On Top of the World communities. The Huntley model is a 3 bedroom, 2 bath, 2 car garage home with 2,181 sq ft of living area. It features a gourmet kitchen with maple cabinets, stainless appliances, an electric wall oven, gas cook top and Corian counter tops. There is a formal dining room for entertaining. The Great room is large and bright with high ceilings and crown molding. The master bedroom is very large and leads to a master bath with a double vanity, tile floor, a walk in Roman shower and an enormous closet. There are 2 other bedrooms and a 2nd bath on the opposite side of the house from the master as is the case in a split floor plan. This home is located on a premium corner lot with a nice view from the screened Lanai. The build quality of Candler Hills homes is superior to most other newer 55+ retirement communities. The floors are hardwood and not laminate. The MB shower and around the tub in the 2nd bath are tile and not a fiberglass plug-in. Candler Hills is known for extremely energy-efficient building practices. At only $185,000.00 this is a great price when compared to new construction or other nearby newer retirement homes.
My blog post profiling Candler Hills with info on the amenities, HOA fees, images of the community and a link to the golf course..
This Candler Hills resale on my web site with 20+ images and statistics about the home.
THIS HOME IS CURRENTLY UNDER CONTRACT TO CLOSE ON 1-26-12
My video tour of this Candler Hills home.
Ocala Real Estate Report August 2011
| $10,000 to $100,000 | 256 |
| $100,001 to $200,000 | 106 |
| $200,001 to $300,000 | 16 |
| $300,001 to $500,000 | 2 |
| $500,000 plus | 0 |
| Total residential sales | 380 |
| Foreclosures | 91 |
| Short Sales | 55 |
| Farms | 8 |
| Active Listings | 3739 |
Sales in August were up by 1o% from July. Inventory is down by only 30 homes. Earlier this year inventory was dropping every month but it seems to have reached a plateau, at least nor now. Foreclosures are down by quite a bit from earlier this year. We’ll have to see if this is temporary or the beginning of a trend. Short sales seem more or less the same over the last several months.
Ocala Florida Weather September 2011
September here in Ocala isn’t the beginning of fall as in other parts of the country September is still summer. Towards the end of the month temperatures will go from the low 90′s to the upper 80′s but it will remain humid until mid October. September is the last of the wet months and afternoon thunderstorms. We are also at the height of hurricane season in September. That’s because hurricanes need the warm water for fuel and September is when the ocean waters are at their warmest. Although hurricane season is technically June to October, in real life it’s more like mid August to mid October.
If you’re not looking forward to winters up north call me, email me or use my Ocala Dream Home Finder. The hot humid summers are a small price to pay for no winters.
Spruce Creek Golf and Country Club Summerfield, Florida
Spruce Creek Golf and Country Club
Spruce Creek Golf and Country Club is a completely built out Del Webb 55+ community located about 15 miles south of Ocala in Summerfield Florida. Spruce Creek Golf and Country Club is also just 10 miles north of the Villages. and all the activities and shopping but without the traffic and the high cost of housing.
There are 3250 homes in Spruce Creek Golf and Country Club on 1600 acres. The age of homes range from 1996 to 2007. The size of homes varies from just over 800 sq ft to over 2800 sq ft of living area. There are different methods of construction. There are frame homes with vinyl siding, a few with aluminum siding, frame and stucco and concrete block and stucco. Most of the frame homes with vinyl or aluminum siding were built prior to 2003.
Home prices in Spruce Creek Golf and Country Club vary quite a bit do to the size, age and construction of the home. There were 75 sales from January1 to August 25 2011 ranging from $89,900- for a 816 sq ft home to $270,000- for a 2344 sq ft home over looking the golf course.
HOA fees are a very reasonable $121.00 per month. They cover professional management services, guards at the 2 gates 24 hours a day, trash pickup, maintenance of the common areas and facilities and the use of the clubhouses and amenities. Golf is not included in the HOA fee.
The Spruce Creek Golf and Country Club home owners association has a great web site. Be sure to go to About Us and click on the video tour. The web site has information on all the amenities, activities, clubs and area shopping.
If you’d like to see homes for sale in Spruce Creek Golf and Country Club either call me, send me a detailed email with what you’re looking for or use my Ocala Dream Home Finder.
Below are images of Spruce Creek Golf and Country Club. All the images are original photos and are copy right protected.
Ocala Real Estate Market Report July 2011
| $10,000 to $100,000 | 229 |
| $100,001 to $200,000 | 98 |
| $200,001 to $300,000 | 8 |
| $300,001 to $500,000 | 7 |
| $500,000 plus | 1 |
| Total residential sales | 344 |
| Foreclosures | 92 |
| Short Sales | 44 |
| Farms | 9 |
| Active Listings | 3767 |
Sales in July were similar to past months. The total number of active listings declined again but not as much as previous months. Foreclosures are down quite a bit but you really can’t make judgements on just one month. You need top watch for trends.
I’ve been saying all year long that the big news is that the number of active listings is declining. To illustrate that point I looked back to my August 2010 market report and there were 5,464 active listing 12 months ago.
Statistics used for this blog post are from the Ocala Marion County MLS and are deemed to be accurate at the time this blog was written but are not guaranteed. All information is time sensitive and subject to change without notice. Home sales are for Marion County only and do not include FSBO, homes sold by builders or by auction that were not listed on the MLS, commercial properties or vacant land.
Ocala Florida weather report for August 2011
Crape Myrtle
It’s August here in Ocala. August is the middle of summer and not the last month of summer like it is up north. Our summers here last until mid October.
August is the month when tropical storms and hurricanes get going. Hurricane season starts in June but it’s not until August that the ocean temperatures really get high enough to feed a storm. This year may be a bad season for hurricanes. The temperatures this spring were unusually warm, especially in May, which should have heated up the ocean temperatures earlier than usual. Ocala may one of the least hurricane prone areas in all of Florida but the remnants of a hurricane can be scary and do a lot of damage.
Temperatures in August seldom get above 95 or below 90. The humidity makes it feel hotter though. Evening temperatures stay in the mid 70′s. We get regular afternoon thunderstorms that can be torrential down pours at times. August is one of the rainiest months of the year. However it seldom rains all day. A sunny morning, followed by an afternoon thunderstorm and a calm evening would be the norm. The thunderstorms don’t cool things down.
As I always say “The hot and humid summers are a small price to pay for no winters”
Want to know more about Ocala? Read the newspaper
Horse Topiary photo by Joe Dallorso
Most of the readers of my blog are from outside the Ocala Marion County area. A great way to get to know an area is to read the newspaper. If you’re a younger person you probably think newspapers are like dinosaurs. The reality is that only local newspapers have local news. All the Ocala Marion County newspapers can be read online.
The Ocala Star Banner is Marion County’s daily newspaper. You need to read it daily in order not to miss anything. This is a great source to get an idea of what different areas of the county are like.
The South Marion Citizen is a great place to find information about the SW corridor retirement communities. If you click on news and then community you’ll fing columns written about the goings on in various retirement communities written by people who there. The South Marion Citizen is a weekly paper.
The Citrus County Chronicle is a weekly paper than covers Dunnellon and west into Citrus County.
The Ocala area also has 2 magazines. That’s pretty extraordinary seeing that Ocala is such a small city. Both magazines are lot nicer in print than online. They are both printed on exceptionally nice glossy paper, in a large format, with great photography. Even the advertisements have beautiful photography.
Moving cross country is a huge undertaking. I know, I moved from Maine to Ocala in 2004. You have to do your home work and keeping up on current events is part of the job
Ocala real estate market report June 2011
| $10,000 to $100,000 | 251 |
| $100,001 to $200,000 | 99 |
| $200,001 to $300,000 | 14 |
| $300,001 to $500,000 | 8 |
| $500,000 plus | 4 |
| Total residential sales | 376 |
| Foreclosures | 124 |
| Short Sales | 45 |
| Farms | 4 |
| Active Listings | 3876 |
June home sales in the Ocala Marion County market were pretty much the same as May. The big news once again is the steady decline in the number of active listings.
It’s not just my opinion that the market is improving. The following is an excerpt from a newsletter that I get from Micheal White a local appraiser. Visit his Ocala Appraisals web site. He has nice charts and analysis by zip codes.
For the past several years Marion Oaks and Silver Springs Shores have been the driving forces in the Marion County real estate market, however the influence of these subdivisions appears to be subsiding. Inventory levels have switched from vastly over-supplied to a shortage of single-family housing. Marion Oaks has an approximate supply of four months of inventory while Silver Springs Shores has less than a three month supply. Combined, these subdivisions accounted for 21.9% of all sales recorded through the Ocala/Marion County Association of Realtor’s Website (OMCAR) in Q2 of 2011, compared to 23.4% in Q2 of 2010. Values have continued to decline in both communities, although at a much slower pace than in recent years. I would expect declines to moderate even further if inventory levels remain at their current rates or decline even further.
Countywide, inventory levels have dropped from a peak of 26 months in 2008 to a current inventory level of 9.2 months. Absorption rates have increased from 215 per month in 2008 to 387 per month for the second quarter of this year. The declines in prices should begin to subside further within the next year if inventory levels continue to decline.
The bottom line for the local market is that values are still declining but brighter days may be on the horizon. Several of the markets included in this report saw values increase, which may be a harbinger of things to come for the remaining markets.
Statistics used for this blog post are from the Ocala Marion County MLS and are deemed to be accurate at the time this blog was written but are not guaranteed. All information is time sensitive and subject to change without notice. Home sales are for Marion County only and do not include FSBO, homes sold by builders or by auction that were not listed on the MLS, commercial properties or vacant land.
Ocala Florida weather report July 2011
July in Ocala is hot and humid every day. Day time temperatures almost never go below 90 or much above 95. At night the temperature stays in the low 70′s. It’s very humid every day with afternoon thunderstorms 2 or 3 times a week. These thunderstorms are extremely isolated. It can pour in one spot and it can be as dry as a bone just a mile away.
The dry season extended into the middle of June. Normally we begin to see the afternoon thunderstorms start up in late May. So far this is the 2nd really dry year in a row. There were forest fires again this year and the water levels in lakes and ponds are low. We need a good tropical storm to bring the water table back up to normal.
As I always like to say “the heat and humidity are a small price to pay for no winter”.
New home sales in Ocala Florida
I often get buyers looking for newer homes here in the Ocala Marion County area. Many are interested in a new or newer Ocala 55+ retirement home. I end up telling these buyers that there has been very little building here since the market crashed in 2007. The reason for this lack of new construction is that resales are selling at prices below the cost of new construction and in some non retirement communities much less.
The below survey is based on active listings on the Ocala Marion county MLS as of July 7, 2011
Total residential listings 3915
new homes dated as 2011…..19
homes from 2010-2011………32
homes from 2009-2011………55
homes from 2008-2011……..114
homes from 2007-2011……..311
homes from 2006-2011……..571
homes from 2005-2011……..769
What does this all mean? It means that despite the fact that vacant land is available at fire sale prices and Marion County has suspended impact fees on new homes, builders still think it’s not worth trying to compete with newer resales. This is the time to but a house in Ocala.
The above numbers include both 55+ communities and non retirement communities and all types of construction including mobile and manufactured homes. They do not include homes offered by builders that are not listed on the OMCAR MLS.
