Ocala Real Estate Talk

Posts Tagged ‘ocala first time home buyers’

Here in Ocala we have the lowest mediam home prices in Florida. We have foreclosures, estate sales and even great prices on traditional sales. I mostly work with buyers and I’ve seen 100′s of such homes.  I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s a big mistake to concentrate on just the price. Buyers don’t think enough about condition.

I think the big 4 are the age of the roof, the AC heat pump unit,  the flooring and the kitchen appliances. When looking at newer foreclosures I’d add landscaping to this list.

The roof. Standard shingles here last about 15 years. Some insurance companies won’t insure a house with a standard shingle roof over 15 years old. Architectural shingles are good for 20 years or so.  The heat of our summers give a roof a real beating.

The AC unit, which in most cases is a heat pump, is harder to judge. An AC guy told me that they can break in 5 years and I’ve seen them 20 years old.

Flooring is really taken for granted. To carpet an entire house, as can be the case in an estate sale or even a newer foreclosure, can cost as much as a roof. For some reason buyers who would walk away from a house with a bad roof will have no problem replacing flooring. Flooring prices vary a lot from builder quality carpet to tile and wood floors.

Kitchen appliances can be 20 years old in an estate sale and missing altogether in many foreclosures. Here again there is a big difference in price between builder quality and top of the line. I do think appliances are at the bottom of the list price wise though.

Landscaping is often totally absent in foreclosures. No shrubs or trees, dead sod in the front of the home and a back yard that never had grass in the first place because builders here for some reason give an amount of sod that won’t cover the whole yard. You don’t over seed a bad lawn here. You rip out the old sod and lay down new sod.  Mature trees and shrubs won’t add anything to an appraisal. However I owned a landscape company and I can tell you an extensive landscape job on the house in an empty field can cost as much as all the four items above combined! Curb appeal is what makes a house a home.

Am I trying to sell more expensive houses? No I just believe too many people are “Penny wise and pound foolish”. I’ve walked out of what at first appeared to be low priced homes and said to my buyers that they couldn’t buy that house cheap enough to make up for all the work it needed.

I’m writing this blog post in response to a recent article in the Ocala Star Banner about how the Ocala area has the dubious distinction of having the largest decline in homes values in the entire country in the 3rd quarter of 2010 as compared with the same period in 2009.

I thought the Star Banner article was too negative, just like most of their articles about local real estate. Low home values are bad if you’re a seller or a Realtor (my average commission is down 50% since 2006) but not if you are a buyer. Low home prices are great if you are a first time buyer or looking to retire here in sunny Florida. The Ocala area has a low wage structure and local people who couldn’t afford a home in 2006 can afford a home today. Homes in The Shores or Marion Oaks, built in the last 5 years, that originally sold for over $200,000.00, are now available as foreclosures for under $100,000.00.

The current median home price in the Ocala area is $82,000.00. I think this needs some explanation. The median home price is being brought down by really cheap sales. For example there were 77 sales in October under $50,000.00. Of this total there were 19 mobile homes, 27 were homes with fewer than 2 full bathrooms and 18 homes were smaller than 1,000 sq ft of living area. There were also 10 55+ homes in the under $50K category most of which were villas in On Top of the World.  Now there’s nothing wrong with homes like these. Every area needs extremely affordable housing. I’m just pointing out that homes in the under $50K range require compromises that not everyone might want to make and it’s these under $50K sales that are bringing down our median home prices.

Lastly I want to make a few comments about foreclosures. As you know I like foreclosures but I haven’t sold one his year. I showed plenty of them but my buyers elected to spend more money on traditional sales. Why was that? When my buyers looked at what it would cost to get the foreclosed home up to the same condition as the traditional sale they decided it wasn’t worth the trouble. If you’re interested in foreclosures you should prepare in advance. You need to know what it costs to replace carpet, install tile or laminate flooring, the cost of appliances or even an AC unit or roof. To a lesser extent this would apply to some 55+ estate sales too.

Right now is the opportunity of a lifetime to buy an Ocala home. Here are 12 reasons to invest in Ocala real estate right now.

1. Interest rates are at historical low with no where to go but up.
2. Many Ocala area home sellers will pay part or all of a buyers closing costs.
3. Fannie Mae Homepath Financing doesn’t require an appraisal and also offers renovation loans for their Ocala and Marion County foreclosed properties.
4. USDA offers 100% financing with no Private Mortgage Insurance (PMI) on many Marion County homes. Mostly homes that are not in the Ocala city limits.
5. FHA loans allow the seller to pay many of the buyers closing costs.
6. Conventional loans rates are at all time lows. Local banks want to loan money to buyers with good credit. Don’t let anyone tell you different.
7. Foreclosures are selling at a 50% discount from 2005-08 highs.
8. Most Ocala foreclosures are in good condition and easily pass a professional home inspection.
9. Many “traditional sellers” have dropped their prices to better compete with distress sales.
10. In the 55+ communities there are always great deals on estate sales.
11. Estate sales also exist outside the 55+ communities and are a hidden secret often over shadowed by Ocala area foreclosures and short sales.
12. Principle, interest, taxes and insurance are often not much more than renting.

If you are a first time buyer, a renter, a retiree or investor now is the time to buy.

Its termite swarm season again here in Ocala. As the weather warms up termites go out and look for a new home. You do not want that new home to be yours.

Termites cause $700,000,000.00 in damage each year here in Florida. Despite this scary statistic about half the homes in Florida have no form of protection.

There are 2 types of termites, subterranean and dry wood. The subterranean variety is considered the worst because they have much larger colonies and thus eat more wood. Obvious from the name they live in the ground and prefer moist conditions and wood. The subterranean termites enter your house through a sort of tube that connects their colony to the food source. Dry wood termites like dry wood, like the rafters in your attic. They have much smaller colonies and are harder to detect.

The University of Florida has a great web site dedicated to termites with loads of information and great color images. Take a good look at the pictures and so you can identify the little buggers if you see one.

Subterranean Termites

Read the rest of this entry »

The median home price in Ocala has dropped to $87,800.00 edging out Ft Myers to become the cheapest place to buy a home in the state of Florida according to an article in the Ocala Star Banner.

Median home prices mean that half of all homes sold for more and half of all homes sold for less than $87,800.00 I think this is a little deceptive especially to those looking at this online from outside the area.

There are great deals in the Ocala area. I just think the median home price is a little misleading. It reflects what is selling more than what you get for your money. The Ocala area has a high unemployment rate and a low wage structure and local people are buying what they can afford.

In addition, I suspect investors are buying up really cheap houses looking to fix them up and rent them for positive cash flow. A huge percentage of below $50,000- foreclosed houses are selling for cash, which to me indicates an investor.

Most houses on the Ocala Marion County MLS sell for under $200,000-. In my opinion the real sweet spot in our market is in the $125-200,000- range. It is in this range that you can find a really nice house, in a nice area that needs very little or no work at all.

I specialize in helping people from outside the area find a home here in Ocala and surrounding Marion County. If you have a question email me or use the comment feature below. If you’d like to receive listings email me about what you’re looking for or use my Dream Home Finder in the right hand column.

The First Time Buyer Tax Credit has been extended to April 30, 2010. There have also been some changes, the biggest being that the credit has been extended to existing home owners. I have created the chart below to show the differences between the current tax credit and the new one that just got signed into law.

First time buyers can also use their tax credit as part of their down payment.  This is done by a bridge loan that you get through the State Housing Initiatives Program, better known as the SHIP program. Call or email me for contact info. It’s important to realize that there is both a city of Ocala and Marion County SHIP.

I know it sounds like a late night infomercial but it can be done using the USDA home loan program. As a matter of fact I just closed on a house yesterday where the buyer had zero out of pocket expenses.

Much of Marion County Florida qualifies for these USDA loans. Most every where outside the Ocala city limits.

Here is an example based on the closing I did yesterday. The house was $95,000.00. The seller paid $4,000.00 in closing costs and inspections. The buyer had a 102% USDA loan to cover the USDA guarantee which is instead of PMI insurance and rolled that into the loan. The buyer got a great 5.25% interest rate. That’s cheaper than renting.

Zero money down does not mean bad credit. The following is a rough guideline. Credit score above 620 and no bankruptcy or foreclosure in the past 3 years. There are other criterea but I think these are the big ones.

So basically if you have decent credit you can buy a house in the Ocala area with no money down. Call me or email me and I’ll refer you to the banker who closed the loan for my recent buyer.

I work with a lot of first time buyers and out of state buyers and as we look at homes I try and point out things that make one house better than others. Here are some things that I think make for a quality home here in Ocala.

CBS or concrete block and stucco construction. Everything else is considered inferior do to the termites. CBS homes can get termites because there is wood framing in the walls and roof but CBS is considered the best material and commands a higher price than frame house. Read the rest of this entry »

Real estate online has revolutionized the industry. It has empowered the consumer. Real estate agents used to be able to just show buyers listings of their own or those of their broker but all that has changed. Buyers can look at hundreds of houses from the comfort of their own homes and develop a real feel for value. This is a good thing.

I constantly send listings to buyers through my Ocala Dream Home Finder which sets buyers up with a predetermined search of their choosing and automatically emails them listings.

The problem is that there is just no substitute for seeing a house in person. You need to get a feel for the space, imagine yourself living there, check out the neighborhood. The size of a house can also be very deceiving. Online all you can do is look at the square feet of living area. I’ve been in houses with great floor plans that felt 25% larger than they really were and just the opposite with poor floor plans. Buyers see a great priced foreclosure but don’t realize that it’s in the middle of no where. Realtors don’t know what to expect from a listing either until they see it. I’ve been in foreclosures that were obviously never lived in and I’ve been in others that were so nasty I wanted to go home and take a shower. I once went to show a really nice looking house. We pulled into the driveway and saw the neighbor with cars parked on his lawn. There he was working on his Harley in the driveway.  A guy who looked like a member of the band ZZ Top.

The moral of my story is the internet is a great thing for real estate. The internet has brought transparency to buying process. However it is just one tool. A starting point and no substitute for a good real estate agent. That would be me of course.

Property taxes in Ocala, as in the rest of Florida, are pretty confusing. A lot has to do with the Save Our Homes initiative, also know in real estate as amendment 10. Save Our Homes was supposed to keep seniors from getting taxed out of their homes by capping tax increases on homestead properties by 3% or the rate of inflation, which ever is lower.

The problem with amendment 1o is that you can buy the exact same house as the guy across the street, who has been there for 10 years, and pay twice the taxes that he does. Another example of politicians helping one group at the expense of another.

Now that property values have dropped like a stone here in Florida a new issue has come up with Save Our Homes.  This is called the recapture rule. The recapture rule states that tax assessors must increase the assessed value of a house by up to 3% as long as that it  is less than the homes market value.  This is why most peoples taxes are not going down even though their homes value has gone down.

Now here’s some home work. Below are 2 great links. One is to the Marion County property appraiser. Read the FAQ and check out the tax estimator. If you live in Florida read the portability calculator because you can bring your Save Our Home exemption with you to a new house. The other link is to an article from the Ocala Star Banner which has a detailed explanation about why taxes aren’t going down.

Marion County Property Appraiser

Ocala Star Banner

If you buy a foreclosure or short sale in the Ocala area it is important to understand that you will be assessed at market value and not the amount you paid for your house.

Finally, when you see the taxes on a real estate listing be aware that it is not the amount that you will be paying. Taxes adjust every time a house is sold.