Ocala Real Estate Talk

Archive for the ‘Ocala home buyers’ Category

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.

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.

Ocala Magazine

Ocala Style

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

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.

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.

There are some great deals in Ocala real estate in addition to Ocala Short Sales and Ocala Foreclosures. For example it’s no secret that Florida is full of older retired people. Often out of state relatives inherit homes that they need to sell. I refer to these as estate sales.

Unlike foreclosures, that are rare in the Ocala 55+ communities, there are an abundance of estate sales. The 55+ estate sales vary from newer homes in very good condition to older homes in need of updating such as paint, carpet or appliances.

There are also quite a few estate sales outside the 55+ communities.

In addition to estate sales there are also vacant homes owned by investors who are unable to do a short sale and homes vacated by people who had to relocate for various reasons.

Benefits of buying a vacant home or estate sale.

• Quick closing
• Excellent prices
• Exist in 55+ communities
• motivated sellers

If you are interested in vacant homes in the Ocala area or an estate sale call me, email me or use my Ocala Dream Home Finder. Be specific, I can’t send you every estate sale on our MLS. There are just too many.

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.

This is my first Ocala Marion County foreclosure report. It is intended to give buyers an idea of what the Ocala foreclosure market looks like.

The total number of foreclosures sold in Marion County during February 2008 was 116.

Homes built between 2004 and 2008 accounted for 56 out of the total or 47%. These were homes built during the real estate boom years and are selling for about half of their original price.

The huge Silver Springs Shores area which is divided into the North, South and East accounted for 49 foreclosures. Of these 49 sales 28 were built in that 2004-08 period.

Marion Oaks had the next largest number of foreclosures at 19. Marion Oaks had 13 of 19 sales built from 2004-08.

The 55+ communities accounted for only 3 sales. Ocala area 55+ foreclosures are hard to find. I sold 2 55+ foreclosures in 2009. One was almost never lived in and the other needed work but had a golf view. So they are available. An alternative that gives a much larger selection is 55+  estate sales.

Two Marion County farm foreclosures were sold in February. There are farms available as foreclosures in the Ocala area. As of the writing of this blog post there are 8 farms for sale as foreclosures ranging from $279,500- to 1.7 million.

If you’d like a list of Ocala foreclosures send me an email, give me a call or use my Dream Home Finder. Be specific in what you’d like to see. There are 316 foreclosures for sale as of today!! I can’t send you every one. I need to know the sq ft of lining area, beds & baths, age range and price range at a minimum.

Check out my Ocala Foreclosure Guide for more about buying a foreclosure.

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 winter of 09/10 will be one of the coldest on record here in Ocala. The weather guy on the TV station I watch says it is one of the 5 coldest since they started keeping records in the 1800′s. It seems every day has been 10 to 15 degrees below normal. Winters in Ocala are usually a great time of year with temperatures in the low 70′s. This year the low 60′s were the norm.

March is the beginning of spring here in Ocala, although this year is off to a slow start. Temperatures in March should be in the mid to high 70′s, the grass should green up and the azaleas should start to bloom.

Check out my Ocala Weather page on my web site to see weather information for each month of the year here in Ocala