Ocala Real Estate Talk

Archive for the ‘Ocala Real Estate News’ Category

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.

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”

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

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.

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”.

We had an excellent month for home sales here in Ocala for May. May’s 400 home sale’s is the 2nd best month this year. The real news, and this is something I don’t see in the papers or on TV, is that the number of active listings keeps going down, When I started my blog in January 2009 we had 6500 listings. Today we have 4044 listings. It is months of inventory that defines a buyers market. I definitely don’t see prices going up but I can’t imagine them going down much more either. I do think selection will become limited if the number of active listings keeps shrinking, especially when you take into account that there is very little new construction and there hasn’t been much at all since 2008.

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.

Even though our spring, which starts in March, is warmer than summer in many parts of the country I still think of June as the beginning of summer here in Ocala,  From the first of June until mid October it will be in the 90′s every single day. June is also when the humidity returns and it also stays around until mid October too. The night time temperatures drop to the low 70′s but it stays humid all night long. You get used to the heat and humidity after a while here in Ocala. I moved to Ocala from Maine where it seldom gets into the 80′s and now I been here a while the heat doesn’t bother me at all.

June is also the start of hurricane season, which as you might have guessed, lasts until October. No where in Florida is totally hurricane proof but Ocala is about as safe as you can get. The only evidence of a hurricane that I can find hitting near Ocala was in 1968 when Gladys came in land south of Ocala and did some damage.

May was warmer than usual and extremely dry. I don’t think it rained at my house in SW Ocala the entire month of May at all.

Ocala weather by the month.

“The heat and humidity of Ocala summers are a small price to pay for no winter”.

Home sales were down from last month but that’s not surprising. March was the biggest month for sales since the market crashed. April is actually a great month in my opinion.

The big news is that inventory seems to be on a steady decline. As of today there are 4178 homes for sales on the Ocala Marion County MLS. That’s a huge decline from the dark days of 07-08 when there were over 7,000 active listings.

If you are waiting for the market to bottom out then this is it. A combination of brisk sales and a sharp decline in inventory are signs of the bottom.

I don’t think prices will go up in the short term. However I do think that there is a huge back log of out of state buyers. When these out of area buyers eventually sell their existing homes, competition may start to drive prices higher. After all the Ocala area has the lowest median home prices in Florida so there is no where to go but up.

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.

Wild Flowers SW 80 Ave Ocala FL

It has been an unusually warm spring here in Ocala, with many days in April approaching 90 degrees.  Normally temperature in April should be in the low 80′s. It’s been dry as is to be expected in the winter and spring months here. The humidity won’t return until the end of May which is also the start of our wet season.

May temperatures are normally in the high 80′s and night time temperatures drop to the mid to high 60′s. By the end of the month it will get humid and stay humid until mid October. Afternoon thunderstorms should get going by the end of May too.

It’s always a sunny day here in Ocala. Even when you get rain it’s only for a few hours and the sun comes back out. If you’re sick of winter followed by cold raw rainy spring weather then move to Ocala. The hot and humid summers are a small price to pay for no winters.

There was a huge increase in Ocala area home sales in March. In March there were 455 sales in Marion county. That’s a huge increase from February with 328 sales. It has been years since our multiple listing service had over 400 sales in 1 month.  In addition we saw another decline in the number of active listings. Is this the beginning of a recovery?

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.