Again and again I hear these words from potential buyers and with the news we hear day in day out in the media regarding the Real Estate market; I can't blame them!
This is the 'problem': we do not have a lot of sellers in distress in the Keys ergo sellers are not willing 'to give their property away'. They rather hold onto their property until the market comes back and it will; That is the nature of the Real Estate market in the long run. Most properties down here are second homes and let's be honest; most people who own a vacation home in the Keys are not starving. Once in a while -seldom- we do have a sale that was one heck of a deal for the buyer. Most of the time in those few cases, the owner had purchased the property many years ago for a now unbelievable price and is still walking away with a considerable amount of cash in their pocket. Prices have dropped in the Keys, most definitely, but they have not plummeted! Asking prices have finally adjusted themselves to market value and are no longer 'pick a number, the sky is the limit'.
Here are the distress sellers: The buyers who purchased in the last two years anticipating to flip the property, thinking that they were not going to own the property longer than a couple of years. They entered into interest only mortgages; That interest only time period is up, the houses have not sold because values have not gone up over the time of their ownership and they are now drowning in higher mortgage payments for properties they did not anticipate to own so long. A 'short sale' is an option in that case. It means that the bank is willing to satisfie the mortgage with a lesser amount. But even when you look at the short sales available for sale: they are no steals; they are a good value many times, sometimes they are not even that if the owner paid way too much for the property a couple of years ago. Back then some buyers were willing to pay 'anything' just to get their foot in the booming Real Estate market. Hey, even developers did that and you'd think that they'd be more cautious with huge numbers!
This is a great time for buyers with the inventory being so flooded! You are much more likely to negotiate a good price for a property letting owners know that you are shopping the lowest price and ready to buy now. What matters in the end is not the asking price of a property but what you are actually paying! As the buyer you are currently in the drivers seat; Nobody knows how much longer that is going to last but I am pretty sure that once the Real Estate market takes a turn, we are going to see yet again what we saw over the past ten years; a great increase in property values and many buyers who wish they had bought now. The Keys are unique and different than any market in the US. An Island with a Coral Reef and great weather all year long; that's never going to get old and everybody here knows that. Don't wait for the prices to drop (That is probably not going to happen much more down here), put yourself in the great position of being a buyer in this market and negotiate a great price! Sellers are much more 'reasonable' when there is a real buyer with real money ready to make a deal now!
Here are the new properties that have come on the market since my last post: Click'>Click'>http://www.flexmls.com/cgi-bin/view.cgi?20071010163930963520000000&s=6&id=1">Click
these properties have sold: Click'>Click'>http://www.flexmls.com/cgi-bin/view.cgi?20071010164152596251000000&s=6&id=1">Click
and these properties went under contract: Click'>Click'>http://www.flexmls.com/cgi-bin/view.cgi?20071010164250096645000000&s=6&id=1">Click
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