HOME BUYERS BUY NOW MESSAGE RINGS TRUE!

For people scalped by the real estate market the past couple of years, few promotional campaigns grate more than the Never Been a Better Time to Buy mantra.
(Never better? For a few frenzied months in 2004 and 2005, you could have bought a house for zero money down and flipped it painlessly for a profit of $50,000. That's assuredly better.)
Leaving that aside, it's harder to scoff at the latest pitch by the Tampa Bay Builders Association. Yes, builders are once again reassuring us it's a good time to mortgage our future on a pile of concrete, shingles and 2 by 4s.
But I think they've got most of the facts on their side this time. They were shared at Thursday's roundtable at the Tampa headquarters of the Tampa Bay Builders Association. About a half dozen builders were there, ranging from Arthur Rutenberg Homes president Bobby Lyons and Taylor Morrison division president Michael Storey to Pulte Homes' Reed Williams and Standard Pacific Homes regional president David Pelletz.
Builders face obvious pressure to sell. As a group, the industry has lost billions of dollars. Sales are less than half of what they were during the 2005 peak. But at the same time, they can drop prices only so low.
Rising material costs, from the concrete in the slab to the diesel in the dump truck, are partly absorbed by customers. Local governments charge more than $10,000 in impact fees per home to pay for roads, schools and sewer lines.
Executives from the likes of Pulte, Standard Pacific and Taylor Morrison admit prices could dip further this year from an average of about $200,000. But not by much. And while procrastinators may save $15,000 waiting six months, they could lose that amount to interest rates that a chorus of economists insist must rise to stem inflation.
Is the message getting out to the roughly 20 percent of Florida buyers who prefer a new home? Pulte and Standard Pacific report sales about 25 percent higher than they were last year. Sales of smaller homes have led the way.
Builders insist home buying is becoming less the cold economic speculation of a commodities hustler.

By James Thorner, Times Staff Writer In print: Friday, August 22, 2008

Good article, so true it is................ Beth Brown Bethbrownrealtor@comcast.net

Foreclosures a hot commodity!

Everybody is looking for a good deal these days and foreclosures are abundant! Many investors are back on the prowl looking for their best deals in the land of foreclosure! Everybody wants to know if we've hit bottom yet, well the answer is nobody knows. We have been in a declining market for some time and wow, I can't even believe some of the prices out there. We are like Wal Mart and have rolled back to 2003 or 2004 pricing.

I am buying now and I'd say conditions are favorable for future value. Interest rates are great and pricing is good. If you can put enough money down to have a positive cash flow on a property than it's a no brainier, just do it!

I've talked to Realtors in other parts of the United States that I do referrals with and there are very few places that have as much inventory as we do. Yes they are slow and pricing has come down across the board but what we are experiencing here in paradise is simple economics people. Supply and demand, once we reduce our inventory to a normal level the feast will be over. Our problem developed from over building and speculative buying. Everybody wanted to get rich quick and some did but just like the pyramid game, many got caught holding the goods and they didn't pay out. The game is over and we still have many properties that have some price adjustments coming down but that will all shake out in time.

Don't kid yourself playing the "wait and see" if the interest rate creeps up you've lost that savings you were looking for. This is paradise, I've live here for 30 years and Naples is the cream of the crop. We've hit bumps in the road before in real estate but we always come back and right now we are selling a lot of properties.

Let's talk about short sales, I'm sick of them.. Yes I've sold a few but it's exhausting and the banks are taking too much time to answer offers and they don't seem to care if they get through this process. I was in banking for 16 years here in Naples and sold foreclosures on that side too. Many of the people sitting in the seats at banks being negotiators right now are costing their banks thousand of dollars! In a declining market they are throwing off deals that have offers close to market value and in the end it's costing them a fortune! These homes take months to drag through foreclosure and they sit unattended with no electricity on. By the time we get some of them after the final judement has been filed they have serious mold issues, pools are green and in rural areas all outside water equipment has been stolen as well as the a/c units.

Many of the short sales have two loans on them, a primary and an equity loan. We Realtors first have to negotiate the primary loan and then the equity line (which would get bumped off in foreclosure and get nothing) and the secondary loans are giving us so much grief. They know that they have the ability to blow the deal and they can refuse to sign off or demand more money. I'm so tired of the work out on these short sales that there are very few that I'll take. I'm only going to list your short sale if it has one loan on it.

Anyway it's an exciting word in foreclosures right now and I get new ones every week. I also have several affiliates that work foreclosures so if that' s the arena your looking in....call me
There is a plethora to look through!

If you would like a current list of the foreclosures in the area, eamil me. I'll be happy to provide one Bethbrownrealtor@comcast.net or 239 250-2408