Kids Cancer Foundation - Jupiter FL

When a great charity opportunity comes along, it's always worth a look. If you're in the area March 12...this is a terrific event to take the family to and benefits a wonderful cause... http://kidscancersf.org/music-festival/

Market for Vacation Homes Is on the Rise

Ahem - you heard it here first...

By S. MITRA KALITA

WSJ 10 Jan, 2011

Sales in many vacation communities across the U.S. soared last year to levels not seen since boom times, driven by deep discounts, cash purchases and buyers' rising stock portfolios.

On Mercer Island, Wash., waterfront sales nearly tripled in 2010, compared with a year earlier, reaching par with 2006 volume there. Sales on Hilton Head Island, S.C., rose 14% for the year. Palm Beach, Fla., experienced a 40% annual increase and a 54% increase in homes under contract, indicating an especially strong fourth quarter. Palm Beach sales volume now is comparable to its 2007 peak. These figures were gleaned by brokers in each locale.

"The proverbial train has left the station," said Ned Monell, an agent with Sotheby's International Realty in Palm Beach. "We haven't felt energy like this in a long time. Buyers sense that they've been on the sidelines long enough."


The question now is whether the momentum will last. The strength of second-home sales paints a stark contrast to the overall housing market, which is expected to worsen in 2011.

Existing-home sales in November rose 5.6% on an annualized basis, according to the National Association of Realtors, a trade and lobbying group. Last month, the Case-Shiller housing index of 20 cities showed prices across the U.S. fell in October, and most analysts predict another 5% to 10% slide in the coming year.

Data for the nationwide vacation-home market aren't tracked regularly. The National Association of Realtors conducts an annual survey of home buyers, but results for 2010 won't be out till March.

Yet the market for vacation homes, based on local sales data, appears to be booming. The comeback, NAR economist Lawrence Yun said, has been helped by gains in the stock market and an improving economy, which have made wealthier Americans more upbeat about the future. "It also implies that prices in some markets have come down so much that people are fighting for those properties," said Mr. Yun, noting that demand is strongest in areas close to stable labor markets.

According to the NAR, one in 10 real-estate transactions in 2009 was for the purchase of a vacation home. And though a small fraction of the overall market, it is significant because vacation homes are often big-ticket properties and attract discretionary buyers. Just four houses sold last year on Madeline Island, Wis., for example, but the island's average dwelling sells at two to three times the price of the county average, said Eric Kodner, a realty broker on the island.

Sales of second homes are showing an uptick even in more-affordable communities. In some locations, prices are even inching upward. Cape Cod sales climbed nearly 9% in 2010 from 2009, while prices rose 7%. Monroe County, Pa., in the heart of the Pocono Mountains, saw a 3% decline in transactions, but its Lake Naomi resort community was up nearly 15%. A one-acre plot off Lake Naomi recently fetched $1.1 million, a record deal for the area.

Still, in most markets where demand has improved, prices haven't. For Realtor Andy Twisdale in Hilton Head, S.C., it is too soon to rejoice; prices are down almost a third over the past five years. "People are buying at the very low end of the product," he said. "The financing is very difficult. Banks are requiring 25% down and crystal clean credit."

Buyers who qualify or can pay cash say this is the time to take the plunge. On New Year's Day, the Makarewicz family arrived in Pocono Pines, Pa., to look for a vacation home. They already own their primary residence in northern New Jersey and own a property in Damascus, a northeastern Pennsylvania town along the Delaware River. But the family says the latter doesn't offer enough things to do: Not enough shopping. Not enough activities for kids. Not even enough fish.

"How's the bass here?" Joe Makarewicz, a vice president for sales at a financial-services firm, asked Re/Max Realtor Rob Baxter as the two looked at floor plans.

The family plans to sell the Damascus house, which would allow them to pay cash for one near Lake Naomi. The resort community at Lake Naomi boasts pools, tennis courts, a recreation center and a golf course—and is equidistant from New York and Philadelphia.

Some second homes had been stuck on the market because sellers wouldn't budge on price; unlike owners of primary homes, they often aren't in a hurry to move.

"Sellers have become aware that they have to price their homes accordingly," said Harald Grant, a senior vice president at Sotheby's in New York's ritzy Hamptons region. "There's a perk in the market because a lot of prices have come down to where they should be."

This shift became clear to K. David Hirschey, who runs a consulting business in Minneapolis, as he hunted for a home on Madeline Island.

After competing in a summer swimming competition on the island, Mr. Hirschey decided to buy a home there, perhaps to rent it a few years and maybe retire there eventually. The first offer he made was rejected, he recalled, because the seller said, "We don't negotiate on properties here." The same thing happened with his bid on the next house.

Then he found a third property—four bedrooms, three baths—that began as a sale by owner, was taken off the market, then relisted under one broker, then another. It had been initially priced at $1.25 million, and remained on sale for two years.

"When I saw it, it was listed at $687,000," said Mr. Hirschey, a father of four children. He offered $530,000, furnishings included. "They wanted to negotiate and I said no," he said.

The tactic—an all-cash offer—worked, and Mr. Hirschey closed on the house in November, just in time for his family to spend the holidays there

Florida Growth Not So Slow After All

Florida Growth Not So Slow After All
Dec 24, 2010 – 8:19 AM

Laura Parker

AOL News, Laura Parker Contributor

A year ago, the news in Florida couldn't have been more dire. On top of the housing bust and an unemployment rate topping 12 percent came the news that Florida's great economic engine -- growth -- had ground to a halt. For the first time since the end of World War II, Florida lost population -- some 50,000 people, estimates showed.

"We've got rooftops to spare. We just don't have the bodies to put in them," said Sean Snaith, an economist at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, at the time.

It turns out that Florida's future may not be so bleak. It remained one of the fastest-growing states in the past decade, in spite of the recession, new census data show. The Sunshine State added 2.8 million people, enough to win two new seats in Congress and assure that Florida remains on track to overtake New York as the third most populous state in the 2020 census.

"To me, that's saying the long-term trends have not really changed all that much," said Stan Smith, director of the University of Florida's Bureau of Economic and Business Research in Gainesville. "Even though there have been substantial ups and downs, people have often over-interpreted what's been happening in the last year or two and view deviations as the beginning of a new trend. I don't think you can conclude that."

Smith and other Florida demographers await the population counts for city and counties that the U.S. Census Bureau will begin releasing in February, to determine whether his premise is true. But the new state-by-state numbers help put the larger picture in perspective.

Even with the recession, the state's growth rate can only be described as robust. Florida grew at a rate of 17.6 percent in the past decade, compared with the national average of 9.7 percent. As with the rest of the country, most of the growth occurred in the first half of the decade.



It was Smith's bureau that came up with the estimated population loss last year.

Now that the new state census has been released, he said the loss may have been merely a smaller increase in population. He said his population estimates for the mid-decade may have been "on the high side," influenced by the building boom.

"Consequently, when the housing bust hit, it made it look as if the population declined for that one year in 2009," he said.

Smith said he expects slow growth next year, then a gradual return to what he calls "more normal levels" of growth.

"Ohio and New York and New Jersey are still going to be cold in the winter," Smith said.

Smith warns that Florida may not grow at its previous pace. "But it will get to 2 million or 2.5 per decade, which is still a big number," he said.

Until the housing bust brought Florida's economy crashing down, the state had grown explosively for three decades. In the 1970s, '80s and '90s, Florida added between 3 million and 3.2 million residents every 10 years, Smith said.

"We called it 'Economic Development for Dummies,'" said Snaith. "Sit back, if people come, your economy grows."

In the first few years of the 2000s, houses were being built so fast that they made Florida's legendary swamp lot developers of yesteryear look downright somnolent by comparison. In Fort Myers, a city of 60,531 residents in southwest Florida, 14,000 new homes were built on speculation.

When it all ended in 2008, Fort Myers became the state's ground zero in the home foreclosure crisis. Some 12 percent of homeowners found themselves in foreclosure, one of the highest rates in the country -- and high enough to draw a visit from President Barack Obama in February 2009 as he campaigned for passage of his stimulus plan.

Across the state on the Atlantic coast, Flagler County went from being the fastest-growing county to having an unemployment rate of 16 percent, Snaith said.

The August 2009 announcement that the state had likely lost population seemed inconceivable.

"People were stunned," said Aubrey Jewett, a political scientist at the University of Central Florida. "We had a variation on the saying, nothing is certain except for death, taxes and population growth in Florida. Then we discovered only two of the three were sure things."

Some economists, like Snaith, are less confident that Florida will resume growth at its old pace. The decline of housing values nationally makes it difficult, if not impossible, for some who once considered a move to Florida to afford it.

"We're not Michigan by any stretch of the imagination," Snaith said. "The near term is going to be a slow climb out of a pretty deep hole. People will again move back to Florida. But I don't think we'll see a 3 percent growth rate."

To be sure, Florida is still mired in recession. The statewide unemployment rate hovers stubbornly around 12 percent. Christmas shopping looked good, but even Santa Claus had trouble finding a job at the mall this season.

Still, there are some promising signs. Enrollment in public schools is expected to increase for the third year in a row. State officials anticipate next fall's enrollment to be the largest in six years. Likewise, electric hookups, another measuring stick, are on the rise statewide.

In Fort Myers, if the economy isn't exactly hot, it's certainly less grim.

International Buyers Snap up 90,000 Florida Condos and Homes in 2010

International Buyers Snap up 90,000 Florida Condos and Homes in 2010

MIT prof: Housing demand about to take off

William C. Wheaton, professor of economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, argues that the housing market is due for improvement, calling home construction, “a sleeping giant that is about to wake up.”

Wheaton believes because there has been so little construction that demand exceeds the level of building and it will soon absorb excess inventory.

“Housing construction will not only rise, but it will stay high for a while, which didn’t happen in previous recoveries,” Wheaton predicts.

Source: Fortune, Nin-Hai Tseng (09/17/2010)

© Copyright 2010 INFORMATION, INC. Bethesda, MD (301) 215-4688

Where is the shadow inventory?

We've been saying this for some time now - in our area, there is little inventory to speak of. Add to that the fact that we started the downturn at least a year and a half before much of the rest of the country, and it takes the wind out of the 'shadow inventory' case made by many who incorrectly associate it with northern Palm Beach County...

WASHINGTON – Sept. 20, 2010 – For the last year, the real estate industry has been talking about shadow inventory and the coming flood of distressed properties. Where are they?

Here’s what’s happening, according to a recent paper by Alan Mallach, a senior fellow the Brookings Institution:

• Some delinquencies have been resolved through loan modifications or people working out the problems on their own.

• Banks are getting better at managing short sales.

• Investors are aggressively buying up properties, sometimes in bulk, directly from the banks or at courthouse auctions so they don’t hit the market.

The likeliest outcome, Mallach predicts, is a steady flow of foreclosures over a long timeframe that will prevent another crash in home prices – but it will probably lead to low or no appreciation in home prices for a while.

Source: The Wall Street Journal, Nick Timiaros (09/16/2010)

© Copyright 2010 INFORMATION, INC. Bethesda, MD (301) 215-4688

Florida population grows again

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – After declining for the first time since the end of World War II, Florida’s population grew once again last year, a hopeful yet tentative sign that the worst of the recession may have passed, according to the latest preliminary population estimates from the University of Florida (UF).

Stan Smith, director of UF’s Bureau of Economic and Business Research, estimates that Florida added a modest 21,000 residents between 2009 and 2010, but that follows a population decline greater than 56,000 between 2008 and 2009.

“Even though the state turned it around, it still represents the smallest population increase since the 1940s and does not make up for last year’s loss,” Smith said. “Florida’s population growth continues to be very, very slow by historical standards.”

Florida grew by more than 125,000 residents in every year from 1950 to 2008. It’s estimated that Florida added 21,285 residents during the past year, with its total population increasing from 18,750,483 on April 1, 2009, to 18,771,768 on April 1, 2010, Smith says. The previous year it lost an estimated 56,736 residents.

“Two years ago, the economy was deteriorating rapidly, while over the past year there have been some signs that it is leveling off or even improving slightly,” he says. “I think that’s the reason we’re seeing a small increase in population. Although technically the recession has ended, the economy continues to be in bad shape, particularly in terms of its ability to create jobs. There have been some jobs added in the last few months, but unemployment is still very high and job growth is very weak.”

Slightly more counties lost rather than added population, but the split was fairly even. In percentage terms, both increases and decreases in counties’ populations were generally very small, with no dramatic changes.

“At the state level, foreign immigration continues to be relatively strong, and the state also continues to have substantially more births than deaths, which are really the drivers of Florida’s growth in the last year,” Smith says.

The largest population gains were in some of the biggest counties. Miami-Dade led by adding an estimated 8,253 residents, followed by Hillsborough, 6,353, and Broward, 5,834. “Because they’re the largest counties, they have fairly sizeable numbers of births,” Smith says. “They also receive a substantial number of foreign immigrants.”

The county with the biggest percentage increase was Lafayette, which grew by 5.2 percent, but that change was largely attributed to the addition of state prison inmates. There was no pattern to which counties lost population, which were spread throughout the state and include both large urban counties and small rural counties.

The largest population decline was in Seminole County, which lost 3,659 residents, followed by Pinellas, 3,119, and Volusia, 2,055. In percentage terms, the county with the biggest decline was Glades, followed by Jackson and Holmes.

With a quick economic turnaround unlikely at either the state or national level, Smith expects Florida’s population to continue to grow slowly during the next year or two. But within the next 10 to 20 years, the state’s annual population growth could be as high as 250,000.

“From 2003 to 2006, Florida’s population grew by more than 400,000 per year, and in the previous three decades increases averaged about 300,000 per year, although there were certainly ups and downs from year to year,” he says.

Last year’s population decline, a result of the economic slump, was the first since 1946, when military personnel left the state at the end of World War II.

“If the economy recovers sooner than people expect, we would expect faster growth,” Smith says. “If it recovers less rapidly or even slips back into recession, we would expect that growth will continue to be very slow and possibly even be negative again.”

Between 2000 and 2010, the counties that grew the most in absolute numbers were Miami-Dade, Orange and Hillsborough. Flagler had the highest growth rate, 90.4 percent, followed by Sumter, 82.6 percent, Osceola, 59.8 percent, St. Johns, 50.6 percent, and Wakulla, 41.7 percent.

The population figures are interim estimates that will be replaced by numbers from the 2010 census when they become available early next year.

© 2010 Florida Realtors®