El Realtor

Jacksonville Real Estate

2009-01-10T04:05:00.000-08:00

¡Bienvenidos amigos compradores! ¡Uds. han encontrado el 'website' mas apropriado para hacer su primer compra de bienes Y raices en Jacksonville!

Llameme inmediatamente para obtener mas información sobre financiamento, reglas de compra, para encontrar las verdaderas "gangas".

Vayan a XcelMarketing.net para mas información.

The Sky Is Falling!

2008-10-01T12:12:00.000-07:00

President Bush went on TV two days ago and said the sky is falling. He said that the American Congress was going to have to approve the $700 billion cash bail out immediately, without review, the entire world economy would collapse.

Secretary of the Treasury Paulson was to be given sole, discretionary authority to spend the $700 billion without any review from anyone or any organization.

ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, was in there for billions. ACORN was one of the organizations that got us into this mess by insisting on financing housing for people who simply couldn't afford it.

A Time For All To Pause.

2007-07-01T05:04:00.000-07:00

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Home > Real Estate > Archives > 2007 > June > 27 > Entry
Mortgage Broker Makeover
By Alexandra Clough Wednesday, June 27, 2007, 06:55 PM
It looks like the mortgage industry is trying to put itself through its own Extreme Makeover.
Tired of taking the brunt of the blame for the real estate meltdown, mortgage brokers have created a special group designed to restore confidence in the industry. It’s a tough task: Mortgage brokers have particular responsibility for placing borrowers in loans they had no business taking out. (Negative amortization mortgages for struggling borrowers? No problem!)
Home buyers of the world, meet the National Association of Mortgage Professionals Inc., or NAMP.
NAMP wants to “raise the professional standards of the industry” to bolster consumer confidence.
In other words, NAMP wants cred. It even has a special seal, the mortgage “M,” to designate the group’s stamp of approval.
This seal can be used only by members who follow certain guidelines, most of which are vague or super basic.
For instance, NAMP members have to have a valid license. OK, check.
They have to continue their education within the field. They have to abide by the Code of Ethics listed on the company Web site, including disclosure of conflicts of interest.
And they have to go through a background check in the state in which they do business.
Why NAMP now?
“Consumers have lost faith in the lending industry as a whole,” said Michael Lefevre, founder and chief executive of NAMP. By joining NAMP — and forking over $695 — brokers will be able assure clients “a level of professionalism and trust.”
Once a member, brokers can then proudly display the “M” seal. (Are we sure that doesn’t stand for money?)

Richard Newquist, Realtor par non indicated that the entire package of real estate itself, appraisers, direct lenders, mortgage brokers, inspections and title companies need to take this time to review their procedures and processes to streamline their operations to facilitate the business of Florida Real Estate.

Florida Property Tax Reform Has Doubting Thomases

2007-07-01T04:43:00.000-07:00

Click-2-Listen
By Alexandra Clough
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Will the tax reform plan help end the pain in the real estate market?
Not likely, said Palm Beach County Property Appraiser Gary Nikolits.
South Floridareal estate

Last week, Nikolits addressed the first meeting of the Master Brokers Forum in Palm Beach County, held at The Resort on Singer Island. The Master Brokers Forum, already active in Miami-Dade and Broward counties, consists of Realtors producing $5 million a year in sales during the past five years. In other words, people with a dog in this real estate tax fight.
The standing-room-only crowd of nearly 100 listened carefully to a panel discussion of real estate, taxes and insurance. But when Nikolits told the group that the Florida Legislature's tax reform measure fell short, Nikolits was greeted with applause, or as he put it, "hoots and hollers."
Why? Because Nikolits stated what is becoming increasingly obvious: The proposed tax reform won't help all taxpayers and therefore won't do much to lift the sagging real estate market.
The reform fails to address the need for "portability," meaning people cannot bring their Save our Homes exemption with them to another property. Nikolits said the reform plan also still keeps the biggest tax burden on those without Save Our Homes, such as snowbirds who have second houses in Florida.
"The same basic problem is that not everybody is still being treated the same," Nikolits said Wednesday, the day after the meeting. "I don't see where you've done anything for tax reform."

Richard Newquist, Realtor par non in Jacksonville, said the bill requires voting out the Save our Homes legislation limiting assessed valuations to a maximum of 3% per year. "That'll be gone", said Newquist. "Not only that", continued Newquist, "the out of state real estate owners get no benefit at all from the SOH legislation and nothing from this legislation".

What needs to be done, suggested Newquist, is to go back to the drawing board and come up with a real property tax savings bill that will cut homeowner costs while assisting communities cope with the reduced revenue. "We can't have the mayors of every little town saying they're going to cut police protection when that is the PRIMARY function of the local government to begin with".

FL Stats STILL Down

2007-05-12T07:58:00.000-07:00

Richard Newqust - Realtor 904-422-5091
www.fsbomover.com
www.liveatthebeach.net

The statistics for Florida are NOT improving and actually seem to have taken a dive from April to May...see www.jacksonvilletoday.blogspot.com

A lot of people are selling their own houses now so they can save the commission. To to www.fsbowiz.blogspot.com to get some great ideas on website marketing for your property. For $99 bucks you can get a website that will save you $$hundreds on your classified ads, put it on your yard sign and triple the value of THAT!

www.fsbomover.com is also a great place to start.

Florida Real Estate Sales Still Waaaaaaay Off From The National Statistics!

2007-04-17T19:35:00.000-07:00

Existing home sales for March were down by 23% in Florida. Nationally, the existing home sales increased by 3%.

What's up in Florida? First, we had the biggest share of speculators, people who bought properties and flipped them with no added value. They just worked from the psychological perch where buyers thought that if they didn't buy RIGHT NOW, they would lose out.

Second, is INSURANCE. JEEZ LOUISE! What did the State legislature do a few years ago when they let the insurance companies rate Florida using only Florida loss statistics? Florida DOES sustain greater losses from wind damage than the rest of the country but the whole basis of insurance is SPREADING THE RISK. That's out the window in Florida. Thanks to our indominable legislators. They really hang tough.

Last, is the pesky problem with hurricanes. After Katrina, everyone saw just how brutal a hurricane can be...along with bad hurricane evacuation planning, bad government and living ten feet below sea level....ON THE COAST!

So...high insurance rates, the threat of hurricanes and the absence of speculation in the market has really squashed the market!

For great real estate representation in Jacksonville call Richard Newquist at 904-422-5091. Go to: http://www.liveatthebeach.net

2007-02-14T14:45:00.000-08:00

So what does $250,000 get you these days?
Richard Newquist, Realtor
www.LiveAtTheBeach.net

ORLANDO, Fla. – Feb. 12, 2007 – A cool quarter of a million dollars. Two hundred and fifty grand. That’s roughly what it takes to buy a typical used home in Central Florida these days.
Existing-home sales soared to record heights in 2004-05, taking prices with them: The median resale price of a home in the Orlando area rose more than 60 percent in those two years alone, according to data gathered by the Orlando Regional Realtor Association.

In the Jacksonville Beachside area (beachside is east of the Intercoastal) is stagnant or dropping. Still, $250,000 won't get you much. Up in the Mayport area, there are still homes for sale for less than that and those are probably still a good deal. Everything else beachside costs more. Anything within 15 blocks of the beach is in the $400,000 range and up.

The general opinion is that, Florida wide, home prices are stuck in neutral: For nearly a year now, the median has been exactly $250,000 or within a few thousand dollars of that amount in the Realtors’ core Orlando market, which consists mainly of Orange and Seminole counties but includes some sales in surrounding counties.

So what kind of home can you get for that quarter of a mil?

The answer varies widely depending on where the home is located in Central Florida. That same amount will fetch you a condo or small bungalow in downtown Orlando – or a nicely appointed pool home with a big yard in outlying parts of Volusia, Lake or Osceola counties.

One of Hunt’s Volusia County listings, for example, is a 2,247-square-foot, four-bedroom, two-bath home built last year in Orange City that’s priced at $250,000.

By contrast, a 912-square-foot, two-bedroom, one-bath home built in 1938 in College Park – minutes from downtown Orlando – is also listed for $250,000.

“Much of it depends on how close the home is to jobs,” said Michael Rodriguez, an agent and operations director with Ample Realty in Casselberry.
He said he has a home with about 1,300 square feet in Casselberry listed for $239,900 that would sell for “probably at least $50,000 or $60,000 more” if it were “closer to downtown Orlando or Winter Park.”

The same applies to the Jacksonville area. It is hard to find "affordable housing" near the Downtown areas, Orange Park and the Beaches.

“Three years ago, you could get so much more” for $250,000, said Richard Newquist, agent for Coral Shores Realty in Jacksonville. The Jacksonville median price has slowed.

Most of the surge in prices came during 2004-05, when interest rates were low, the inventory of local homes for sale was tight and speculators began snapping up homes and fanning the inflationary psychology.

But the market slowed abruptly last year, and the median price flattened out at $250,000.
Economists and industry experts say two of the three factors that fed the sales boom are now gone: Investors are no longer looking to flip properties for a quick profit, and the number of homes listed for sale has swelled more than sixfold to record and near-record levels.
Supply is up and demand is down, a recipe for “continued softness in pricing,” said Michael Larson, a real-estate analyst with Weiss Research in Jupiter.

Orlando’s core-market existing-home inventory slipped from a peak of 21,324 in October to fewer than 20,000 by year’s end, but “a lot of that is seasonal,” Larson said. He predicts that many new listings will surface soon as people who yanked homes off the market late last year make another attempt to sell them during the prime home-shopping season this spring. In January, inventory rebounded to 21,266 properties for sale.

Larson, local Realtors and other industry experts say the median price is a figure that, like most statistics, has strengths and weaknesses. The number is best used as a long-term indicator of trends, because it can be volatile from month to month – though not as volatile as a market’s average sale price. The average in any one month can be skewed by the sale of a handful of very expensive or inexpensive homes.

The median figure avoids that problem. Hunt, a veteran agent with Realty Executives Orlando, said the median price has flattened out in the Orlando area as affordability issues finally kicked in and sales fell.

The median has stopped rising, he said, in part because “people are buying at the bottom of the market, because it’s all they can afford,” and sellers have been slow to give ground by lowering their asking price.

For example, the average list price reported in January by Realtors in the Orlando area was $329,374 – about $80,000 more than the median for that month. And the average list price never fell below $300,000 last year, despite the sales slowdown, as local sellers clung to hope that the market would soon rebound in their favor.

Hunt said the lack of “entry-level, or starter, housing is a real concern” throughout Central Florida. While housing prices now are “relatively stable” compared with recent years, he said, sharp increases in homeowner-insurance premiums and in newly resold homes’ property taxes have added to the pressure on prices and made it difficult for Realtors to close sales, Hunt said. Home prices, he said, are “out of reach for many people.”

This edited version has Copyright © 2007 The Orlando Sentinel, Fla., Jerry W. Jackson. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.

http://www.LiveAtTheBeach.net

2007-02-14T14:40:00.000-08:00

Condo Market In Jacksonville
http://www.LiveAtTheBeach.net

Edited by Richard Newquist

ORLANDO, Fla. – Feb. 13, 2007 – The condo craze is over but the condo market isn’t dead yet, builders and developers gathered at an industry trade show said last Thursday.

The glut of condominium projects under construction in markets from Miami to Jacksonville means that thousands of new units will flood an already large pool.

The Florida Association of Realtors says while the condo market has experienced the same slowdown in sales as the single-family home market, declines in local markets have been less severe...but not much.

For example, 2006 condo sales in Palm Beach County fell 28 percent from the previous year, while single-family-home sales dropped 37 percent, the association says.

One of the great problems in the Jacksonville area, said Richard Newquist, agent for Coral Shores Realty is that so many condos in our area, especially Ponte Vedra, are condo conversions. The association fees started out low--maybe artificially low--but they had to be raised to cover the actual costs. A 2/2 in Ocean Grove started out at $180/month fees but are not up to $340 per month. Combine that with rising interest rates and many buyers have suddenly been priced out of the market.

Sharon Dworkin Bell, the National Association of Home Builders’ senior staff vice president for multifamily housing, said condos remain an attractive “lifestyle choice” for many home buyers. Developer Donges agreed.

“Today’s buyers want to live close to work, transportation, entertainment and retail,” he said. “A great location, a distinct product and a good price for your market are critical to a condominium community’s success.” Developers say don’t expect condo construction cranes to create downtown traffic jams forever.

But from Miami to Jacksonville, there are thousands of unsold condo units that have to be absorbed as a result of builders trying to satiate the region’s perceived demand for condo units. Many of the region’s high-end rental properties were also converted to condos. But that all came to a screeching halt last year as a growing number of high-priced units found a shrinking number buyers.

Because income has not kept pace with double-digit home-price appreciation, many would-be home buyers have become or remained renters.

In Palm Beach County, a survey by the Housing Leadership Council showed that 90 percent of the workforce could not afford the median-priced single-family home, which cost more than $390,000 at the time.

For all of 2006, with the boom over and housing prices falling, the median-priced single-family home remained out of reach at $384,700.

At the peak of the condo frenzy, developer Donges said, he was building about 80 percent condos and 20 percent rental apartments.

Today, with investors out of the condo market, Donges said the 2007 forecast calls for a reversal in the multifamily formula: condos, 20 percent; rental apartments, 80 percent.

This is especially true in markets where the rental market is tight, such as Palm Beach County, where some of the rental properties that converted or began converting to condos during the housing boom have begun turning back to rentals.

In markets where affordability is a major issue, such as Palm Beach County, rental apartments will be a prime focus of developers, Donges said.

This is the edited version of Copyright © 2007, The Palm Beach Post, Fla. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.

Foreclosed Homes Articles

2007-01-10T02:25:00.000-08:00

Foreclosed Homes Articles

2007 Projections

2006-12-31T09:46:00.000-08:00

David Lereah, Chief Economist for the National Association of Realtors (NAR) projected that: "The bad news is mostly behind us....many markets throughout the country are poised to pick up in 2007 and are on track for a full turn around in 2008"

He did except the major "coastal" markets especially Miami and California coastal properties.

Now for some numbers:

In 2006, inflation averaged 3.4% and the 30 year fixed rates averaged 6.5%. That's a slim margin for the banks meaning real interest rates are still low.

In 2006, existing home sales totalled 6.5 million homes, down 8.5% from 2005. Existing home sales projected to be 6.4 million, off in 2007 which will be down only 1.5% from 2006.

Lereah has been right on with the numbers since taking over as chief economist for NAR six years ago. He predicted the "corrections" in the market in 2004 and amplifying them in 2005.

Jacksonville, Florida, with it's coastal markets, inland markets and rural markets will weather the storm with some negative growth into mid-2007.

The beaches have experienced serious price declines in the condo area due in part to rising association fees. Many complexes were converted at the end of 2005 going into 2006 and are already experiencing "special assessments" and skyrocketing association fees. Once the shock wears off, that market too is expected to normalize.

Richard Newquist
Coral Shores Realty

Where's Real Estate Going?

2006-11-25T19:48:00.000-08:00

The traditional business model may be going by the wayside. New model brokerages are popping up where the agent pays the broker $350 a month or less and they get 100% of the brokerage commission. The company I'm with, Coral Shores Realty of Ft. Lauderdale (and Jacksonville) gives a lot of support for the money, has a mail list where all the agents can contribute through the fully distributed email list.

The old model, such as RE/MAX, where they charge $1200 per month desk fee plus a percentage of sales, plus extra charges for additional advertising, office supplies, etc, seems to be of the old model, where brokers usually get their agents for free...let alone charge them desk fees.

The old model where brokers can pick up agents at no cost has caused a very bad situation over the years. Brokers know that every new agent has two or three sales in them so the brokers business model is to recruit as many agents as possible and pick up those two or three sales....it's pure profit.

Imagine owning a business where everyone that works for you is considered an independent contractor. Tell them when to come to work. Tell them how to do their jobs. Tell them when to be on the "floor" to answer the telephone. Have them adapt to your paper requirements, keep you informed of the progress on their sales....AND THEY ARE INDEPENDENT CONTRACTORS!

Brokers don't pay salaries to agents. Agents only make money if they sell something....and if they do, the broker gets a fat cut. Need to "hire" more sales people? Get some independent contractors and don't pay 'em a salary! Now, THAT's a great deal! There is virtually no cost except for the advertising . The brokers don't even have to train them.

No where in U.S. small business, can you get away with calling these people independent contractors. Oh...don't get me wrong...this whole scenario has been tested in court over and over but the National Association of Realtors always wins. It's a great deal for the brokers and a crappy deal for the agents.

This is the model I'm talking about. The brokers are always open to getting newbie agents because they will get the two or three easy deals that the newbies bring to the broker. Keep hiring new agents, just out of school. The more you "hire", the more money you as a broker, will make.

This causes the market to be oversaturated with inexperienced agents. Inexperienced agents are a dime a dozen. There's lots of them. Inexperience oozes out of the cracks, cornices and pores of this business. It's the inexperienced agents that give the industry a bad name AND that is the very reason so many homeowners try selling their houses without an agent otherwise known as FSBO (for sale by owner). Sellers don't think that the agents earn their commission.

Funny! Sellers want to sell their own properties themselves to save the 3 to 6% commissions. Many FSBOs have told me that they think the agents don't earn the money. They take a listing, put a sign in the yard and go back to the office....to wait....wait for another agent to bring them a buyer. The inexperienced agent drops the ball on follow-up. They get the paperwork wrong. They put the wrong prices on the listings. Then, they earn a 3% commission which is split in some manner with the broker.

No wonder the general public thinks real estate agents aren't worth it!

That leads me to the new model. A new approach to real estate sales that will create a small but competent cadre of sales associates. Agents who know that they're doing and how to make their client's money first then, thake their commission. Brokers need to see the writing on the wall. Things are going to change. We need to clean up the industry and earn a good reputation for earning our commissions.

Real Estate Trends

2006-08-20T20:23:00.000-07:00

The National Association of Realtors says sales are off a few percentage points nationally. Here in Jacksonville, FL, however, it seems our sales are off about 30% (according to the Florida Association of Realtors).

The interesting thing about our sales in Florida is that FAR says that although sales are down, prices are still increasing! How is that? I know in Jacksonville, prices are being reduced from one end of the giant metropolis to the other. Prices at the beach are falling. Many are taking their properties off the marketing and trying to rent. Many more are selling "by owner" in order to maintain their imagined profit margin by eliminating real estate agent costs.

The market needs this "reorganization' in order to shake out the speculators. It was the speculation, however, that created the buying frenzy that kept the prices going up.

If you need a good negotiator, good investment property locator, excellent relocation advisor, call me.

Richard Newquist
904-422-5091
newquist@LiveAtTheBeach.net
http://www.LiveAtTheBeach.net