Holiday season is upon us,
Take 10 minutes and read up on what is going on in the Orlando Market. I encourage you to forward this newsletter to everyone you know as well. Knowledge is the key to success.
Just the Facts
Median Sales Price $112,700 up 7.3 % from Sept. $105,000
Median Sales Price “normal Sales” $153,000 41.3% of market closed sales in Oct
Median Sales Price REO $80,000
Median Sales Price Short Sales $95,000
*(represents 10/10)
Closed sales 2,038 (+5.89%)
Pending Sales 8,937 (+1.36%)
New Listings 3,650 (-17.89%)
New Contracts 3,084 (-7.12%)
Active Inventory 9,973 lowest since 2005
Average Days on the Market 106 (91 in 10/10)
Sold to Asking Price 94.66 %
Current Inventory equals 4.82 month supply
Pending sales 8,937
Average interest rate 4.21 %
Interest rates did hit 3.99% this month !
National Numbers from NAR:
*NARs national numbers are 30 days behind our local market, it takes a lot longer to compile the data…these numbers below are all for September.
Median Sales Price $165,400 Down 3.5% from 9/10
Median Slaes Price for the SOUTH $144,400 down 3.3% from 9/10
4.91 Million homes sold so far in 2011
Current inventory 3.48 Million
8.5 Month Supply
30% of all sales were REO/ Short Sales (18% REO and 12% short)
30% of all closed sales in September were ALL CASH
19% of closed sales in september were investor purchases
32% of all closed sales in September were first time home purchases
Foreclosure Filings for October 230.678, this is 7% increase from September
Shadow Inventory- estimated at 4.3 Million
Important Links which I provide every month which all data above was derived, I take the time to pull out the relevant information but many of you like to see the whole picture, these links comprise the most comprehensive collection of accurate and trusted housing data in one place:
Housing Trends Summary
MSA 8 Year History
Orlando 8 year History
Orlando Actives by Price
Orlando actives by county
Orlando Recap
Orlando sales by price
Orlando sales by zip code
Orlando Sales by County
NAR Monthly Housing report
Orlando Market Pulse * most comprehensive report on housing data available.
ORRA Housing Report
Investing
When it comes to investing, predicting future trends is key. I have stated numerous times the benefits of investing in Central Florida. Like any local market, Central Florida has areas that will outperform others. Real estate is always very localized.
My group of investors have experienced appreciation over the last year that outperformed the market significantly, In many cases we have realized 45-65% return in less than 12 months. This is not luck, this is hard work and knowledge. Not to mention the use of all my connections.
This is what I bring to the table. I know where the market is going, I know where the demand is, I know where the infrastructure is going to be 10 years from now. Working in a very select geographical location for well over a decade (13 yrs to be exact) has made me an undisputed expert of SW Orlando. The knowledge and experience I bring to my clients allows them the piece of mind that they have made the absolute best decision when they pull the trigger on an investment. The returns they realize confirm their decision every time.
November and December provide my investors with amazing opportunities. This year with inventory so low and demand so high. It is going to be interesting to see how many opportunities present themselves.
Latest estimates of the “shadow inventory” range from 1.6 million to as high as 8.2 million, one company that is a trusted industry standard, Capital Economics, puts the number in the middle at 4.3 Million. This is slightly down from the 4.7 million they estimated in 1st quarter of 2010.
As stated many times in my past newsletters, the systematic release of these properties has been essential in the stabilizing of the real estate markets. Properties are going to have to be released at an increased rate at some point. While robo signing has caused an anomoly in the cycle, properties will be flowing again. I feel this will be happening in the next few months, my personal reo inventory is starting to see a gradual increase. A welcome sign to the spicket being turned.
There is still alot of “creative accounting ” (I loath this word/concept) in the REO world. The larger banks keep shuffling their assets to other banks, many of these banks are in the same ownership tree even. They do this to keep the days on market fresh and it really distorts the numbers drastically when it comes to analyzing the raw data.
I will discuss the impacts of the administrations policy changes in my predictions section of the newsletter to follow.
Investing in real estate right now offers an amazing opportunity for your future portfolio, we have already hit bottom in SW Orlando. In fact it was a year ago in my November 2010 newsletter I predicted the bottom was hit and we would not see that low of prices again, In the areas I concentrate on, this has been dead on.
The stock market is currently based on speculation, corrupt data and forces outside our control. I strongly believe that it is highly over inflated. Being propped up by creative accounting and government involvement.
Real estate offers a solid monthly return, rentsconitnue to rise. Buying at the bottom of the market only solidifies the future appreciation. Couple this with historic low interst rates.
The areas I concentrate on will have a housing shortage in as early as 3 years. Builders have not been building in fact new builds are at a low not seen since 1960 !
Supply will be short and demand will be high. economics 101 will take hold regardless of what those in Washigton DC do to manipulate free market.
Here is my list of top REO investments. I can not stress enough that if you are seriosuly interested in investing do not wait for this list to come out once a month, the best deals are sold within days of hitting the market, you need to get on my home run investor email list.
The inventory is so low, demand is hot . Here are the best investments on the market as of today. All of these properties are in communities that have strong renter demand, ideal locations and massive appreciation potential….
Rons TOP REO List
As I have discussed many times, REO is not for everyone. a strong area of investment is in single family homes in sought after residential communities with good schools. This type of investment does not require 100% cash to be the victor at the bidding table and allows you to make your fortune sut like Doanld Trump did… with other peoples money ! All of these properties will allow investor/ second home financing. Many of these we can build 3% in closing costs into the deal as well, allowing for maximum leverage.
All of these homes are in sought after area and will rent consistantly and outperform the Orlando Market every day…
Rons Top Single family home investment list
There is no better investment than Central Florida real estate, its 85 degrees and sunny today and it is 11/18 !!
Rons Predictions
Biggest factors in predicting where the housing market is going to go is always interest rates and inventory/ supply. The biggest factor in accurately predicting the market is knowledge and experience. In our local market demand is always there, this is a world wide destination and the tax shelters that are unique to Florida.
The clogged up housing and job markets have prevented thousands of what should be retired baby boomers to migrate south. The job crisis has prevented many 20 and 30 somethings from buying their own home, many residing with parents thwarting their need to downsize.
Couple this with an historic low in new building starts… it does not take a PHD to see where our local market is heading in the very near future.
With my knowledge I help maximize my clients potential by providing advice on where the best buys within this entire market are located. The entire Central FLorida market will make headlines in years to come about its turn around… my clients will enjoy even more rewards than reported. Outperforming the median drastically.
In regards to the shorter term outlook,the next 1-2 quarters. We will not see any drastic shift in pricing… I am seeing the communities I have sold and recommend over the past year starting to push new pricing points. I see this trend continuing.
Our administration is looking at reversing there ingenius decision to lower FHA loan limits, this took place 10/1/11 and as I predicted it drastically affected the housing market immediately. On the west coast so much so, it has almost put the market to a halt. They are currently working on reversing this decision. Hopefully they do. Until the conventional markets can offer low down mortgage products FHA is the only game in town. I predicted and discussed this last month in depth.
I am very confident we will see this reversed and in doing so be one step closer to a healthy market.
The other significant step that needs to happen is obvious, I will not discuss it too much in detail. I have many times in the past. The foreclosure system is still a mess. Until the banks and our administration can just roll up their sleeves and clear out the defaults we are in a constant state of slumber.
Banks are starting to get aggressive in some ways. They are realizing it is cheaper to buy out the home owner than to force forclosure. Something that should have been done years ago. I am not in total agreement with the paying a defaulting homeowner to relinquesh ownership, it is kind of an oxymoron. What in our current state of america does make sense ? common sense is not common.
Banks are starting to offer $3,000- 25,000 to avoid the lengthy and expensive judicial system. Many of these delays and issues are a direct result of the banks unwillingness to adapt or use common sense. So this is where I justify this odd business practice
Great article on the banks paying defaulting homeowners to short sale
You can mark my words on this one, I predict a major shift in banking philosophy in the coming months from reo/foreclsoure to putting systems in palce to streamline short sales. I strongly believe they will eventually stop the insanity of pursuing foreclosure and start to work diligently towards successful short sales. I discussed short sales in great detail last month. You can access any of my newsletters thru the category section of my blog, there is a 3 year library of unaltered newsletters for you to read at anytime.
To shore up housing we need more American Buyers. Jobs need to be created, real jobs not government pencil pushing and admin jobs. Real tangible Jobs that will genrate tax revenues. If Obama and Congress would even deregulate the EPA slightly we would open up millions of high paying jobs in Oil and natural gas.
If Obama would have signed off on the Canadian pipeline last week, thousands of jobs would have hit the streets in days. If he would have not banned offshore drilling while giving a Brazilian offshore oil companies billions of our tax payer dollars in the same week, we would not have lost thousands of jobs and billions of dollars.
In summary, housing as a whole in this country will rebound, many areas in the depressed North and northern midwest that rely on industry will continue to fall behind unless we get back to a made in America philosophy in this country.
In our local Central Florida market we have no where to go but up, One of the busiest airports in the country, a strong and growing medical industry, government research and defense spending int he area, one of the largest tourist businesses in the world, the tax shelters of homestead and no state income tax and the fact that it NEVER snows are all indicators, each on their own right let alone collectively.
Central Florida will make headlines by next summer as the fastest recovering market in the nation. All the peices to the puzzle are there , they just need to be put into their final places.
Rons Rant
First and foremost, the msot pressing matter as of this week … we have just hit insolvency as a nation for the first time in its existance.
Yes, we have officially bankrupt our country 15 Trillion in debt matches our 15 trillion GDP. We are now spending 100% of our GDP. I personally think we are spending well over and have for quite some time, Our GDP calculations have been so manipulated by the current administration they literally issue retractions and revisions every month to the numbers originally provided on our GDP the previous month.
Great job by all involved, how do you get to this point? The Corruption and greed is appauling. Unfortunately, the only ones making any kind of noise are making it for the wrong reasons at the wrong people. The occutard movement wants more of this to continue? Their platform is based on taking more… without putting anything in.
Not going to spend much effort on the ridiculous occupy movement except to say every day things are getting more and more violent. If you would have asked me even 3 months ago if our own citizens would take the port of oakland by force or storm a NYC courthouse I would say that is impossible. Yet this is becoming a common occurance.
The movement is based on chaos and taking what is not earned. A direct result of our countries lack of family values and resposibilty. One of the reasons we have our debt crisis in the first place.
The everyone gets a trophy and political correct society liberals have fostered over the last 2 decades has developed a nation of incompetant unskilled dependants. Our nations push to deindustrialization has gotten us soft and as a societal whole, we lack even the basic skills. The loss of these industrial/ factory jobs has also created a large portion of our society that used to be employable to become entitled dependants. We can blame much of this loss to the unions and the high costs they placed on the industry, driving them overseas. Taking the jobs and taxes with them.
Todays business and factory jobs have more to do with analytics than working on a line and doing a simple task over and over. We need to get back to where we can give many lacking strong aptitude an employment base. To push a broom is still better then to push the button on an xbox while getting subsidized by government funds.
Easiest place to get these jobs to the masses is in energy, not Obamas energy but in fossil fuel extraction and production. There is more oil on our soil than in all of the middle east. I have said this so many times in the past, provided the links, the proof etc.
Who is the number one contributor to detering american drilling? OPEC.
We could have ourselves out of this depression in less than a year. Imagine gas at 1.50 a gallon, even with 70% being government taxes. Less out of everyones pockets to spend on other areas, more jobs, less unemployment costs, more income tax revenues, lower food and production costs, on and on… even with our ridiculous costs incurred from Unions in this country we could become competitive world wide inspite of ourselves and the incompetant EPA.
This could easily be our reality. The insanity needs to stop.
Have you heard yesterdays threats by the Russian Military Chief..Gen. Nikolai Makarov ?
Yesterday he threatened to use nuclear weapons? Yet this is no where to be found in our local news. The lack of real news reporting by this country is disgraceful, treating us all like sheep.
Russia Threatens Nuclear Weapon use
Does this concern anyone?
Again our media is up to date on the bieber child case, the break up of demi/ashton and how many times jesse james cheated while married …yet nothing on this amazing threat?
Another topic of concern not discussed on nightline is Isreal and Irans tensions heating up drastically over last 2 weeks. Obama is consistantly trying to distance himself from Isreal due to what is not being reported. A war is basically inevitable in the middle east.
Obamas Arab Spring has caused the area to become even more volitile. Now once long ruling dictators have been violently ousted and replaced with Shiria Law Muslim Regimes. Obama is going to tout this as a good thing? what?
Iran is Americas largest threat in the middle east . They have a nuclear missle regardless of what they say. Their plant is fully operational and we already know they can strike Isreal in less than 12 minutes with long range missle. Hezbollah has been sited in excessive training exercizes as early as yesterday.
Yet Syria is killing more of its own citizens than all the arab spring countries combined? Iran just thwarted an uprising with excessive violence yet nothing has been done. I personally dont want us involved in an of this but the actions of our country are very odd to say the least.
Iraq is still upsetting to me, we have ordered a pull out because the new government we put in place threatened to prosecute our soldiers for war crimes if they are on their soil after June. What will make me even sicker is when Obama uses this pullout as a positive in his election campaign…sickening and predicatable.
Speaking of arab spring why are we treating the injured Libyan Rebels on our soil at our dime? just another disturbing way we spend money we do not have.
Summary/ Closing
The Rons rant section never really applies to real estate directly.It is about world news and politics that you may not be aware of. These events and policies affect the way I make my predictions for our local market, nothing is separate and all of these items effect our daily lives. I hope you find the stories I select to cover in this section as eye opening and sobering as I have.
Thanksgiving is here next week already. I give thanks to most importantly my lovely wife and 3 healthy beautiful children. I also give thanks to all my clients past and present, all of whom have helped me achieve what I have achieved to this point. Many of whom have become friends to my family.
This business has given me the chance to help families, change their lives and in many cases secure their futures. Nothing makes me happier than when what is planned comes to fruition. I see great things in the future for my clients. I look forward to what lies ahead.
As always, if you ever have any questions, I am always available for real estate advice. If you know anyone that need sto buy or sell make sure you pass along my name and a kind word. My entire business revolves around the referrals of my clients. I take referrals very seriously, my goal is that anyone you refer to my services thanks you immensly the next time you see them.
Keep sending links to interesting news. I feature much of it on my blog, real estate related or not I try to cover everything here as you know.
Continue to forward this newsletter to your friends and family. My readership spans across the globe and grows by over 15% a month thanks to the effort of my clients.
Enjoy the start of the holiday season, for those of you with family overseas defending our freedom. God bless you and yours.
If you wish to help veterans that have come home my office is the local chapter for the sentinels of freedom organization and my broker Hudson McMurtrie , himself a war veteran of the Korean War, is instramental in assisting these young men and women when our own government fails them on their return home.
Be safe, be healthy and happiness is a state of mind that only you can affect. Be thankful for all you have,
Happy Holidays,
your friend and Realtor
Ron Ziolkowski.