New Port Richey, Florida Real Estate Blog: August 2009

The Preserve at Sea Pines: a Waterfront Gulf Access & Golf Course Community in Hudson, Florida

The Sea Pines Golf Club  is a modest 18 hole Executive Golf Course at very affordable rates.  The highest rate, including a cart is $17/person.

Memberships are available to all for a discounted rate, and a Membership is free to all residents of the community.

Around the Golf Course are Newer Construction Townhomes and surrounding all this is Single Family Homes.  The Waterfront Gulf Access Homes are single story homes as well as Stilt homes.

Now if you can not afford a waterfront homes, you can buy a more affordable home around the golf course and use one of the Community ramps to launch your boat.

One of the draws of this community is there is not much around it as you can see in the map below, but it is still only minutes to all the area spots.  And more importantly it is just minutes to open Gulf waters to really enjoy the Florida lifestyle, with nothing obstructing boat traffic to the gulf.

And no time is better than Now to buy Florida Real Estate.  Housing is more affordable than it has been in many years.  You can still take advantage of the $8,000 First time Home Buyer Tax Credit, which in Pasco County can be borrowed and used for down  payment, and repayed, interest free within 18 months,  But you have to close by November 30th, 2009.  And in an article in The Wall Street Journal, Stephanie Simon (08/25/2009) wrote that Florida's population, and other sunbelt states will grow in the 2010 Census.  So the future is looking bright in the Sunshine State

nice offer, hope you get more than 6 people

How do I break the 2000 following Limit on Twitter?

Well there are many ways to break through this limit on Twitter.  The most common ones you come across are the auto-follow programs, which spam you to hundreds of other tweeters hoping they follow you back.  However, these softwares are very generic.  They focus on people that have a history of reciprocating back, and following you, if you follow them.

Unfortunately, IMHO, it seems you just get to follow, and are followed by, others using the same or similar software.  And is that actually in your best interest, for growing your web presence?  I do not think so.  I am a Realtor in Hudson Florida and I am using these networks to try an build my internet presence, as well as learn and share knowledge about our industry.

So I stepped back from twitter and thought about how to best build my following in a smart, efficient and beneficial way.  And after looking at many tweets in my stream, I came upon my answer and a very smart tool for Tweeters.  It actually came from @Alyssa_Milano of whom I am a huge fan.   Yeah, you knew her as Sam in 'Who's the Boss' and other shows/movies.  While her acting is enjoyable, I am actually a huge fan of her Humanitarian works much more than her craft, but I digress.

What I found most effective to build my following was not to target the public, but other realtors.  So I started locally and expanded from there.  I started with following @proupdates a local Realtor Association ( Pinellas Realtor Organization) of which I am an affiliate of with my side business Agent Listing Websites.  Local Realtors for Local Information! Than I went wider and started following Floirda Association of Realtors (FAR) and the National Association of Realtors.

But that was just 3 following/followers so what is a guy to do to build his following, and eventually break the 2000 limit of following on Twitter.  and than Lightening stroke.  Follow those following the organizations important to your business.  So I just raided the followers list of the above organizations.  I was maxed out at 2000 following very quickly.   

So here I am following 2000 tweeters, but I did not have 2000 people following me back!  So what is an avidly interested Tweeter to do?  Well my friends, it is called Friend or Follow.  What this does is, as your following grows, it allows you to see who you are following but is not following you back.  And you eliminate them, if it has been a while since you started following.  Many people do not maintain their twitter account on a daily basis, but if its been months since their last tweet, or they have tons of followers but do not follow back, than dump them for somebody who is going to reciprocate.  Now a key to doing this efficiently is to use ctrl + left click on each avatar so they open in bulk in new tabs for you to review.   Also when your mouse hovers over the avatar it tells you when they joined, their date of their last tweet, number following and followers.

Now it takes time for your followers to catch up to how many you are willing to unfollow.  But maybe once a week, you do Friend or Follow and eliminate dead wood.  Now many times for me, in the beginning, I would be automatically following 2001 people almost as soon as I weeded out the dead wood.  Than when i got to following 2001 versus 1800 followers than I started to see a vast difference.  Ihave now punched out over 2000 following, and now the sky is the limit, and I did this all in the time since I joined ActiveRain.  My head was ready to explode a few times trying to 'get' all these Social network sites, but it has been worth it in the long run, with Twitter and ActiveRain being the best of all the Social Network Sites I have joined so far.

So put in a little time, give ActiveRain your Twitter account log in info so every blog you enter here is announced on Twitter with a link back.  And even if that is the total of your participation, it is yet another place marketing yourself FOR FREE.

And by the by, I am Love The Gulf Real Estate on Twitter

I encourage all to share their Twitter names so we all can follow and build each others networks, helping each other break the 2000 ceiling

edit: I also forgot to mention Realtor Magazine to follow, as well as tcar

It is not real estate related, but I found it very interesting indeed

For the Newbies: How to turn a link into click-able text


<a href="http://AgentListingWebsites.com">click here</a> RESULTS IN click here

So if you copy the above to a notepad or word doc, until you have it memorized, it becomes incredibly easy

or perhaps the easier way for you to save it is


<a href="Actual Full URL in these quotes">Text you want to replace URL with, without quotes</a>

And that is how easy it is to turn

http://AgentListingWebsites.com

to

click here

try it a few times, it does get to be second nature.  As you will see there is not much to type aside from what you want to use as URL and text in lieu of

it boils down to

<a href="__">__</a>

& replacing the red underlines with your URL and desired replacement text

Home Buyer Series: How to take the headaches out of buying a Home by a Hudson Florida Realtor::: Part II

Now in Part I of this series we focused on where to start the home-buying process.  And in it we focused on getting a pre-approval for your mortgage so as not to waste your time looking at Real Estate that is above your budget limit.

Now once buyers get to this point, they think it is time to go shopping, and so do a lot of Realtors.  I operate a bit differently, hopefully most of you do to.  After getting a maximum value they are able to spend, I like to spend time with the buyer to determine their wants and needs.   It is at this time I recommend that they do not max out the budget.

Once we know a few details it is easier to determine a few other costs associated with the Purchase of a new Home

Around here taxes are a millage amount which is based on $1000 price points, but for simplicities sake it is typically 1.4 - 2.5% of your purchase price in Taxes.  Knowing where your client will likely buy, will narrow down the spread even more.  

Sign of Economic Woes: Florida Population Declines for first time in 53 years

That's right folks, for the first time in over 50 years the population of Heaven's Waiting Room has declined.  Why you may ask.  

In my opinion it is just the economy.  The state of Florida has 10.6% unemployment.  Locally here in Pasco we are at 12% unemployment.  And it is hard to budget for retirement when you do not know how much it is going to cost in the long term.  

But rest assured the Baby Boomers will reverse this anomaly in the states growth.

With the crash in our Real Estate market and the high rate of foreclosure we are starting to look very attractive to investors, both foreign and domestic.  And with a bottom eventually to be found, those looking for a nice place to retire will again turn their eyes towards Florida.

Read the full article at www.FloridaRealtors.org

Tampa MSA 2009 Q02 Real Estate Market Report by a Hudson, Florida Realtor

MSA= Metropolitan Statistical Area.  There are over 350 in the United States, which are used to give a more local evaluation of Real Estate Markets.  National Real Estate numbers are good to follow, but it can not be said enough.  All Real Estate is Local.  Just ask Detroit or Flint Michigan how they fared during the housing bubble.  An area is considered an MSA if, like Tampa, they have over 50,000 people in the area.  The MSA also includes surrounding counties if they are interdependent on one another

As you can see in the map above, the median home price for the Second Quarter of 2009 fell to $140,900 which is a drop of 22.1% from the Second Quarter of 2008.  And is a fall of 36% from Real Estate Market highs of ~$220,000 in 06

To read the Chart below, the Red Line is read off the Right side dollar values, and the Blue bars are read off the Left side percentage gains/losses.  As you can see, while many are saying the Recession has bottomed, their is not yet such an indicator in our local housing market.  But keep in mind this is only the first quarters information.  We do not have the second quarters statistics yet, which may show a bottom, hopefully.

If you eliminate, or average out Q1 in 2007 it has been a pretty even decline in the market, price-wise, as shown by the Red Lines pretty even decline.  And taking out Q1 in 2008 you will see that the pecentage losses, are fairly steadily accelerating as well.  But keep in mind each one is year over year.  So every 4th blue bar is what is being compared, they are all year over year price declines.  All in all, you can see we have pretty much wiped out any and all gains since 2002 in the Tampa Real Estate market.  With some housing selling in the teens or low 20's, I really can not see much more price declines in the general market.  There just is not much room for them to go lower.

map and graph courtesy of www.Realtor.org

July 2009 Hudson & West Pasco Florida Real Estate Market Report

Sorry about following up on July 2009 Real Estate Market Report so late, but there has been a lot of transition going on in my office.  

What I see in the chart above is not the best of news for sellers, but is great news for Buyers, especially if you are a cash buyer.  People are having hard times getting financed for Townhomes these days.  And with the 30% required down payment on Condo's the market for them is in the tank as well.

To break it down, in West Pasco Florida, The Real Estate  market is not showing much signs of recovery.  For quite some time we were enjoying ~10/day, or about 300 closed sales on houses per month.  Now the inventory of homes has come down to under 1 years inventory.  Inventory levels are down to 9 months, but that is because of less homes coming on the market, not because more homes selling.

However the bright spot in the overall house market is that while the number of sales this month dropped to 284 homes closed, the inventory levels have dropped even more, resulting in only 9 months inventory.

As to the Condo and Townhome Real Estate Market Report, I think the numbers speak for themselves

Now when you look at the Hudson Florida Real Estate Market Reports it is a tad bit gloomy for sellers, but that of course is great news for Buyers.  Now the Townhome numbers look pretty bad, but Hudson, Florida does not have a large # of Townhomes, but the 2 years inventory of Condos, is a big ouch especially with how the bottom has fallen out on prices, some for less than $20,000, but that pesky 30% down is still a hindrance for many.

2 positives I am seeing in this Market report is how much larger the number is for units under contract, as opposed to what has closed for the month.  Also this is July, a typically slow month here.  We are actually starting to get calls from our snow birds for the winter.  So I would not put too much into this months numbers.

Until next time, this is your Hudson, Florida Realtor signing off