Boca Raton Real Estate Market Conditions

The latest rent ratios were released by Moody’s and can be seen in this New York Times article, giving support to the argument that in South Florida at least it is looking like it is more worthwhile to buy than to rent in today’s market of depressed home prices.

The rent ratio is the purchase price of the property divided by the annual cost of renting that property. The premise is that if the ratio is more than 20 (as in New York City for example), it is a better economic decision to rent. When the ratio is less than 15, the advantage tilts to owning. Between 15 and 20 is up in the air, but of course these ratios do not take into consideration potential price appreciation.

Because of the low prices and amazing opportunities in the Boca

South Florida home sales are threatened as banks freeze foreclosures

Another snag has hit the already the troubled housing market throughout the US and particularly in South Florida, including the Boca Raton, Delray Beach, Highland Beach and Boynton Beach real estate markets in which our team specializes.
Because of a myriad of legal and paperwork issues, many banks have halted the sales process of their REO (real estate owned) bank owned properties while the investigation into the improper actions takes place. This is leaving many pending sales in limbo, including several pending contracts that we are working with. More banks are threatening to follow suit and freeze their pipeline of foreclosure sales as well.
Many of our clients are investors, and are

Selling your South Florida home in today’s market is certainly a challenge. With a slow market and strict lending guidelines it can be very frustrating for sellers when considering whether or not to sit back and be patient or make a price adjustment. Of course, if the goal is to sell the home quickly, a price adjustment may be considered earlier rather than later. Either way, even in the market of Boca Raton, where there are many homes for sale right now, your home will sell if the price is right. Here are some specific scenarios that may indicate a price adjustment is necessary.

The house is not being shown.
This may indicate that agents think the price is too high for that specific neighborhood. A relatively significant price adjustment should be

With short sales making up over twenty percent of all Boca Raton real estate listings, and over thirty percent of those listings under $400,000, it is time to answer some commonly held questions and misperceptions about short sales.

SHORT SALE MYTH #1: Short sales take 9-12 months and do not get approved.

This is the most difficult part of a short sale process for both buyers and sellers. The lenders are slammed with files and do not always respond promptly. And it is true that the lender will not look at a file without an executed purchase contract. However, I am finding that the process is becoming more streamlined and it is possible to get a response in a more timely manner. The average process is as follows:  Once there is an executed contract

I have been spending some time examining the Boca Raton real estate market and the underlying statistics of what is happening in our area. I think it's important to discuss the market in terms of price bands, as we have a wide range of inventory and price ranges in our local market. As an example, I have analyzed the current situation for single family homes in Boca Raton, in various price ranges. Check out this chart below:

What is most interesting to me is that the number of months of inventory for homes priced between $750,000 and $999,999 is a whopping 92 months! Only two homes in this price range sold in February 2010 out of 193 listings! Not that it's so great for homes over a million, but they are actually faring better, with 45 months supply.

We are happy to announce the successful closing of our listing at 17052 Boca Club Blvd in the Greens development of Boca Country Club. These Boca Raton Real Estate buyers are a lovely couple from the New York area who will be using the townhouse as a vacation home. The sellers are from Venezuela, and recently bought another property in Broken Sound Country Club.

This property was on the market for less than sixty days, and sold for 87% at the asking price. A 3 bedroom 2000 square foot townhouse, it sold for $240,000. The average days on market for homes of this type in Boca Raton is currently 212 and the average sell price to list price ration is 85%, so needless to say, our sellers were very happy with this result in the current market!

I am participating this week in the National Real Estate Cyber Convention and just attended a keynote presentation by Lawrence Yun, the chief economist of the 1.2 Million member National Association of Realtors and widely considered one of the top ten economic forecasters in the country. Here are some of the highlights of Mr. Yun's very interesting talk about what to anticipate in 2010. This is part one of my recap of his lecture. The second part will be covered in a separate blog post:

• Predictions are for 15% higher unit sales in 2010 which will cause inventory levels to stabilize.
• 2 Million first time buyers are expected to take the 1st time buyer credit to date
• An additional 2.4 Million (both 1st time and move up buyers) will take the credit by

The news continues to be bleak for the luxury real estate market in Boca Raton, Delray Beach, and Highland Beach at the end of 2009 and beginning of 2010.

Last fall I wrote a blog post about the Boca Raton Luxury Market for the six months ending September 30, 2009.  THis is a followup to that previous post.

I have examined the current state of the market for properties in excess of $1,000,000 for the last half of 2009.

Here are the number of sold properties in relation to current listings for each price band for the last six months:

Here is an illustration of the current month's supply in each of the price bands:

It is very clear from these illustrations that the luxury market continues to be hammered. While the number of current listings in