Thursday, August 07, 2014

Cooling Trend

The crazy pace of sales in Cocoa Beach and Cape Canaveral has slowed. After a blistering first half of the year for property sales, July returned to a more sedate pace. My constant predictions about a coming slowdown have until now been entirely wrong. It seemed impossible that we could sustain an average pace of 63 sold condos a month with an inventory of around 250 existing units. Somehow we did until July. As of this morning, the Cocoa Beach MLS is reporting a total of 45 sold condos and townhomes in the month of July and 11 single-family homes. That's compared to 67 condos and 14 single families in June. There are 255 existing condos and townhomes for sale at the moment along with 19 very-optimistically offered pre-construction condos.

I expect the slowed pace to continue. Eleven of the 255 for-sale condos are bank-owned and six are short sales. The days of high numbers of distressed sales are, for the most part, behind us. We are at the lowest ratio of distressed offerings since the first short sale closed in our market in 2008. There are 27 pending distressed contracts yet to close so the boost in numbers from those will be inconsequential. While no one was looking, our market has returned to a healthy supply and demand dynamic. Demand exceeds supply by a good margin at the moment.

Of the 45 closed condo sales in July, 25 sold for cash. Only one of the sub-$100,000 purchases was with a mortgage. A quarter of the condo sales were at prices above $285,000 and a quarter were below $107,000. The higher priced sales were a good mix of ocean and river units.

There are currently 47 direct ocean listings. Six of those are asking $250,000 or less, most in that range in older buildings along Ocean Beach Boulevard. Twenty of the units have been for sale for over 300 days telling us that they are most likely overpriced.

I hope those of you who are surfers got to enjoy our first, brief hurricane swell this week as Bertha passed off our coast. Yours truly missed it completely while scalloping off Florida's west coast. On a bright note, the scallops are thick this year and my crew was able to limit out every day in less than an hour of snorkeling the grass flats. If you've never done it, it's a great activity for kids and adults alike and the bounty is very tasty.

"...one of the worst things society has done is name adipose tissue the same thing as a macronutrient."  comment on fat by a random Redditor