Do Not Be Deceived

Games are afoot in the Cocoa Beach and Cape Canaveral real estate market. If one looks for the time on market of the current condo and townhouse inventory of 314 units, the median appears to be 95 days. Not great but not historically awful. Peeking at the listing history of the newest listings tells a different story. About a third of all new listings within the last forty days have had their listings manipulated to reset the Cumulative Days On Market (CDOM), almost all of them with the intention/hope of deceiving buyers and their agents. I would advise all prospective buyers and their agents to search the listing history of any potential target property to get the true history of the listing. There are several listings that were cancelled around the end of the year and reentered into the MLS in January with zero CDOM and higher prices than the just-cancelled listing. Sellers and their agents believe that their negotiating strength is greater with a property that appears to be a new listing than with one that has obviously been sitting on the market for a long time. Several of the listings that have low CDOMs have, in some cases, been on the market for over a year. The true time on market is likely to influence the price of an offer so the selling parties justify their ethical fluidity with the hope of a better eventual selling price.

The number of condo listings that are being offered at less than the seller's purchase price is increasing but is greatly outnumbered by the overpriced listings whose sellers remain in denial about the reality of current market conditions and selling prices. As I mentioned in an earlier post, many who purchased between 2021 and 2024 are finding out that selling their unit and realizing a profit or even just breaking even is not possible. We continue to see lower selling prices in many of our complexes and the units that are selling are the ones that are priced in line with the current reality.

I would advise all potential buyers to research recent selling prices and listing history of any possible targets. Don’t be swayed by the fact that several similar units in the same building are all asking similar high prices. Asking prices are just that, asking. They are in many cases unrelated to the reality of the selling prices of units that have actually closed. As always, knowledge is power and in the purchase of a condo or townhouse in our market it can be worth tens of thousands of dollars. Do your homework.

“The plural of anecdote is not data.” unknown