Current Advice from Real Estate Agents

[joestein]

There isn't much inventory here, so there is little room for a low-ball offer. These homes are moving very quickly.

I agree the increase in value is really only useful if one wants to sell or pull equity. There is no advantage to selling in this market unless someone wants to leave town. There's a good chance they'd have nowhere to live until they happened to find another home. For me, it's helpful to have the higher value because I'm working on a refi after our improvements are done.

There are presently about 2000 homes in my development, and only 7 houses are Active listings for resale. It's a steadily increasing price point, proving this is a viable market for potential buyers and sellers.

Dave

It works great if you are nearing retirement and you already own a retirement home. If I was in that position and my home could go for 50% higher - maybe it is time to retire.

 

[DaveNV]

It works great if you are nearing retirement and you already own a retirement home. If I was in that position and my home could go for 50% higher - maybe it is time to retire.

Given the value of your home, I certainly agree with you. For me, it's about quality of life in retirement. Living here, we have no regrets of leaving our previous home, (which we sold when the Covid lockdown was still happening.) The home we bought here is the model we wanted, with enough "good bones" to make the investment since worthwhile.

Once our pool and backyard makeover is completed, we'll refi to pay us back for all the investments, and we'll enjoy having that semi-instant equity that has occurred. The light at the end of the tunnel is in sight, and it doesn't appear that the light is an oncoming train.

Dave

 

[Sugarcubesea]

We have seen that area just explode in the past year. We bought a home in Bonita Springs exactly one year ago: detached 4BR, 3BA, pool, in a planned development (not a 55+, but definitely geared toward that) for $525K. It is very easy to get comparables for this house, since the developer only built a few different models in the development, and the same company developed at least three other subdivisions that are almost exactly the same, so we can easily track and compare when when a house that is the same floor model goes up for sale in the Naples area.

Looking at recent sales at the time that we bought (one year ago), we paid about $50-75K more that what those houses were selling for about a year earlier. Now it is just nuts. All of the recent listings for our house model are now in the $775-850K range. So in just a year, the value of our house has gone up ~$300K, or over 55%. We were very lucky we got in when we did!

Kurt

Kurt, I'm so happy you were able to purchase a year ago, I'm kicking myself that we didn't do that in early 2021. We had to fly home mid trip due to a family emergency and then other family members had issues we had to deal with, so we did not buy the condo we were looking at and loved on that trip in late January 2021. I'm determined one way or another I will land in FL