Ashley Brinson Cusak

Archive for the 'Miami Real Estate News' Category

Summer Blues?

People ask me all the time if the real estate business dies in the summer, and should they hold off on listing their house until September when the buyers are back in town. In my experience, I have not found that the summer is particularly quiet in Miami! The people who are looking to buy in the summer tend to be the real buyers because they are on a mission to get settled before the school year begins. So while the summer may not be quite as busy as the spring (which is usually my busiest time of year in terms of new listings and sales), it is still a steady workload of buying and selling.

If you’re considering listing your house for sale, don’t wait until September to put it on the market. Real buyers are out there and it’s better to go ahead and get it listed now!

Tags: buyers, sellers

Homestead Exemptions Must Be Filed by Tomorrow

I just wanted to remind you about filing for your homestead exemption if you purchased a new home in 2010.  The deadline to file is this Tuesday, March 1st.  Here’s a link to the instructions on what you need to do to file, and your application must be postmarked by this Tuesday in order to receive the exemption.  If you have any questions, please let me know. I’m happy to help in any way I can!
http://www.miamidade.gov/pa/exemptions_homestead_filing.asp

Tags: homestead exemptions

Condo-Living in Miami

The Miami condo market has had a colorful past few years, but I’m hopeful that we might finally be seeing some light at the end of the tunnel.  While we’ve seen the residential market level off in the past year or so, the condo market has been a little slower to turn around, but it seems that it too is making progress. At the end of 2009, we had a 16 month supply of condos on the market in Miami-Dade County. By the end of 2010, we were down to a 12-month supply, as a result of a 21% increase in the number of sales and a 7% decrease in inventory. At the end of 2009, we had an average of 1,000 condo sales a month, and by the end of 2010 we were up to an average of 1,213 per month.

It is important to note though that the condo market turn-around is very neighborhood and building specific as the “health” of a building is largely determined by its residents.  One of the most interesting buildings to analyze is The Jade, located on Brickell. Once considered one of the worst places to buy a condo because of all of the fraudulent transactions turned foreclosures, it has actually become one of the first buildings to see a turnaround in our market.  Way back in the beginning, there was a ton of interest around this building. It was going to be one of the nicest buildings in Miami, and people were really excited about it. Before the building was finished in 2004, some of the units had already been sold, flipped and resold, at prices as high as $700/sq ft in mid-2006! However, many of these were fraudulent and it became impossible to use the Jade’s sales as comparables because you never knew which were real. But just as dramatically as the prices went up, they dropped to the floor in 2008. Units were selling as low as $200/sq ft!

Because of the instability of the building and the number of distressed sales, banks were very strict on lending to buyers there.  So today it has become a building of owners that bought with cash, bringing it back to a much better place.  People are living there again, paying their maintenance fees and taking care of their property.  Today, there are 30 units on the market in the building, ranging from $317,000 to $2.89 million, and hopefully this building is the pioneer of the condo market turn-around in Miami.

Tags: Brickell, condo market, Jade

Cash is King

Last week, I promised an update on current market facts and trends.  There was an interesting article on the cover of the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday about the rise in cash buyers across the country.  Written by Mitra Kalita, the article notes that homes being bought with cash versus with financing are way up, and the first city she cites is Miami.  She says more than half of all the sales in 2010 in Miami-Dade were cash deals, up from 13% in 2006.

From my perspective, 26% of my closed sales in 2010 were cash deals.  Many of those buyers ended up getting financing after the fact, but it shows that they had the confidence on the front end to buy without the headaches often associated with lenders and appraisals today.  These cash purchases have given our market a lift because people are paying fair market value for these homes. We are avoiding the bad appraisals that we so often find getting in the way of sales.  

I’ll continue to look after these types of trends and keep you updated.  It is nice to see the pickup in our market validated by a source like the Wall Street Journal.

Tags: appraisals, buyers, cash buyers, sellers

Miami is #1

Did you see the article  in the Herald on Tuesday written by Toluse Olorunnipa?  Miami has been voted the top market in the nation to buy a house instead of renting one! 

Tags: Miami, rent vs. buy, rental