Tallahassee Real Estate Blog

With all the major real estate reporting centers claiming that the Tallahassee real estate market is seeing appreciation, I felt it might be a good time to explain the difference between higher spending and appreciation.

As we look at this first graph, we can see that the average home price in Tallahassee appears to be higher (through February) than it has been in years past.

While this is good and accurate information, I suspect that many people are using this information to declare that home prices are rising in the Tallahassee real estate market. I think that lower mortgage interest rates in Tallahassee have allowed buyers to buy more home for their money, rather than pay more money for a home. In order to demonstrate this point, I downloaded all the Leon County residential sales from the Tallahassee Board of Realtors Multiple Listing Service (Tallahassee MLS) for the past twelve months. I then sorted them by price range. The following chart shows residential sales in Leon County compared to homes currently for sale in Leon County.

Note how each price range has four colored bars above it, and a yellow field behind them. I have “blown up” a section of the above graph to show what this information is telling us. In the picture below:

• Point #1. shows red arrows trending downwards. This is the past 12 months, 9 months, 6 months & 3 months sales for each price range. Note how the price per square foot for each price range is falling? I believe this is demonstrating depreciation in each price range.
• Point #2. shows us the yellow field is the current asking price at each price range (presented as price per square foot). Note that the price range of $125,000 - $150,000 has the yellow field closer to the tops of the vertical bars (the asking prices average 9% higher than the previous 3 months sales) as compared to the price range of $250,000 - $300,000 where the yellow field is much higher than the tops of the vertical bars (the asking prices average 20% higher than the previous three months sales).
  

Conclusion on Residential Home Prices In Tallahassee

There are many good buying opportunities in the Tallahassee real estate market. There are also a lot of homes that are over-priced and can be confusing to buyers. The key is to use the modern tools that are available to find the best buys in the Tallahassee real estate market. The graphs above were created using “averages,” but averages are not what a buyer buys. Each home is priced specifically and it takes all the homes for sale in Tallahassee to create the averages. If you want to buy a home in Tallahassee, just look at the homes of the Sellers who are priced to sell, and your selection process will be much simpler and more enjoyable.

As a reminder for those who subscribe to the Tallahassee Real Estate Blog by email, some embedded pictures and videos might not be appearing in your email and you might need to click the title header to go to your browser where all will be visible.

Keep checking out the Tallahassee Real Estate Blog every day for updates that include charts, graphs, and analysis of the Tallahassee real estate market.

If you like this Article then please subscribe to my blog through a full RSS feed. You will be able to stay informed about the happenings in the Tallahassee Real Estate Market. You can also subscribe to this blog and have it delivered by Email.

Joe Manausa is a real estate investor and the Broker and Co-Owner of Century 21 First Realty. He can be reached via e-mail through the Tallahassee Real Estate Website or catch his latest writings on the Tallahassee Florida Real Estate Blog , or by calling (850) 386-2001.

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In yesterday’s blog, I analyzed the Southeast Area of the Tallahassee Real Estate Market for the purpose of demonstrating how to use the Free Monthly Tallahassee Real Estate Market Report that anyone can download from the Century 21 First Realty web site.

Today, we’ll conduct the same analysis on the Southwest Leon County real estate market. The picture below represents the Southwest Section of Leon County. The price ranges are featured on the left, and then 9 columns of data fall to the right of each price range. Those 9 columns are actually three sets of three columns. The first set of three are homes for sale in Southwest Tallahassee (All, New Construction, Resales), the second set of three columns are homes that sold in Southwest Tallahassee in the past twelve months, and the final column displays the amount of homes for sale in Southwest Tallahassee (measured in ‘months’ of supply).

Based upon what the above numbers show us, the Southwest quadrant of the Tallahassee real estate market has the least amount of activity of all the market area segments. With only 418 sales in the past twelve months, there is most likely not enough data to draw as confident of conclusions as we can in the more active areas.

Using this information I would advise somebody who wants to sell a home in Southwest Tallahassee, with a value between $200,000 and $250,000, that they have a whole lot of competition. With 8 comparable resale homes on the market and 3 newly built and available for a total of 11 homes, this price range is going to be very competitive for home owners. The Southwest Tallahassee real estate market sells roughly 1 home per quarter, so a serious seller would need to be the single-best buy in order to get a serious look from buyers in todays market.

We can see a “picture” of this data below, and it does shows that due to such a low sales volume in this area, the chart is all over the place. The months of supply go from as low as 0 and as high as 33 (almost three years worth!).

As a reminder for those who subscribe to the Tallahassee Real Estate Blog by email, some embedded pictures and videos might not be appearing in your email and you might need to click the title header to go to your browser where all will be visible.

Keep checking out the Tallahassee Real Estate Blog every day for updates that include charts, graphs, and analysis of the Tallahassee real estate market.

If you like this Article then please subscribe to my blog through a full RSS feed. You will be able to stay informed about the happenings in the Tallahassee Real Estate Market. You can also subscribe to this blog and have it delivered by Email.

Joe Manausa is a real estate investor and the Broker and Co-Owner of Century 21 First Realty. He can be reached via e-mail through the Tallahassee Real Estate Website or catch his latest writings on the Tallahassee Florida Real Estate Blog , or by calling (850) 386-2001.

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In yesterday’s blog, I analyzed the Northwest Area of the Tallahassee Real Estate Market for the purpose of demonstrating how to use the Free Monthly Tallahassee Real Estate Market Report that anyone can download from the Century 21 First Realty web site.

Today, we’ll conduct the same analysis on the Southeast Leon County real estate market. The picture below represents the Southeast Section of Leon County. The price ranges are featured on the left, and then 9 columns of data fall to the right of each price range. Those 9 columns are actually three sets of three columns. The first set of three are homes for sale in Southeast Tallahassee (All, New Construction, Resales), the second set of three columns are homes that sold in Southeast Tallahassee in the past twelve months, and the final column displays the amount of homes for sale in Southeast Tallahassee (measured in ‘months’ of supply).

Based upon what the above numbers show us, the Southeast quadrant of the Tallahassee real estate market has more over-supply than the Northeast, but less than the Northwest.

Using this information I would advise somebody who wants to sell a home in Southeast Tallahassee, with a value between $200,000 and $250,000, that they have 54 homes that they are competing against, of which 17 are new construction. The Southeast Tallahassee real estate market sells roughly 6 of these homes per month, so a serious seller would need to be one of the best 6 buys in order to get a serious look from buyers in todays market.

We can see a “picture” of this data below, and it does not look nearly as friendly as the Northeast Tallahassee real estate market.

As a reminder for those who subscribe to the Tallahassee Real Estate Blog by email, some embedded pictures and videos might not be appearing in your email and you might need to click the title header to go to your browser where all will be visible.

Keep checking out the Tallahassee Real Estate Blog every day for updates that include charts, graphs, and analysis of the Tallahassee real estate market.

If you like this Article then please subscribe to my blog through a full RSS feed. You will be able to stay informed about the happenings in the Tallahassee Real Estate Market. You can also subscribe to this blog and have it delivered by Email.

Joe Manausa is a real estate investor and the Broker and Co-Owner of Century 21 First Realty. He can be reached via e-mail through the Tallahassee Real Estate Website or catch his latest writings on the Tallahassee Florida Real Estate Blog , or by calling (850) 386-2001.

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In yesterday’s blog about the Tallahassee real estate market, we published our numerical report on how each area of Leon County was doing. This report is particularly useful to Tallahassee real estate agents in helping to determine the competition for somebody wanting to sell a home in Tallahassee.

One of the first bits of feedback we received was “how do I use this” and “can you make this into a graph,” so we decided to use this opportunity to do both. Today’s Tallahassee Real Estate Blog will use the Northeast Quadrant of the Tallahassee real estate market to explain how to use this report. If you would like to download the free Tallahassee Real Estate Market Report so that you can use it as we go along, just click the link and print the form.

The picture below represents the Northeast Section of Leon County. The price ranges are featured on the left, and then 9 columns with data fall to the right of each price range. Those 9 columns are actually three sets of three columns. The first set of three are homes for sale in Northeast Tallahassee (All, New Construction, Resales), the second set of three columns are homes that sold in Northeast Tallahassee in the past twelve months, and the final column displays the amount of homes for sale in Northeast Tallahassee (measured in ‘months’ of supply).

So, to use this information, let us assume you want to sell a home in Northeast Tallahassee worth somewhere between $200,000 and $250,000 (see the red circles in the picture above). This report tells you that you have 205 competitors, of which 168 are resales just like yours. We can see that there is 5.9 months of supply of homes in your price range. 385 homes sold in this price range last year, so the current trend is about 32 homes per month are selling. I would make sure that this home was positioned as one of the best 32 in this price range in order to accomplish a quicker sale.

Finally, we were asked to turn our numbers into a “Picture.” The graph below makes the numbers come alive. The red bars are homes that sold in Northeast Tallahassee over the past twelve months, while the blue bars are the current homes for sale in Northeast Tallahassee. The yellow bars are months of supply. The $200,000 - $250,000 price range looks the way we like to see a healthy, balanced market. As prices go higher, the over-supply of homes becomes more apparent.

As a reminder for those who subscribe to the Tallahassee Real Estate Blog by email, some embedded pictures and videos might not be appearing in your email and you might need to click the title header to go to your browser where all will be visible.

Keep checking out the Tallahassee Real Estate Blog every day for updates that include charts, graphs, and analysis of the Tallahassee real estate market.

If you like this Article then please subscribe to my blog through a full RSS feed. You will be able to stay informed about the happenings in the Tallahassee Real Estate Market. You can also subscribe to this blog and have it delivered by Email.

Joe Manausa is a real estate investor and the Broker and Co-Owner of Century 21 First Realty. He can be reached via e-mail through the Tallahassee Real Estate Website or catch his latest writings on the Tallahassee Florida Real Estate Blog , or by calling (850) 386-2001.

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Recently, we began a new feature on our Tallahassee real estate web site with the intent of providing Tallahassee Real Estate Market Data to our visitors. We have requested input from our visitors and from our blog subscribers to help us make this page valuable to everyone in the Tallahassee real estate market.

We have received numerous requests and are now determining the best way to “deliver” on the Tallahassee Real Estate Market Report. I would like to say “thank you” to all who have sent us recommendations and I would encourage everyone to keep the recommendations coming. The easiest way to do that is with a comment on this blog!

One reader asked us to provide a regular update on Tallahassee residential real estate inventory, so we have made the report below something that we will update monthly. Additionally, anyone can download the Tallahassee Real Estate Market Report from this blog link at any time.

march-inventory-report-2008.pdf

As a reminder for those who subscribe to the Tallahassee Real Estate Blog by email, some embedded pictures and videos might not be appearing in your email and you might need to click the title header to go to your browser where all will be visible.

Keep checking out the Tallahassee Real Estate Blog every day for updates that include charts, graphs, and analysis of the Tallahassee real estate market.

If you like this Article then please subscribe to my blog through a full RSS feed. You will be able to stay informed about the happenings in the Tallahassee Real Estate Market. You can also subscribe to this blog and have it delivered by Email.

Joe Manausa is a real estate investor and the Broker and Co-Owner of Century 21 First Realty. He can be reached via e-mail through the Tallahassee Real Estate Website or catch his latest writings on the Tallahassee Florida Real Estate Blog , or by calling (850) 386-2001.

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There has been much discussion about the Tallahassee real estate market, specifically on the number of residential units that are selling and how home prices are moving. There appears to be a consensus that home values have remained relatively stable in the past (our market saw a decline of .25% of the median home price last year), but we are not seeing prices start to adjust downward. A chart of the residential real estate sales in the Tallahassee real estate market shows this:

From the chart above, we can see unit sales dropped, as expected, off of the highs of the boom market. When we segment the residential market between attached and detached housing, we get the following charts.

We can see that the average “attached housing unit” saw a greater drop in the median price than did the attached units. It will be interesting to see the progress of the market in the coming months and years.

So, where do you think the median price is heading?

As a reminder for those who subscribe to the Tallahassee Real Estate Blog by email, some embedded pictures and videos might not be appearing in your email and you might need to click the title header to go to your browser where all will be visible.

Keep checking out the Tallahassee Real Estate Blog every day for updates that include charts, graphs, and analysis of the Tallahassee real estate market.

If you like this Article then please subscribe to my blog through a full RSS feed. You will be able to stay informed about the happenings in the Tallahassee Real Estate Market. You can also subscribe to this blog and have it delivered by Email.

Joe Manausa is a real estate investor and the Broker and Co-Owner of Century 21 First Realty. He can be reached via e-mail through the Tallahassee Real Estate Website or catch his latest writings on the Tallahassee Florida Real Estate Blog , or by calling (850) 386-2001.

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often hear that the Tallahassee real estate market is cyclical, but sometimes a picture will show us much more than mere words can communicate.

I decided to pull residential sales in the Tallahassee real estate market from 1991 to the present (December 2007) in order to see what long-term trend could be found. The following graph shows unit sales and average prices of residential properties (single family homes, town houses, & condominiums), reported quarterly.

This chart clearly shows an uptrend in both price of properties as well as the number of units selling in the Tallahassee real estate market. The light-blue shaded area represents the average price while the dark blue line is the linear trend of average price over the past 17 years. Similarly, the red shaded area represents the number of units sold each quarter and the red line represents the unit sales trend.

We can see the affect of seasonality each year in the red shaded area, as there are peaks and valleys corresponding to the different times of years. But if you look closely at the red shaded area, you can also see a rough-ten year cycle. The last up-cycle occurred in 2004-2005, but we can see a similar up-cycle occurring in 1994-1995. I suspect this will be more clear to see in 2015. I hope to see you here.

The up-cycle in 2004-2005 was far greater than a normal cyclical move, having more than our local economy bearing on the situation. Because of this, we should expect a great than normal down-cycle, as we are starting to see with the last-two reported quarters. The fourth quarter of 2007 reported the fewest number of sales out of all the quarters in the entire period. Don’t be surprised to see 2008 follow this pattern, with unit sales not truly rebounding until 2009.

As a reminder for those who subscribe to the Tallahassee Real Estate Blog by email, some embedded pictures and videos might not be appearing in your email and you might need to click the title header to go to your browser where all will be visible.

Keep checking out the Tallahassee Real Estate Blog every day for updates that include charts, graphs, and analysis of the Tallahassee real estate market.

If you like this Article then please subscribe to my blog through a full RSS feed. You will be able to stay informed about the happenings in the Tallahassee Real Estate Market. You can also subscribe to this blog and have it delivered by Email.

Joe Manausa is a real estate investor and the Broker and Co-Owner of Century 21 First Realty. He can be reached via e-mail through the Tallahassee Real Estate Website or catch his latest writings on the Tallahassee Florida Real Estate Blog , or by calling (850) 386-2001.

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A friend of mine was curious about the Tallahassee mobile home market. He wanted to know how much of an impact it was having on the overall Tallahassee real estate market.

I went to the tax data base and pulled all Leon County residential unit sales and first sorted it by unit type and by price range. The following graph shows that the mobile homes are very active below $150,000 (red color).

In order to best see it’s impact on the market, I felt a simple part chart would tell the tale. Each piece of the pie chart below has two numbers in this format XXX, Y%. X stands for the number of units sold, where Y stands for the percent of the entire market. In the chart below, the red pie piece shows 447 mobile home sales were recorded, representing 9% of the entire Tallahassee Real Estate Market.

Finally, we can take a look at the past 17 years of tax records and we find that the mobile home sales are increasing at a fairly substantial rate. The chart below shows, for each year, the number of sales of mobile home units in Leon County (numbers on right scale), the percentage of the residential market that mobile homes consume (left scale), as well as the unit sales trend (green line, right scale).

As a reminder for those who subscribe to the Tallahassee Real Estate Blog by email, some embedded pictures and videos might not be appearing in your email and you might need to click the title header to go to your browser where all will be visible.

Keep checking out the Tallahassee Real Estate Blog every day for updates that include charts, graphs, and analysis of the Tallahassee real estate market.

If you like this Article then please subscribe to my blog through a full RSS feed. You will be able to stay informed about the happenings in the Tallahassee Real Estate Market. You can also subscribe to this blog and have it delivered by Email.

Joe Manausa is a real estate investor and the Broker and Co-Owner of Century 21 First Realty. He can be reached via e-mail through the Tallahassee Real Estate Website or catch his latest writings on the Tallahassee Florida Real Estate Blog , or by calling (850) 386-2001.

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I had a reader who formulated an opinion about the Tallahassee Real Estate Market, based upon some statistical figures he found on a web site. I did not agree with his numbers and told him so. He responded with this comment:

“Here’s the Link. My guess is that the natural demand in Tallahassee might be around 2500 homes per year, or 200 house per month. Last four months of 2007 may be the true indication of demand in Tallahassee. If my estimated demand is true, then we might have enough inventory to last for the next two years. For sale signs are eveywhere in my neighborhood.”

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Rather than reply in the comments section, I figured this would make a good, informative blog. The reader is “my kind of guy/gal” in that he or she is doing his homework. It always make sense to study the market before making a decision. So, I followed his link, thankful that he provided it. It turns out the link goes to a “statistical” site that gets its information from FAR (The Florida Association of Realtors). That means they get their information from a collection of Realtor MLS’s, which usually contain somewhere between 45% and 65% of the entire market. Many sales in the market are not recorded in an MLS, including some Realtor sales that the Realtor did not need to use the MLS for marketing. Additionally, there are sales that have no Realtor invoived (such as some builder sales and some “For Sale By Owner” sales) which means the MLS cannot be viewed as the “end all” for housing demand.

Below, I have provided the real numbers. My data comes from a company called Metro Market Trends which actually goes to the Leon County Courthouse and pulls the recorded sales information. This includes all the sales in the MLS. It also includes sales not in the MLS (which could be 1/3rd to 1/2 of the market).

As you can see, we have had growth for the past twelve years (which correlates to the growth in population during that same time). Graphically, this information looks like below. The blue (measured on the left) represents the “average monthly sales for each year), the red (measured on the right) is the annual residential sales, while the green (measured on the left) is the linear trend for monthly sales.

So, in my opinion, I think the Tallahassee housing market is growing. There will be years where we slide backwards, just as there will be years that the market will surge ahead. But based upon my study of the market, it appears that the number of residences that will sell each month (on annual average) is growing towards 575 (see the green linear trend line). I feel very confident that 2008 WILL NOT aveage 575 units per month, but when we look back ten years from now, I believe that the trend line will continue to be moving up.

As a reminder for those who subscribe to the Tallahassee Real Estate Blog by email, some embedded pictures and videos might not be appearing in your email and you might need to click the title header to go to your browser where all will be visible.

Keep checking out the Tallahassee Real Estate Blog every day for updates that include charts, graphs, and analysis of the Tallahassee real estate market.

If you like this Article then please subscribe to my blog through a full RSS feed. You will be able to stay informed about the happenings in the Tallahassee Real Estate Market. You can also subscribe to this blog and have it delivered by Email.

Joe Manausa is a real estate investor and the Broker and Co-Owner of Century 21 First Realty. He can be reached via e-mail through the Tallahassee Real Estate Website or catch his latest writings on the Tallahassee Florida Real Estate Blog , or by calling (850) 386-2001.

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Often times, we read articles written in local and national publications referring to the state of the real estate market. Much of these articles are written based upon the sales activity of both new and resale single family homes in a particular area, such as the Tallahassee real estate market.

It is important to understand a dynamic that is happening in the Tallahassee real estate market that is so important to the measurement of our activity. The dynamic that I refer to regards the condominium/townhouse (CT) category encroaching on the single family detached home (SF).

As land prices have skyrocketed, it is becoming nearly impossible to bring a $150,000 single family home to the market. The average price for a lot in Leon County is over $80,000 (and we seen surges higher than $100,000!). This means that builders and developers are looking to get more homes in an area than would have previously been done.

Townhouse and condo communities give the builder and developer a chance to get more homes per acre, thus reducing the overall land cost per residential unit. With lower land costs, the builder can bring the townhome or condominium to the market for those seeking prices below $150,000.

So why is this such an important dynamic? Because many “experts” measure the market based upon the sales of single family homes only, and treat the condominium and townhouse market seperately! This just cannot be done anymore. These two categories must be studied in total, as they now reflect the Tallahassee housing market. Think about it, even in a flat market, if we only measure single family home activity, we will see it drop. Conversely, in that same market, we will see the condo and townhome market rise. Most experts would be calling that flat market a “falling market” because they only looked at one portion of the residential market.

In the chart below, we see the Tallahassee residential real estate market, including all single family homes, condominiums and townhouses. Notice how each year the condos and townhouses (pink portion of bar) is growing as a percentage of the entire bar.

The chart above shows that the 2007 residential market was the worst since 2000. But considering that 2000 was a good year, this is not all bad. We are just in a correction in a growing market!

When we look just at the Condos and Townhouses, we can see that 2007 was the third best year ever! Why? Most likely because these are the most affordable residences in the Tallahassee real estate market, and the demand for affordable housing in our area has not wavered as much as the above-median priced portion of our market.

So, when you real something about the Tallahassee real estate market, or the Florida real estate market, or even the national real estate market, check to see if the author is referring to single family homes alone, or the entire residential market.

As a reminder for those who subscribe to the Tallahassee Real Estate Blog by email, some embedded pictures and videos might not be appearing in your email and you might need to click the title header to go to your browser where all will be visible.

Keep checking out the Tallahassee Real Estate Blog every day for updates that include charts, graphs, and analysis of the Tallahassee real estate market.

If you like this Article then please subscribe to my blog through a full RSS feed. You will be able to stay informed about the happenings in the Tallahassee Real Estate Market. You can also subscribe to this blog and have it delivered by Email.

Joe Manausa is a real estate investor and the Broker and Co-Owner of Century 21 First Realty. He can be reached via e-mail through the Tallahassee Real Estate Website or catch his latest writings on the Tallahassee Florida Real Estate Blog , or by calling (850) 386-2001.

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