Housing Report For Bobbin Trace, Bobbin Mill Woods, and Bobbin Brook March 2016

Bobbin Trace, Bobbin Mill Woods, and Bobbin Brook (the neighborhoods of Bobbin) continues their sluggish start for 2016 as the number of listings continues to grow.

Currently, there is a unique trend occurring in this high end neighborhood and existing homeowners should take note.

There are ten homes for sale in the Bobbin neighborhoods, and not one single one is under contract. In fact, if you check the map below, you’ll only see nine homes listed. For some reason, one seller has chosen not to have the home shown on the internet (and the home has been on the market for three weeks already).

With only two homes sold and closed and ten on the market, the Bobbins are atypical to say the least. Most other Tallahassee neighborhoods have 35% to 40% of their listings already under contract.  

In our last report on the Bobbin neighborhoods, I suggest there just would not be that many motivated sellers here who want to move (key word is motivated). That appears to be playing out three months later.

Currently, there are 7 homes for sale in the Bobbin neighborhoods, and only the one priced below $500,000 is under contract. We are seeing much better performance in most other neighborhoods in Tallahassee.

Unfortunately, there has been a growing trend in luxury homes for sale for buyers to lean towards building instead of buying existing homes. Even though they can acquire “more house,” typically on a favorable homesite, the fact is that buyers in the upper price ranges want the newer homes loaded with the amenities that are available today.

This is going to further exacerbate the imbalance between supply and demand at the higher end of home prices in the Tallahassee real estate market.

If you want to see the current state of the luxury housing market, Bobbin Trace, Bobbin Mill Woods, and Bobbin Brook are great places to start.

In this report, you will find the current Bobbin listings in the Tallahassee MLS to all past home sales going back to 1991. Additionally, we provide updated graphs featuring average home price trends, average home value trends, and average home size trends in the three Bobbin neighborhoods.

For the real estate graphs found in this report, you will find the number of closed home sales for each year (red columns, measured on the left vertical axis), and an important real estate statistic shown in blue (measured on the right vertical axis).

It is important to note that the narrative contained below is for sales through December for all previous years, but through the third week of March in 2016. The graphs and the closed sales table will be continuously updated into the future (meaning bookmark this page if you always want to know the current status of homes in Bobbin Trace, Bobbin Mill Woods, and Bobbin Brook).

Bobbin Home Prices

Average home prices shift around frequently in Tallahassee luxury home neighborhoods due to the relatively few number of homes selling each year.

When one of the larger homes sells (for over $1M), it has a far greater impact on the “average” price when only a handful of homes sells in a given year. This is why we advise you use these reports to get a general feel for trends, but rely on your real estate buyer’s agent for specifics if you are planning a move here or your listing agent if you are planning a sale.

Insufficient data to generate chart.

We see a great example of price volatility in the real estate graph above. The average recorded sales price is only based upon one sale in the first quarter of $930,000 for Bobbin Trace, Bobbin Mill Woods, and Bobbin Brook. The average for the 14 sold last year was $624,000, so some people might errantly believe this suggests real estate appreciation is occurring. The fact is, there remains more supply than demand.

Bobbin Home Values

Average home values in the Bobbins are also subject to large fluctuations due to the few number of home sales.

The 14 homes sold in 2015 reported an average value of $156 per square foot, representing the 3rd consecutive year of declining home values in Bobbin Brook, Bobbin Trace, and Bobbin Mill Woods.

As with every price range and neighborhood, we look to supply and demand to forecast the future. Currently, there are 7 homes for sale in Bobbin Trace, Bobbin Mill Woods, and Bobbin Brook collectively, with one of these are already under contract. Considering the strong rate of sales last year, I suspect it means some or all of these current sellers have priced themselves out of the market.

The first home sale this year in the Bobbins sold for $211 per square foot.