Pine Tip Hills Real Estate Report July 2015

Hidden to many buyers due to being located a few yards West of the NE Tallahassee boundary lies a treasure of a neighborhood called Pine Tip Hills.

With more than half of all home sales occurring in the northeast quadrant of Leon County, many shoppers mistakenly limit their search to this area when looking for large homes on large lots. Sadly, they are deprived of seeing what Pine Tip Hills has to offer.

Most of the homes in Pine Tip Hills were constructed from 1980 through the 1990s, but there are more that have been built since.

In this article, we will look at long term average home price trends, value trends, and size trends of homes sold in Pine Tip Hills, as well as all current listings in the Tallahassee MLS and all closed home sales going back to 1991.

For each of the 3 real estate graphs found below, 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 mid July in 2015. 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 the Pine Tip Hills).

Pine Tip Hills Home Prices

Due to the relatively small number of homes sold each year, the long term trends in Pine Tip Hills have frequent variations. This is not uncommon with smaller neighborhoods.

Unlike everywhere else in Tallahassee, average home prices peaked in 2012 in Pine Tip Hills. Since then average prices fell 38% through the end of last year, but have recovered nearly 3% thus far in 2015. Pine Tip Hills provides a clear example of why tracking average home prices often misleads those looking for information on real estate appreciation (as shown below in the valuation section).

The average recorded home sales price in Pine Tip Hills through this writing in 2015 has been $347,943.

Average Home Price

Home sales activity has averaged between 2 and 13 sales per year for the past 12 years, and this year the pace appears to be record-setting. I find it interesting to note that Pine Tip Hills did not experience a significant peak and valley from the real estate market expansion of 2002 through 2006, as did all other neighborhoods that we have studied.

In fact, the second highest volume year on record was in 2013, as lower prices brought in more than double the recent amount of buyers. Thus far in 2015, there have been 9 closed home sales in Pine Tip Hills, which is more than double the amount closed in all of 2014.

Pine Tip Hills Home Values

Average home values in Pine Tip Hills are down roughly 6% in 2015 versus 2014, which is completely contrary to the 3% increase in average home prices shown above. There are two things we can take from this information.

1. Don’t ever confuse price movement with value movement
2. Neighborhoods with a small number of home sales will have “noise” in the data, and this is what we are seeing recently in Pine Tip Hills.

Average Home Value

Through mid July, the average value of a home sold in Pine Tip Hills has been $128 per square foot. This is up 7% over the “bottom” reached in 2013, and down 22% from the market high set back in 2006 (used 2006 as the market high as only 2 sales were posted in 2012). The surge of buyers to this neighborhood in 2013 clearly indicated that buyers thought they were greatly undervalued at $118 per square foot (resale values), and the lower values again in 2015 seems to have re-energized home buyers.