Sebring-Lake Placid (Tampa, Orlando, Lakeland: crime, mortgages, big house)
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We are interested in a house in the Lake Placid area. We don't need to sell out house in Port Charlotte but have a lot of equity in it ( 6 figures ), despite the downturn and can think of a LOT of other places the money would do better for us rather than as a potential rental nightmare which I have no interest. Last night we were thinking about what we paid for it in 2003, what the house we are interested in Lake Placid cold for IN 2004 and how much room there might possibly be in order to make us happy and also make the appropriate offer to the seller there. They have a listed price of DOUBLE what they paid for it.
Now we'd be tickled to death to get double what we paid. But that ain't gonna happen. The house in LP has been listed for 7, going into it's 8th month. It's waterfront. Only issue is, does this house in Lake Placid have comcast cable. If so, and if the seller wakes up and decides to be realistic, then the seller and real estate person there will likely make a new sale.
What's realistic?
Now to find a realtor in that area and let the joust begin. Jammie, I spoke with an "Eve" at the recommendation you made. I hope she'll call back today but I'm on the road to Ft Lauderdale. ( My dentist is there and I have a horrible pain....arghhh )
Hi All, well now that we've been back and forth to LP and Sebring, 5 times, 4 to LP, my Wife and I decided yesterday that we're interested in buying a house there and relocating, assuming we can get a good deal.
There's a LOT of houses for sale and we were told that recently a LOT of listings had expired, so there appears to be a glut like everywhere else. Some listings that we are interested in were basically presented to us as "make any offer", and that maybe a low low offer will not work, but that even a lowball will be looked at. I asked for a copy of the solds for equivilent houses for the past 3 months but have not thus far been provided them. There seems to be an enormous amount of B/S flowing. Separating fact from fiction is going to be tough.
There's one house in particular that we would LOVE to buy but we'd be making an offer nearly 25% less than the asking price. We would NOT be interested in playing ping pong and settling in the middle. Maybe we would come up from that offer to 15/20% behind the asking but that's a "maybe".
We searched the county assessors office and saw that even with our lowball that would be double what the people paid in 2003. So what do you think?
They bought the house at roughly the same time we bought ours in Port Charlotte and there's NO WAY we are doubling our money here. Maybe we'll see a 60% increase. MAYBE.
One other concern is there's an abundance of "well water" for these houses. I'm not happy about that at all and wonder why they would have septics on lakes, canals, and a well for drinking water on the same small piece of property. Would you all please comment, render and opinion or post some factual info/links etc to help us internalize what we need to internalize on the well water and septic subject as well as the lowball?
Think we'd be wasting time with offers in those discounted percentages?
Thank you! Hope to take this thread from what was initially an "inquiry" to a full fledged closure and purchase.
...I asked for a copy of the solds for equivilent houses for the past 3 months but have not thus far been provided them. There seems to be an enormous amount of B/S flowing. Separating fact from fiction is going to be tough.
You should be able to google the property appraiser's office for Highlands County and do some of the searches yourself. When I do it, it seems to take forever, as I look at various individual houses and then look for the sales price. My son is an appraiser and he seems to be able to massage the property sites to get all the recent sales, quickly. Maybe if you poke around you could figure out how to do the same.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MrTudo
There's one house in particular that we would LOVE to buy but we'd be making an offer nearly 25% less than the asking price. We would NOT be interested in playing ping pong and settling in the middle. Maybe we would come up from that offer to 15/20% behind the asking but that's a "maybe".
My daughter and son-in-law just went on a house-hunting expedition in Zephyrhills. Because of job relocation, they had to move quickly. They found one house they really liked. Research showed the owners had paid $279,000 for it in Sept. 2005, the height of the market. They were asking $300,000. The kids put an offer of $250,000 on it, and told the agent, "This is a serious offer, and we expect it to be accepted." When the owner countered back at $283,000, the kids walked. It was hard, because the house had a lot of things they liked -- a pool, nearly an acre of ground, great neighborhood, and even a concrete paved basketball court in the back yard -- something my son-in-law was hard-pressed to give up.
Two days later, they found an even better house, with recent comparable sales in the $335,000 to $355,000 range, for $270,000. My appraiser son was incredulous. Sometimes it pays to take a business-like approach and not let one's emotions get in the way.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MrTudo
One other concern is there's an abundance of "well water" for these houses. I'm not happy about that at all and wonder why they would have septics on lakes, canals, and a well for drinking water on the same small piece of property. Would you all please comment, render and opinion or post some factual info/links etc to help us internalize what we need to internalize on the well water and septic subject...
I've lived for so many years on a quarter acre lot with well and septic, surrounded by hundreds of other quarter acre lots with well and septic (in Port St. Lucie, before they completed the central water and sewer system), that I have no concern over it. In Port St. Lucie, the city received a special waiver from the state that existing homes did not have to hook up to the central system until their existing system fails. The majority of the city is still on well and septic, mainly because it's a lot cheaper, even with water treatment.
A REPUTABLE water treatment company will assess your need for softener, filters or other treatment -- we have never needed anything more than a softener, but others have had problems with iron discoloration. The local health department will perform a simple test for bacteria, or will recommend a local company to do it, either free or for something under $50 in most cases. We have never bothered.
If you do some research on septic systems, you will see they are really very effective in filtering waste water, and do no harm to the environment unless they are in heavy concentration. Port St. Lucie, with thousands upon thousands of septic tanks, finally was approaching that critical point. I don't think you have to worry about it in Highlands County.
You will need an auxiliary generator to power your well pump if there is a power outage. Our pumps were always wired for 110v and we kept a small Coleman camper-style generator to run the pump; we just unplugged the pump from the wall and plugged it into the generator. It was inconvenient; we only ran the generator when we wanted water, and it was a pain to go out and start the generator, the go out and turn it off again. But, it was better than no water. We have also always had a contractor-style generator for the rest of the household; currently it is a 5500W from Lowes.
On the other hand, the septic tank works without power of any kind.
Hey Old Timer, thanks for your input. Soft water won't do. It's been proven to accelerate arterial blockages especially for people with heart disease or who are at risk for heart disease. I had open heart surgery 2 years ago and have become somewhat of a student of this stuff. Filtered well water is ok assuming that the source is unadulterated, but soft water is a no-no. City water CAN be bad depending on what kind of city water it is. They are putting a LOT of chemicals in the city water where we are and therefore we will not drink it. And we don't use it exclusively for cookiing either. It wasn't always like this but that's how it is now.
Now I flushed the toilet in the guest bathroom and a horrible odor permeated half the house as a result of it. The water was incredibly horrible. Can that be a bad septic system? The realtor told me that the house has been on the market for about a year and that the culligan system is shut off. I'm not sure I can agree with that assessment.
Any ideas?
We received a list of the solds in the neighborhoods that interest us. Only 3 houses have sold since November of last year. 3. Three. Tres'.
Three houses sold. Not exactly a hotbed of activity. And one of those solds was december of last year so a whopping 2 houses sold in all of 2007.
I went to sperlings site and looked at stats ( I also looked at census.gov ) and it's very interesting to see what the actual economic base is and match it up to the price of houses. There is NO POSSIBLE WAY for the average person , in that area to afford a house there based on the per capita and per household income, and cost of houses. No way. So some changes a gonna happen I think .
The odor when you flushed the toilet is most likely from the untreated water. Most well water in Florida has a sulfur odor, which smells like rotten eggs. Sometimes it's a tiny odor and a mere annoyance, like the water in my Okeechobee well, but sometimes the odor is strong and there is also a sulfur taste. It generally won't hurt you, but it isn't pleasant. It's very unlikley that the odor is from the septic tank, for several reasons. The primary reason is that the design of the toilet prevents sewer gases from returning to the house. Another reason is that if the septic has been unused for a year, it's likely that the bacteria in the septic tank have done their work and the waste is no longer "potent".
That is interesting about the soft water. I myself have cardiac myopathy, which is essentially dead heart muscle resulting from silent heart attacks, and my heart is too weak to withstand any open heart surgery. I just have to accept my blocked arteries and hope they don't get any worse -- I watch my diet and meds closely. I certainly don't need to do anything that will increase arterial blockages. I'll have to look into this closely -- I'm not sure what filtering is available to remove sulfur odor and other undesirable effects from the water without using a softener.
We are currently on city water in Port St. Lucie (but still on a septic tank) and untreated well water in Okeechobee, where I stay about 4 days a week in my RV while I am working on the property. No septic tank out there; I have to stop at Flying J and dump the holding tank in my RV every week.
I rarely drink water; I drink mostly caffeine-free Diet Pepsi and an occasional glass of wine. I do cook with the untreated well water with no ill effects of which I am aware. I wash and shower in it, and only notice the sulfur odor after a long, hot shower. It has no lingering after effects that I can detect.
Hey Old Timer, it's in Lake Placid. Really like it and hope the real estate market stays down for a while so they don't lose the orange groves to developers.
Yes yes, please do look into it. While you are, also look into chelation therapy. I had open heart surgery 2 years ago and in addition to that, they wanted to do a bypass of the right femoral, a stent on the left illiac, an endartectomy of the right carotid. My Wife and I were frozen in fear. I could NOT walk 1/10th of a mile without extreme pain in my left leg and right calf. Blockage to the right carotid was pushing 65%.
INSTEAD of the additional surgeries,I completely changed the diet, stopped smoking ( 2 years now ) excercise every other day, and I have undergone 59 chelation therapies thus far. By the 30th however, I was walking a couple of miles at roughly 2 1/2 mph, non stop and the carotids showed 50% blockage. There's a place in punta gorda, chelationtherapymd.com you might want to look into and I know there are places in the merrit island and melbourne area. The surgeon told me it was all nonsense when I started. Mt cardiologist was more open although non commital.....and now we are where we are . I generally walk now between 7 and 10 miles per week on the treadmill between 3 1/2 and 4 MPH at an incline ( did 18 1/2 miles last week), the carotids are just fine, heart fine.
If I ever did a reverse, or when I do as I get older, I'll opt for stem cells in Thailand, theravitae.com and vescell.com before I let these guys touch me.
Sorry to everyone here for getting off topic
We really like it there but the economic base is dismal. There is no way it can support the price levels of the houses now and since only 3 houses sold in 8 months in a development of roughly 750 houses, it doesn't appear there's any mass migration.....yet. So prices have to come down I think.
So does the smell of the well water go away if run thru a whole house filtration system??
Mr. Tudo, I'm so glad you ended up in Lake Placid. I was reading on another thread and I thought you were ending up in Port Charlotte, but now I understand that's where you live presently.
Oh, the cost of houses had soared there so I'm not surprised that it's nearly at a standstill. My family members there had built there house a few years ago so they didn't get burned by the tremendous prices that are being asked now. You know, I still have to say to go back to the 2001 prices and add 5% per year and make that as an offer. OR make a 25% offer is you really want a certain house. You're so right~the wages there won't support families who pay those prices for houses. Things will HAVE to change because working people just can't afford it. The mindset will eventually have to change because homeowners who bought a few years ago will just not be able to quadruple their $$ anymore and they'll have to realize that. I do know that the average house in Sebring in 2000 was 56,000. Lake Placid would've been very comparable to that.
It isn't time for us to relocate yet, but we've been keeping our eye on a couple of places. The St. Pete area seems very inviting even though we haven't been there yet, but since we have family in Sebring, that's also appealing. We've watched the housing market soar and I've noticed the same condos and homes listed there for months and months already, but didn't realize it was THAT slow there.
Isn't Lake Placid just the cutest and neatest town you've ever seen though? Like I said before, Lake Placid and Keystone in my state are so cute. Grove, Ok is another town that is just darling.
Thanks for letting us know what you are finding out about the Lake Placid - Sebring area. We have just closed on our business, so all we have left to do is get our house sold and it's off to Florida. We have a place to stay in Lake Placid till we get settled in, not in a real hurry to buy unless we get a great deal. I agree about housing costs vs. income and think it's a problem just about everywhere. We will probably look at Sebring a little more so than Lake Placid.
We also noticed the sulfur smell in the air and from the water the times we have visited the area. Is it widespread in Florida or just in this area? Water quality is something we have wondered about. I also wondered about all the small lots with septic systems and well water so close together.
You will find high sulfur content in the water over most if not all of South Florida. I am in the Dade City/Zephyrhills area, and our water although very hard with minerals is of the quality you get in the store-bought bottled water. Water quality in our area varies some, but most is delicious and no sulfur. By the way, sulfur smells bad but is not bad for you, in fact it can be healthy.
If the sulfur smell bothers you I suppose you can put some kind of filter system on it.
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