New Home in New Tampa Area (Zephyrhills, Live Oak: section 8, for sale, rentals)

[bentlebee]

Originally Posted by thakers

hi BMOFFITTF

any luck with home purchase...

we are sailing in the same boat...
we like floor plans in live oak but not sure whether to go for it...

any updates about the builder conditions there?

I just was offered a very good deal on a home from a seller who is trying a short sale or else will have a foreclosure. Even with the very good price I'm not buying overthere. To risky for me. Maybe if you are thinking to live there for years you can have a good deal. The location is great and all depends in which sub community.

[JSnFla]

wait, dont buy now unless u have to....they will be giving homes away here in a year or so

[Keeper]

I can tell the worst thing you can do is to buy a house where there are a lot of investors and/or foreclosures. The nabe I lived in was very nice until MacDill had a RIF (years ago). Many homes went into foreclosure and were bought up by investors. It ruined the nabe because the houses they bought cost less than what we paid so no one could sell their house for what they paid for it, more foreclosures. While not all renters are bad, there were some who never took care of the yard, houses needed painting and if they moved out houses stood empty.

Just something to think about..

[bentlebee]

That is why I as an investor don't even buy where there are many investment properties, like some places in Meadow Point, Bridgewater and Live Oak.

[Iroh]

If you're looking at Heritage and Live Oak, you might as well look at Easton Park. It sold over 100 homes in a year and it's right next to/ behind heritage isles. Much lower fees, but lots of empty lots because they only started selling in mid 2006. Houses are quality construction (at least the MI Homes offerings which is 90% of the houses so far). You can drive BBD like most other New Tampa developments, but Morris Bride Road is where the community lets out so we find it faster to use than BBD. it goes straight to I75 and turns into Fletcher Ave.

Not saying it's for everyone, but it's worth a look and MI is not in as bad shape as Lennar or some of the other builders. In fact they're building at least 10 inventory homes right now in the community...I assume because what few homes they did have in inventory, they were able to sell even in this horrible market.

I HATE that I could have waited a year and knocked a lot off my house price, but we were looking for a very specific kind of lot and couldn't match our deal anywhere else at the time. It just stings, but doesn't matter much to me in the end because I don't need to sell anytime soon.

But if you can wait - I agree that there's a good chance even more economic pressure will be put on the Tampa Bay area so your best bet is to rent and wait it out...my bet is that the banks will be discounting heavily in a year or so as the recession hits Tampa's already weak job market really hard. But that's just my educated guess.

[BMOFFITTF]

Originally Posted by thakers

hi BMOFFITTF

any luck with home purchase...

we are sailing in the same boat...
we like floor plans in live oak but not sure whether to go for it...

any updates about the builder conditions there?

We decided to remove Live Oak Preserve from the list. From the listing numbers and listing prices, the whole community seems to fall apart. We don't want to catch the falling knife.

We spent the last a couple of weeks looking at Easton Park and Grand Hampton. For easton park, we can get a lot of sq ft for the money. But we dont' think the neighborhood is as nice.

For Grand Hampton, the price seems pretty high, although it's master planned. And the distance between houses seems very small. We feel like we can even shake hands with our neighbor from inside the house. :P

As someone mentioned, the future of the house market still looks not promising, at least to us. So we decided to take our time. We don't have to buy a house now.

One more question, someone told me Spring is seller's market. It's better to buy in Fall/Winter. I'm curious whether that's true and what's the rationale?

Thanks for all the input. I really learned a lot here.

[queens5]

Heritage Isles, we rented there for a year,Thank God we did not buy. Lots of juvenile crime. Across the street is a low income/section 9 apartment complex. Halloween was truly scary!!! H.I gates are a joke and constantly being damaged. Cop said that side of New Tampa is their "ghetto".

[somesnapper]

The "ghettos" in Tampa are a joke compared to real inner city areas in Detroit, Bronx, Jersey. Some people live in a fantasy world..

[bentlebee]

Originally Posted by thakers

hi BMOFFITTF

any luck with home purchase...

we are sailing in the same boat...
we like floor plans in live oak but not sure whether to go for it...

any updates about the builder conditions there?

Did you look at the HOA/CDD fees? These fees are shockingly high in that community. You pay CDD + HOA + again another fee on top, depends how high by which sub community you live in. We got the prices from the builder in there and immediately stopped looking overthere. The lower prices aren't worth paying the CDD?HOA fees which are coming back every month/year and the property taxes are higher than a little down the road, which makes Pasco County way more attractive. Maybe if the fees will go down, which IMO will never happen since of the rules and regulations of the CDD/HOA, than maybe they will sell more, right now only people who think they have a good deal and later realize how much they have to pay, are buying and renting out and won't make money but will lose money every month. Even for me who doesn't need a mortgage , it isn't worth it.

[Margel]

Since you are still researching, let me throw another suggestion to you. Going west of 54 in Pasco County is the community called Grey Hawk. You can have a custom home built in a nice quiet area, close to good schools, and since it is a buyers' market, you can get a really great deal. I know because I live there and have absolutely no regrets.