[dmccauley]

I feel like I am missing something. How can you say that people knowlingly overpaid when at the time they bought it was priced based on the market at the time.

[TANaples]

Originally Posted by dmccauley

I feel like I am missing something. How can you say that people knowlingly overpaid when at the time they bought it was priced based on the market at the time.

When I was still living in NY, I came down here and my husband and I looked at houses. I couldn't believe what these people were asking. I thought they were out of their minds. Honestly. My husband said this is what homes are "going for in Naples." I said I don't care. They aren't worth all that money for a closet in the sunshine. My exact words. They were asking the same price for what we had just sold our house for in NY, which was twice the size and 4 times the property, which I also thought was overpriced. Oh, the taxes were exactly half here in Naples. Half the property taxes for half the house and property. I thought it was rip off. We didn't buy. We waited. The house we did buy we bought for half the price they had originally listed it for in 2005.

Maybe I am just a "miserable, negative person", but I am not blind either. These selling prices were through the roof and not sustainable for the average working person, ANYWHERE in the country. That is a major reason the country is now in this economic mess. But that's a different thread.

[floridataxsale]

As a second generation investor in Florida real estate, I can say that I only felt bad when someone purchased a property from me and resold it immediately at a higher price (prices were going up). I also felt bad when I held a property to long and was unable to resell for a profit (prices going down). The trick is to keep buying, those properties which I held to long will be averaged against the new low priced purchases I am making today. If you feel bad for Buyers, you will starve in the property game. I have done pretty well at this game with the help of my parents, brother and uncle, who are also Florida real estate investors. We currently have about 70 properties for sale, if you want to ckeck it out see my profile contact.

[grapico]

My dad bought a few properties... I know one in 99 was 67K, fixed a bit of sloping concrete and redid the siding and windows few other things slowly for about 5k investment and now appraised 180K.

[Dave_n_Tenn]

Originally Posted by Sunny-Days90

Wondering who here made money on the boom of the Florida Real Estate Market?

We have several friends who bought in the early to mid 90's and made a ton of money when they sold in 2003-2005 range time period.

One person who we know held on to it and lost their butts, could have sold the home with an offer in 2006 that would have made them 200k profit and did not. They got greedy!

Who was smart enough to see the fake prices of the market and sold and made a profit knowing to sell?

Many bought and sold over and over again and ended up living in a free home.

My Aunt bought and rehabbed homes here for many years and did this in Florida beginning in the early 1990's. She now lives near
Ft Lauderdale on the ocean that is paid off because of the houses she sold in Florida.

Did anyone else do this? Was you able to take advantage of the market and make money in Florida?

I think the market will rebound in time. Florida will be one of the states that will rebound first because of all the baby boomers starting to retire and wanting to own homes in Florida.

So all you smart people who made money please stand up!

Sold 2 homes (both in Fla) in 2007 about 20% down from the market peak. We owned the homes for more than 12yrs. One we did a 1031 exchange (bought a vacation home in Tn) and the other, was invested... so after all is said and done, considering interest paid, taxes, upkeep, and rental income... we have a 25% return on our property investments. Would of had more equity if the vacation home didn't drop in assessed value and our stock/mutual fund investments had performed better. Oh well..... but we did OK, not a killing, but OK.

We still have our "homesteaded" Fla home, a condo (rental), and our vacation home in Tn.

[TANaples]

Originally Posted by dmccauley

I feel like I am missing something. How can you say that people knowlingly overpaid when at the time they bought it was priced based on the market at the time.

We bought in December of 2007. I asked my agent to give me everything she could possible find out the house. It was built in 2001. I actually have about 15 of the house in various stages of being built. The original owner paid $240,000 in 2001. This was an estate sale and the original owner was a snowbird bachelor who only lived in it for short periods of time. The place basically was brand new.

The sister put it on the market in 2005 for $460K. She lowered it to $410K in 2006. In August of 2007, she lowered it again to $375K. We knew she wanted to get rid of it. I told the agent to lowball the offer to $275,000. We were prepared to walk away from it since we already owned a condo we were living in. She took $285,000, which was an increase of $45,000 in 6 years from when it was built.

The home next to us sold in June 2007 for $430,000. Personally, I think they were crazy, but beauty, and real estate, is in the eye of the beholder. Now, similair homes are down in the high $300,000's here. Can it go down more? Sure, but I still think what we did was about right. 2001 was right before prices went through the roof, everywhere.

[annerk]

I was able to take advantage of the market. I bought my Florida home in early 2003 before the market wents absolutely nuts. I then sold my NJ at the very top of the market in mid-2005 and made $200K. Unfortunately the folks who bought my NJ home are upside down, even with their 20% down.

Although my Florida home isn't worth what it was in 2006, it's still worth more than what I paid for it. We were offered double what we paid for it in 2005, but we didn't buy this home for profit, but to live in for at least the next 20 years, so profit wasn't going to motivate us to sell.

I'm watching the market closely up north and considering buying a place up there again, although I'm not sure that market has hit the bottom yet. I feel the market here in central Florida is pretty well out of the free fall and stabalized.

[Sunny-Days-in-Florida]

Originally Posted by Bette

I agree. I found an article from 1999 detailing this same fact as noted above.

This started the entire ball of wax.

If you look back around 1994-1995 Clinton started doing this and Frank and Dodd followed up to make sure everyone ( including those who cannot pay ) was able to buy a home.

Lets face it, not everyone deserves a home, if they cannot manage their money and had poor credit why should they even get one until they show they can be responsible?

I know for a fact that many people in foreclosure today can pay their mortgage payment, they just dont want to because they now feel they are not going to pay for something that is of less value then they paid for it.

Sure some are because of jobs or medical issues, but the majority of those foreclosures are just dead beat people who either gave up who or did not want to keep making payments and dumped it on the lender.

Many people knew they paid to much for the homes they bought in Florida, most of them thought the price would just keep on rolling up so they can sell and make a killing. When it did not happen and the market dropped they dumped us all a new bill for us to pay.

Those smart people who did not get greedy sold in time to make some money and should be commended.

Those who dumped the homes on the rest of us to pay for should not be allowed to buy another home or make them stay and get as many jobs as they can to pay for the house they signed a contract for.

These people are only hurting the rest of us who pay out bills on time.

Someone needs to research and get more people to pay their bills and stop these people from foreclosing when they have enough money to pay or only need to work a small part time job to pay it.

Far to many foreclosures because people just give up or dont care who they are screwing over.

[Kim918]

I bought a townhouse in FL for $69k, lived in it 8 years. Put in 30k in renovations and sold for $218k in 2007. If we had sold sooner we could have made another 30k easy. Waited a little too long. The market was starting to turn. We didn't want to reinvest in FL because saw what was happening to the market. We moved to TN and bought a moderate priced home. Choose not to reinvest all the profits in this house, just in case things went south here. We have a comfortable mortgage(couldn't even rent for what our mortage is) and a very nice home. We put 15k in it already updating things, but plan to stay here for some time. We're happy we got out when we did. The value of that townhouse we sold in FL is only $176k now. I don't feel guilty at all. The guy that bought it only put down 5k. Not too smart in my book. 5k on a home that $218k is nothing The taxes alone were 3k and then you have insurance and association fees on top of that. If he bit off more than he could chew and loses it, that is his doing not mine. We are all free to make our own choices.

[MiamiRob]

my brother purchased a brand new home in 1994 about a year after Hurrican Andrew in deep south Dade. It was a 4 bedroom/2 bath with a 1 car garage on a corner lot. He paid $93,000 for it & would have never sold if it weren't for Katrina's brief sideswipe with it's 16 inches of rain in less than 6 hours.We had a foot of water in the house in area that was Zoned X or not a Flood Zone.
He decided to sell and even with the water damage he sold it for $275,000 in 2005 or nearly triple what he paid for it 11 years before.