Comprables (Fort Myers, Fort Myers Beach, Lee: comparable sales, sales, real estate)

[captivadiva]

Help! I need to find comparable sales for the past year on Cutlass Drive in Fort Myers Beach, Rebecca Circle in Fort Myers Beach, THANKS!!

[benkhanobi]

looks like $200-250/sf and up- go to Zillow.com or Trulia.com and punch in an address, they usually show past sales, only three sales show in in the past six months on Cutlass , not much to go on. The $400K+ homes haven't been dropping as fast, they say. These owners are waiting it out-

[justNancy]

Are you buying a house through a real estate company? Usually the agent does that for you. I realize that looking at past sales and current listings in an area is a good way to get a general idea of the current market value, but you can't simply go by the size of the house/lot. After all, one house might have a brand new roof, new HVAC and wood flooring, while the one next door hasn't been renovated or updated in over 20 years. Some repairs are minor, but others can cost thousands.

Originally Posted by benkhanobi

looks like $200-250/sf and up- go to Zillow.com or Trulia.com and punch in an address, they usually show past sales, only three sales show in in the past six months on Cutlass , not much to go on. The $400K+ homes haven't been dropping as fast, they say. These owners are waiting it out-

$200K is next to impossible to find on FMB, especially on a street with Gulf access. Maybe I misread your post. There's a house on Cutlass currently listed for over $1.4 million. Average home in that general vacinity is $500K to $600K. BTW whether or not owners are waiting to sell, the current values have definitely been dropping. A year ago they were about 20% higher.

However, as another member wrote not long ago, it doesn't matter what a house cost 2 years ago or 6 months ago. It only matters what you can buy it for now. Don't want to go off-topic, but many years ago I sold new & used cars (don't hold that against me. lol) A prospect would say "but Kelly Blue Book said ...." or "I read that my car is worth...." I'm not very aggressive or pushy, and I try to be as honest as possible, but nobody wanted to hear that his trade-in was worth bubkas. So an owner might feel "my house is worth $750K" but it's only worth that much to him. On the other hand, a buyer might feel "I can get a house for $250K" and get confirmation on a web site, from a newspaper article, etc., but if there are no houses for that price available, it means very little.

Well, now that I've gone off on a tangent, I agree with your suggestion to look up comps on Zillow. The "zestimates" are pretty good, although general, since Zillow has no idea if the owners just spend $20,000 on new kitchen cabinets last month or installed a new bathroom. If I'm wrong, I don't mind being corrected, since I'm not in the real estate business. Just posting from experience. When looking up public records in Lee County, I've used:
[URL]http://www.leepa.org/[/URL]
You can use the Database Search to find real estate transactions for the properties in the area in which you are buying.