Just Visited Jax for 5 days. (Jacksonville, Fort Myers: sales, real estate, foreclosures)

[Afishy1]

Hi everyone.
Just wanted to say that my family and I just visited your Fair city for five days and have to say it is very beautiful. I had never been to the Jacksonville area before but have had many trips to Fort Myers Beach. I always loved Ft.MB and wondered if Jax had the same Pine Trees and beautiful water. Yes you do!!!
And yes, I love to fish. We will probably be relocating to the Jax area probably by the new year.

I took my son to the beach(cant remember the name) just north of South Ponte Vedra Beach by a preserve. Put our money in the box to park and crossed the highway to the beach. We went on Tuesday and except for one other couple about 100 yards away, had the beach to ourselves. The beach looked pristine. Very nice. Didnt see a lot of garbage or debris. Shell beach then breaks into sand. My son loved it as well.

I have a few questions if you dont mind.
We looked at homes around Mandarin, Jullington Creek, Fruit Cove etc.. in that part of St. Johns County. All were in subdivisions, some older homes with established oaks(very nice) and some newer homes with fewer established trees. Home prices ranged from $250,000 to $400,000. My questions are as follows.
1) Can someone give me some names of good builders in that area?
2) Can the record of who built a specific home be found in the city records?
3) Would it be worthwhile to check out forclosed homes in the area?

We are coming to Jacksonville on a single income and have noticed the prices of homes to be a bit higher than where we are coming from. I read on this forum that most believe if we wait awhile that prices are going to come down. I dont know this to be true but would hate to pay more than I had to if waiting a few months would make a difference.

Thanks in advance for listening to my rambling on and for any information that you provide.

Sincerely, Afishy1
P.S. I just want a nice redfish now and then for the grill.

[FLPL75]

Afishy1
I am glad you guys had a great visit.
You will find the beaches less crowded this time of year.
I am not that familiar with the builders in the areas you mentioned. Depending on the size of the sub-divisions there will be 1 to 3 builders. Unless the homes are custom.
There are many folks here from that area that I am sure will be posting more information.

As far as foreclosed homes, unless you buy at the Sheriffs sale on the courthouse steps you will be dealing with the banks REO dept. This can be a very slow process. Most of these homes are sold "as is" so an inspection is very important. When I was a foreclosure specialist it amazed me the damage some of these homes had. Chances are pretty good if they weren't paying the mortgage they weren't keeping up with the care and upkeep of the home. Then you have the few homeowners that were not happy that they were losing their home so they felt that they should strip the home of anything they could, we are talking all kinds of fixtures including plumbing etc.

We had a huge home value increase from 2003 to 2005 and the "correction" as some people call it began mid 2006. So if I was house hunting I would try to find a house where the sellers bought before this, there will be more room to negotiate than on a house that someone bought at the top of the market.
As far as the house pricing continuing to come down, I think a lot depends on the subdivision, a good established neighborhood is going to hold its value. You can have 2 sub-division built at the same time and due to location or other reasons, in one the values soared and held and the other only saw a slight increase.
Oh and these are just my opinions I am not a expert or Realtor.
karla

[mawipafl]

If you can figure out how to navigate it, the St Johns County Property Appraiser's website can give you all kinds of info about specific properties, including I believe, a history of ownership of the house which should list the builder.

SJCPA - St Johns County Property Appraiser

There is a link near the top of the page that will show you how to use the internet mapping to see sales histories.

As for listing vs sold prices, there are areas that are running about 89%, meaning the actual sale price is about 11% below asking.

I agree with Karla with a K about foreclosures. However, a tool you could use as a bargaining chip is looking at how long a house has been on the market. A brand new house on Fleming Island was on the market for almost three years - don't have a clue why - but the builder was asking $384000 and took $295000 (4bed/3bath 2300sq ft).

[riveree]

Sounds like maybe you were at Guana Park, one of my faves (though it's actually just south of PV.....so I'm not 100% sure that's where you were). Here's a link if you're interested in learning more about it:

http://nerrs.noaa.gov/GTM/welcome.html

Many of our smaller, local builders have been bought out by the national companies, so you'll find the same builders often building in many neighborhoods.

Code is fairly strict closer to the coast, so the quality of build is not going to vary widely, IMO, but you'll still want to visit job sites and look at the quality yourself before commiting to a builder. I walked through many, many homes in progress before committing - I watched how they handled inclement weather, quality of finish work, etc. in other people's houses before considering letting them build my own......you don't want to rely on model homes as an example of workmanship (and if the model home looks bad, watch out !).

Some of the big builders that build in this area are:

Centex
Mattamy
Lennar
Ryland
DR Horton
KB Homes

There are others, but that should help get you started. Once you start searching neighborhoods being built, you'll stumble across the other builders building in the same area.

[Kimknapp]

I live in Orange Park a bedroom community of JAX. I relocated 7 years ago! We love it. We moved from Upstate New York.

The property appraisers site is a great place to go. Unfortunately many buyers bought at the top of the market, financed 100% are are now under water due to prices going down sometimes 20% or more. So negotiating with them can be fruitless. I would locate a knowledgeable real estate professional in the area you are looking that knows the market. It's watching how many times a home has been listed, have the sellers moved out, did they buy another home already? How much do they owe? This information is easy to gather if you are working with someone already on top of the market.

Also make sure you have a reputable lender. This is such a problem in this business. The predator lenders are still out there. Because consumers only have a real estate transaction a few times in their lives they hardly have time to become experts. This gets taken advantage of. I hope this helps.


In Fleming Island our kids walk and ride bikes to school, crime is low, we have the St Johns River as well as Dr Lake for boating. It only takes 25 minutes to get downtown or 35 minutes to the beach. There are great places to dine, cultural events, professional sports as well as Noles and Gator fans galore.

The planned communities offer a unique lifestyle we had never seen before moving here. It's like Norman Rockwell or as we joke sometimes Pleasantville. Property taxes are much less than NY and there is no state income tax. We still have homestead exemption as well. We'll see how the November vote goes on the super tax break. Housing prices have come down 20% in the last 15 months which is awesome for anyone looking to buy.
Moderator cut: realtor soliciting