Condos

Hope everyone is enjoying their summer and our daily rains. I am enjoying the summer but the rain is not helping my golf game.

The only news from our complexes is that the side unit in Windward East is under contract. This unit is on the 4th floor with 2 bedrooms 2 baths and over 1400 sq ft. It has been updated and the agent did a good job on the pictures. Believe it or not there are still agents using cell phone pictures. "Pictures are worth 1000 words" this is very true in Real Estate.

If you read the Sunday morning Real estate section you may have noticed the Broker opinion section, this Broker is very convinced that the condo market is improving according to the MLS research. I sincerely hope she is correct but I have my doubts. The single family home market has seen prices drop to a point where it is at pre 2002 price range. There are also a ton of short sales and foreclosures in that market. When you follow the condo market you will see that a definite increase in activity has occurred this year. The problem with the theory is when you use MLS to see inventory in the condo market is there are a lot of new condos that are not listed and a lot of builders are shopping blocks of these condos to investors. The inventory figure if using MLS is usually incorrect. There are still quite a few complexes that probably contain over 100 units that have not hit the market.

Pricing

The fact is when you are showing condos as we do daily you will notice that prices in general have not fallen as quickly as the single family market. A lot of buyers will turn to canal homes which can now be purchased at the same or below the price of a 2 bedroom condo.

We will all get through this downturn and looking forward to the turn around.

You may email me if you want to know more about the latest housing bill. walkerbagwell@aol.com

Jim Bagwell