Central Florida & metro Orlando real estate services

The City of Casselberry Florida has a new rental regulation and tax on their horizon.  The City of Casselberry is planning on increasing revenue by a "very conservative ... $22,000" by tacking on yet another layer of fees and regulations onto the back of rental property owners most of whom are already strapped financially.

Proposed resolution 09-2088 would force owners of rental properties   including single-family homes, condos, mobile homes, and apartment buildings to pay an additional tax each and every year for every unit they own in the city limits of Casselberry.  Additionally the property owner would be required to provide their contact information to city hall so that code enforcement could more easily get a hold of them in case of a violation.

Now granted, the tax collector can easily get a hold of property owners each and every November when the property taxes come due.  And the Seminole County Property Appraiser website already has maintained on a list of owners and addresses for every parcel within the county.  But this isn't good enough.  The solution is to tighten the noose around rental owners yet again and end up forcing more of them into foreclosure or bankruptcy in a tough economy.

The 1st hearing on this proposed rental regulation ordinance is this Monday, October 26, 2009, at 7:00 p.m. at the Casselberry city commission chambers. 

You can read the entire proposed ordinance here.

An interesting debate is going on in Washington.  The National Association of Realtors is doing everything it can to get the $8000 tax credit extended beyond the November 30, 2009 deadline. 

However, the White House is still undecided.  In a recent CNN article, Shaun Donavon, the Secretary of HUD says the statistics aren't in just yet to show whether this tax credit has spurred the economy. 

Apparently the IRS is screaming all types of fraud saying that a significant portion of the tax payers filing for the tax credit may have done so fraudulently.  Over 107,000 questionable files have been opened by the IRS according to Fox News.  To me that's not surprising.  Look at all the fraud and "bonuses" that have been paid out as a result of the TARP money in Fall 2008.  Everytime the government creates some new handout or incentive there is always lots of fraud that happens.

Personally I still have mixed emotions on extending the deadline on the tax credit.  So I haven't contacted my Congressman either way. Seems like nearly 40% of the buyers in my market are paying cash. So while the tax credit has had some impact, it probably hasn't been as much as they are hyping it up to be. However at the same time I know the tax credit has knocked some buyers off the fence which is a good thing.

It will be interesting to see what happens in December if they don't extend the deadline.  If you are planning on taking advantage of this, you better get a contract signed quickly because the time is running out fast.

My bet is that like the Cash For Clunkers program, Washington will allow this program to end and not revive or extend it. But who knows for sure.

That's right.  If you are considering not paying your Realtor dues this October 31, you can sign up with our firm Sand Dollar Referrals LLC and still sell property without being a member of the local board of Realtors or the MLS.

We have 2 different plans available.

If all you want to do is refer leads of family and friends to us, we have our "Hands Off" plan where you can simply send us the lead and we will work on it for you.  Or one of our Realtors can match up with you and help you buy or sell a home.  When the deal closes you get a referral fee.

Or we have the "Hands On" plan where you can do nearly everything that a dues paying Realtor would do except you don't have to join the board or the MLS. 

For exact details on how each plan works, visit our website at www.SandDollarReferrals.com .  Then give us a call and we can set up a confidential appointment.

Serving all of Central Florida - Orlando, Winter Park, Ocoee, Winter Garden, Apopka, Kissimmee, Altamonte Springs, Lake Mary, Sanford, Oviedo, Deltona, Deland, Daytona Beach, Mount Dora, Clermont, Leesburg, Ocala, Winter Haven, Lakeland, Davenport, Melbourne, Titusville, Cocoa Beach, and more.

Social media definitely works.  During the 2008 election cycle, I was constantly blogging about various amendments and tax issues and got interviewed by several TV stations as a direct result of my social media interactions.  The internet is where people get a lot of their news anymore.

I was digging around through some MLS stats yesterday afternoon and put together the following numbers:

Since 7/1/2009 there were: 22,604 residential closings in the 13+ counties that comprise the Mid-Florida MLS. 6,536 were not designated as if they were a distressed sale or not - the MLS started requiring properties to be designated this way on or about September 1.  

16,068 were designated as a short sale, bank owned, or neither. Of those 16,068 -- 7,582 (47.2%) were bank owned, 3,524 (21.9%) were short sales, and 4,963 (30.9%) were neither.

Of the 22,604 closings - 9,575 (42.4%) were bought with ALL CASH, 5,511 (24.4%) were bought with FHA or VA mortgages, 6,255 (27.7%) were bought with conventional mortgages, and 1,263 (5.6%) were closed using some other form of creative financing or other financing. 

It is surprisng how many cash buyers are out there.  It is also surprising how many sales were bank owned compared to the others.  Short sales seem to dominate the properties for sale, but are low on the list of closed sales.

The Orlando Regional Realtor Association released their monthly housing statistics for Orange County and Seminole County for the month of September 2009 (area covers Orlando, Altamonte Springs, Lake Mary, Winter Garden, Winter Park, Longwood, etc.).  Here is a link to the full housing report.

ORRA Originated Sales

Inventory levels dropped slightly from 16,361 in August to 15,967 in September.  This continues the decline that started around summertime 2008. 

The number of properties currently sale pending is at the highest level ever seen with 8,790 properties under contract. In September 2008, this figure was just 3,256 and in September 2007 it was just 2,012.  Big change.  However, as of this morning 4,371 of these pending sales were short sales which presently have less than a 1/3 chance of making it to closing.  :-(

For the 3rd month in a row, the number of expired and withdrawn listings 1,860 (ones that did not sell and fell off the market) were less than the number of sold listings 2,151.  While this number of solds is lower than the June, July, and August numbers it is still very strong considering that the market typically slows down once school starts back up.

The average and median sales prices declined slightly yet again.  This is caused by the all the bank owned REOs and the short sales that are driving prices downward.  Median price was $125,000 and Average price was $156,400 for September 2009.

The Orlando Sentinel had an article on these figures today if you want to read up on more details.  The $8000 tax credit will be expiring in 6 weeks. So it if you want to tap into it, you must do so immediately.

Interesting story in today's Orlando Sentinel.  It goes into depth of one man's saga to try and buy a decent home before the $8000 tax credit runs out.  After 4 months of looking, the would be buyer gave up because everything he liked either sold with multiple offers or else could not pass FHA financing standards. Now that we are in mid-October, anybody that doesn't put a house under contract immediately is going to struggle to meet the deadline if they are trying to obtain conventional or FHA financing. 

The story points out that nearly all of the decent affordable Orlando homes for sale are selling with multiple offers.  Even the bank owned REO houses are selling with multiple offers.  The ones that don't sell fast are typically condos with exorbitant fees, homes in marginal neighborhoods, or homes with substantial repairs that make them un-financeable in their current condition.  Even the short sales seem to sell fairly quickly. However because a short sale can often take 3-4 months to close, buyers that want to take advantage of the $8000 tax credit before it expires on December 1 are gun-shy of trying to make an offer.

It is an interesting saga.  And it will be even more interesting to see how the Central Florida home sales are affected when the tax credit does expire. 

This is a great story.  But the most important message to get from the video clip is that the deadline to get a property under contract is looming very near.  If you want to buy something, you need to get an offer in immediately because the loan process will take at least 30 days and probably a little bit more.