Broker's Corner with Tanya Chappell May 2021
Secure Investments Realty and Management
Hi, it's a beautiful Spring Day here in Sunny Florida! We've been spoiled these last few days with an extended cool spring in the 70s/ low 80s. But today we're at 87 so the cool breeze may be on its way out.
As you might have guessed, the real estate market is ridiculously hot! It is the spring selling season and we have run outta houses! Ok so maybe it's not that drastic but- close!! Lumber prices are triple what they were last year, existing homes are flying off the shelf with multiple offers and closing at, over, or very close to the asking price.
The summer rental and sales season are heating up but there is a shortage of homes for sale. It seems this is because of the uncertain economic times and a lot of people are staying put. This is putting more pressure on new home sales, so builders are pretty happy! Jeff Is staying busy with lots of new home starts.
We are just weeks away from finishing our Hawthorne lake-house flip, and boy oh boy, it is a beauty! I cannot wait to put that one the market and start our next project. We intend to simultaneously renovate the river home and build a new home to sell on my lot on Lake Geneva in Keystone Heights. Just because that's how we roll. No downtime ... just work - work -work! Now you know I'm kidding because that's just not my style. We mix in just the right amount of play with our work and that's easy to do here on the river. Every day is a vacation day when you live on the water.
We recently attended the Spring Parade of homes to get ideas and I have included pictures of some of my favorites throughout this post.
Parade of Homes Map
Entry coat rack and seat
In our property management world, Tianna and Ashley are doing a great job of getting leases renewed and properties pre-leased for the busy summer season. Of course, as you may have guessed the shortage in the sales market has forced would-be buyers to rent instead. And we all know the rule of supply and demand. In the low supply, high demand market, rental prices are continuing to increase just like the sales market.
Add that together with the fact that Covid has opened up people's eyes to remote working and Florida's population rate is increasing faster than ever. It seems we have a perfect storm developing that's pushed prices to double-digit appreciation rates. How long this continues is anyone's guess. People are speculating on whether we are reaching the peak yet. No one wants to get stuck overpaying. I don't think we've hit that peak quite yet, but I'd certainly tread lightly keeping that in mind.
Love this basket weave tile accent
Beautiful wood art work. I'm going to make some of these for our vacation rental
Beautiful wood art work. I'm going to make some of these for our vacation rental
Love these pieces of wood art
It is a very interesting and unfortunate time for the city of Gainesville to enact this new, much stricter Rental Ordinance that they are touting will provide more affordable housing....???? The new ordinance outlined in our feature article requires non homesteaded properties to obtain a landlord permit and to be retrofitted to have stricter codes and energy efficiency standards than a non-rental. This carries higher permitting cost, and mandatory inspections by the city but most disturbing is the requirement of any property that has someone other than the immediate family living in the home most also get a landlord permit. So that niece, nephew, boyfriend, or mother-in-law in your home now qualifies you as a landlord regardless of if you charge them rent. The city states they're receiving some benefit and when you refer to their definition of rent, they're stating "any benefit received" is considered rent. This combined with the energy efficiency retrofitting mandating and government inspections is threatening private property rights in the eyes of many. It appears to be tipping some investors towards selling now while the markets hot.
How posh!! Show off your wine collection in your great room!
A great way to dress up an otherwise bare wall
But unfortunately, those concerns continued to land on deaf ears. Our stakeholder group met with met online with every county commissioner this past week to try to educate them on our position and concerns and ask them to wait at least a year to let the bugs work out of the system the city put in place. We did also point out there's a lot of old farm homes and mobile homes out in the county areas that will have to do quite a lot to meet some of these requirements. I suspect a lot of them may not be able to do it and won’t qualify for the permit to continue to rent their property.
There is a group of Landlords, Realtors, Brokers and Attorney’s that are looking into a class action lawsuit to help at least modify the areas of this new ordinance that step on your rights. If you have any interest in donating even $10 to the fund to help fight for your private property rights, please reach out to me and I’ll share this information with you so you can do your part to help if you want to.
Rectangular accent windows for more light
I love this wood look garage door with a few windows and the dark frame
I generally make it a point not to get political in my Newsletter and Blogs, but I would not like to see this heavy government hand stepping on private property rights and fear as others do, that this is all leading down the path to rent control.
So sorry to end with the gloom and doom so I have tried to lighten it up a bit with this picture of one of my favorite things to do in life. Ride the rivers on my Jetski with my pal Pepper and play volleyball on the beach with friends.
Psssssttttt!!!
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