Real Estate

Redfish Village in Blue Mountain Beach has burst to life with 17 units sold last month. This photo from five years ago shows the building in RFV where First Note Music Hall just opened.

If you are a regular reader of my column, you may remember me saying to expect incredible headlines this year. Well, “South Walton Condo Sales Up 119%" is just that, an incredible headline. The condo sales in Redfish Village are part of a 119% increase over the same month last year.

Home sales in WaterColor through the end of April are higher than they've ever been! Looking at data from the Emerald Coast Association of Realtors (ECAR), we see that year-to-date home sales in WaterColor have outpaced sales of all other years through the first four months. Eleven of this year’s sales happened in April.

We have more than doubled last year’s numbers, with a growth of more than
113%, and far surpassed our market’s peak year of 2005. According to ECAR, The Premier Property Group was responsible for 37.5% of WaterColor sales this year.

Want to look back in time? This chart shows you the historical quantity of
home sales in South Walton, going back to 1993 through the end of March
2011.
 

Home sales skyrocketed last month, up 83% compared to the same time last year! According to the Emerald Coast Association of Realtors (ECAR), there were 66 closed sales of detached homes in February.

This number equals February 2004 and is only one sale less than the highest number of sales for February which happened in 2005.  

February was hot, and I’m not talking about the temperature. February is typically our slowest month for real estate in SoWal. When we looked at pending sales in January we knew sales would be up if they closed in February.

That turned out to be true. Real estate sales are on the rise and many people are jumping in.

On January 11, I reported that both the number of sales AND the median sold price for homes in Rosemary Beach  actually increased in 2010.

That wasn’t the case for the overall market in SoWal. But let's look at some other positive changes. How did real estate sales move in January?

Real estate is local. I don’t care what the market is doing in Alaska, and the people in Alaska don’t care about the Florida market.

Breaking it down further, the real estate market in South Walton has nothing to do with the market in Orlando.

Recently I wrote a summary on home sales in Rosemary Beach.

This week I’ll share data from WaterSound and WaterColor, comparing those annual sales with Rosemary Beach.

Though two of these communities, WaterColor and WaterSound, were developed by St Joe, each of these developments is unique and distinct from the other.

The inventory of homes listed for sale in Rosemary Beach, Florida peaked at 107 in June 2009. December 2010 ended with 66 homes actively listed for sale in Rosemary Beach, 38% less than the peak inventory. We haven’t seen inventory levels this low since the end of 2005.

Let's break it down and take a closer look . . .

Rosemary Beach Inventory of Homes from Years 2000-2010

As 2011 rang in, so did real estate sales figures, closing out 2010. Over the next few weeks, I will report details on different segments of the real estate market in SoWal.

Many people have asked how 2010 compares to previous years and I now have the answers.