News on real estate for Santa Rosa & Escambia Counties per the Pensacola News Journal Housing Update
Go to our website: Gulf Coast Homeseekers Magazine Online for more info and to see what's the latest out there for sale.
gchmama
Friday, January 23, 2009
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
A New Hope
Just a quick note - the middle of the month is always tough as that is when we are preparing our magazine to go to the press. By some miracle, we are still here!
Today is history in the making, we are all watching, and let us all take a moment to pray for a new version of our great country. A country in which we are all working together to return to our simple former roots of worldwide greatness, not because of our money, but because our forefathers were tough enough to get us our freedom.
Optimistically yours,
gchmama
Thursday, January 8, 2009
LOSING HISTORY IN SANTA ROSA COUNTY
A huge fire on Jan. 6 nearly destroyed an entire block of historic buildings in Milton, the Santa Rosa County Seat. Fortunately, the Imogene Theatre, built in 1912, was mostly saved although it looks like it suffered some costly damage. For some reason, this loss has touched my heart, maybe because the little town we moved from has lost almost all of its downtown due to fires in historic buildings. Maybe because we had a fire once, too. Sometimes random events serve to remind us of how little we humans are in the face of nature.
Sadly,
gchmama
Friday, January 2, 2009
CONTRADICTING THE DOOM AND GLOOM FORECAST
Dear Reader - Let's talk numbers. I'm starting to get so irritated at the under-reporting and over-exaggeration of the press that I'm going to give you a personal snapshot of real estate in Gulf Breeze, Florida.
In April of '04, I bought my 1500 SF+ house with detached garage for $128,000. It needed a bit of sprucing up. In 2005, I forget the exact month, we had our house reappraised for a re-fi to get out of our ARM loan (thank you lord!) and be put on a fixed rate. See, when you own your own business and you have to get a liar's loan, there are consequences i.e. 8% minimum variable rate. Standing on the right side of 40, we knew that variable interest rates can bite you bad, so we got out of ours by leveraging our equity. How? Our house now appraised at about $250,000 give or take. Yes, in less than a year, our house showed a 95% increase in value.
Along comes the crash, oh my! Now, according to Zillow, my house is worth a measly $170,000. That means my house now, in the middle of the worst real estate slump since Jesus was born, is worth a sad 33% more than I paid for it. Cry me a river.
My point? If I was a sensationalist journalist trying to make a living off of headlines, I could say my home value dropped by 32%! Are you following me here, folks?
Someone please paint a real picture such as home values that doubled and even tripled in value in months will show a horrendous decrease when the market rights itself. Everybody needs to stop panicking and stop thinking of your house as an investment - it's a roof over your head that will, over many years, increase in value because inflation always goes "up".
We are taking it in the "shorts" on some investment property but not really - just accepted an awful loan thinking it would be our only chance to ever have waterfront property. So,now we have an essentially worthless 1.3 acres of real estate because the naysayers are telling you not to buy anything.
It's your choice future homebuyers - but someday, someone has to get off the fence and stop being afraid of the truth!
My '09 verbose and opinionated thoughts of the day,
gchmama
In April of '04, I bought my 1500 SF+ house with detached garage for $128,000. It needed a bit of sprucing up. In 2005, I forget the exact month, we had our house reappraised for a re-fi to get out of our ARM loan (thank you lord!) and be put on a fixed rate. See, when you own your own business and you have to get a liar's loan, there are consequences i.e. 8% minimum variable rate. Standing on the right side of 40, we knew that variable interest rates can bite you bad, so we got out of ours by leveraging our equity. How? Our house now appraised at about $250,000 give or take. Yes, in less than a year, our house showed a 95% increase in value.
Along comes the crash, oh my! Now, according to Zillow, my house is worth a measly $170,000. That means my house now, in the middle of the worst real estate slump since Jesus was born, is worth a sad 33% more than I paid for it. Cry me a river.
My point? If I was a sensationalist journalist trying to make a living off of headlines, I could say my home value dropped by 32%! Are you following me here, folks?
Someone please paint a real picture such as home values that doubled and even tripled in value in months will show a horrendous decrease when the market rights itself. Everybody needs to stop panicking and stop thinking of your house as an investment - it's a roof over your head that will, over many years, increase in value because inflation always goes "up".
We are taking it in the "shorts" on some investment property but not really - just accepted an awful loan thinking it would be our only chance to ever have waterfront property. So,now we have an essentially worthless 1.3 acres of real estate because the naysayers are telling you not to buy anything.
It's your choice future homebuyers - but someday, someone has to get off the fence and stop being afraid of the truth!
My '09 verbose and opinionated thoughts of the day,
gchmama
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