According to the Realtor Association of Greater Miami and the Beaches, the Miami real estate market is showing signs of recovery. Sales of single family homes in Miami were up 47% in January 2009 compared to a year ago.

Coral Gables Real Estate Report

The Coral Gables Real Estate Report that I will be supplying monthly, will contain home statistics for the area of Coral Gables East of US1. This will then in turn be divided into homes that are on the water and homes that are not on the water.

Coral Gables Non-Waterfront Homes:

There are currently 107 homes on the market in this Coral Gables area.

* Highest priced listing: $4,200, 000 (located at 8015 Los Pinos Blvd.)
* Lowest priced listing: $450,000 (short sale located at 5620 Alhambra Circle)
* Pending Sales: 5
* Closed Sales 01/09-03/09: 6

10 homes are short sales (selling a home for less than its mortgage value), while presently no bank-owned properties are currently on the market in this part of Coral Gables.   Coral Gables median home price has dropped 30.9% from the same time last year, making this perhaps a very good time to purchase. This drop in price has also reflected a small surge of buyers entering into the marketplace.

The average list square foot price is $380 while the average sold square foot price was $324. The average days on the market were 262. The current rate of absorption for Coral Gables, meaning the current supply of inventory is 21 months. The formula for the supply of inventory is:

Number of homes sold ÷12 months = monthly sales
Number of homes on the market ÷number of monthly sales = supply of inventory

Coral Gables Waterfront Homes:

There are currently 57 waterfront homes on the market:

* Highest priced listing: $22,000,000 (located at 181 Leucadendra Dr)
* Lowest priced listing: $1,275,000 (located at 832 Alfonso Ave)
* Pending Sales: 2
* Closed Sales 01/09-03/09: 1 (a short sale at 5711 Granada Blvd for $1,900,000)

The average square foot list price is $842 and the average square foot sale price is $622. The current supply of inventory for waterfront homes in Coral Gables is 42 months.

Lynn Cromer is a real estate sales and marketing professional for Coldwell Banker in beautiful Pinecrest, Florida. For more information on Pinecrest, Florida or the communities of Coral Gables, Palmetto Bay and Coconut Grove, she can be reached at 305-962-4068, by email at Lynn@LynnCromer.com or online at www.LynnCromer.com

I am a big believer in social networking and being on top of the latest and best on the web. All week long, occuring on-line, is the National Real Estate CyberConvention & Expo. It is probably the most amazing convention you’ve ever seen. It’s totally on-line but has the look and feel of a ‘real-time’ convention.

1. First you register
2. Enter the Lobby of the Convention (there’s even a check-in desk).
3. Choose from entering a room to see speakers of the day, to shopping at the ‘store, attend social networking forums, enter forums for special Realtor designations. You name it, it’s there just like a ‘real’ convention.

Each day is highlighted by the speakers and the special events. Some of today’s speakers are Dave Beson, Bernice Ross, Dan Gooder Richard, and several more. Many of the big names in real estate coaching and website development seem to be there. Tomorrow Dirk Zeller and someone from Google will be speaking. It’s amazing and I believe extremely worthwhile for all Realtors.

So follow me to the CyberConvention and learn all you can about the newest, hottest and most up-to-date ways to improve your business for 2009!

You can also visit me at www.SouthFloridaHomeBlog.com for real estate statistics in the Miami, Florida neighborhoods of Pinecrest, Palmetto Bay, Coral Gables and Coconut Grove or email me at Lynn@LynnCromer.com.

Absorption Rate of Homes in Pinecrest, Florida

As a Homeowner, I believe it is important to understand a term you™ve probably been hearing a lot about known as Absorption Rate. Absorption rate considers dividing the current number of homes for sale by the rate at which they have been selling.
Understanding the absorption rate will help you understand how the inventory of homes on the market affects the sale prices in the Pinecrest Real Estate market. The longer the absorption rate, the longer it takes for a home to sell. I am going to be extremely broad with the absorption rate in Pinecrest in this article, but will be breaking it down in future posts by more particular neighborhoods.

There are currently 270 homes for sale in Pinecrest. There were 136 homes sold between January 2008 and January 2009.

We measure months of supply as: The Number of Homes Currently on the market ÷ The Average Number of Homes Sold each month in the past 12 Months.

• 136 home sales in 2008 divided by 12 months = 11.33 sales per month
• 270 divided by 11.33 sales per month = 23.8 months supply of inventory

Keep checking back daily as I will be breaking down the Pinecrest absorption rate into neighborhoods and will also be discussing absorption rates in Coral Gables & Palmetto Bay.
For more information on real estate data, please email me at Lynn@LynnCromer.com or call me at 305-962-4068.

Part 2: What You Get for the Money: $600,000-$700,000

This proved to be an interesting proposition as you can now buy either a nice single family home in Pinecrest in this price range or a 2 acre parcel with a home to tear down on it. I will show both of these options.

The home below is on over 2 acres or 93,218 square foot lot. It has 3 bedrooms and 2 baths and is now currently for rent. According to the Miami-Dade County tax recoreds, the 2 acres sold for $640,200. A builder has sub-divided the property into two separate acres and has plans to build new homes on each property. Below are the renderings of the new home.   Of course, you will need over $2,000,000 to build your dream home!

Pinecrest Acre Lot at 7450 SW 100 Street, Pinecrest, Florida

Following are photos of a “Real Home” purchase in the price range of $600,000-$700,000 in Pinecrest.
It is at 11145 SW 73 Avenue. It is an updated home on an oak-laden lot in the heart of Pinecrest. It has 4 bedrooms, 2 baths and 3,046 square feet. It was listed at $767,000 and sold for $650,000 in Oct. 2008. It was on the market for 162 days and was not a foreclosure.

For complete data of all the homes sold in Pinecrest, Florida, with photos, in this price range, since October 2008, just click this link for further data.

If there is a particular home you want to know about, just email me at Lynn@LynnCromer.com and I will email you the information along with photos and a full description of the property.

Feel free to comment on your opinions of this article here.

For more information about  Pinecrest Real Estate and surrounding neighborhoods such as Coral Gables or Palmetto Bay Florida, visit my South Florida real estate website at www.LynnCromer.com or email me at Lynn@LynnCromer.com.

Part 1: Pinecrest-What you get for the Money

A truly wonderful winter tradition in Pinecrest is the Pinecrest Gardner™s Farmers Market located at 8287 SW 124 Street. It has grown substantially through the years and now fills the entire parking lot of Gardner™s Market. I believe the Farmers Market is now organized by the Market Company, which is a special events and farmers market production company. If this is so, it was a terrific addition. Open every Sunday through mid-April, a variety of venders sell vegetables, fruits, plants, orchids, oils, herbs, jams, salsas and baked goods. Bee Heaven Farm~Pikarco, occupies the west side of the parking lot selling only organically grown fruits and vegetables all grown locally. They are part of a group known as œRedland Organics, a of group of local organic and sustainable growers working together towards a common goal – to stimulate our local economy and support local small family farms while providing the consumer with high-quality, locally-grown, organic and pesticide-free   produce at a reasonable cost. See their website.

Today the weather was gorgeous, 70 degrees at 9:30am. It was Heaven on earth here in Pinecrest. I bought fresh corn 3 for $1, peppers for $1 each, organic tomatoes, delicious strawberries for $3 a pint, an abundance of lettuces to last me through the week and I even bought a tomato plant, to try my thumb at those. I™ll let you know how that goes. But the market is amazing and shouldn™t be missed.

Below are other Farmers Markets in the area. Don™t miss them as they are very seasonal and last only through April. More information on these markets can be found at the Market Company.

The Palmetto Bay Farmers Market, SW 174th Street & SW 97th Avenue, Palmetto Bay: Every Sunday
Coral Gables Farmers Market, in front of City Hall at 405 Biltmore Way.
The Surfside Marketplace, 95th Street and Collins Avenue, Sundays
Lincoln Road Farmers Market, Lincoln Road, Miami Beach: Every Sunday
Normandy Village Marketplace, 71st St. at the Normandy Isle Fountain, Miami Beach, Saturday
Aventura Mall Farmers Market, Aventura Mall, Miami: Saturday & Sunday Resumes February, 2009.
Upper East Side Green Market, Legion Park, Miami: Every Saturday
The Fresh Market at the Market Company’s Miami Warehouse, 4127 NW 2nd Avenue (just west of the Miami Design District), open Tuesdays and Thursdays, except holidays, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

At my office meeting today at Coldwell Banker in Pinecrest, the most astonishing news was made perfectly clear.

Effective January 1, 2009, new  homeowners seeking insurance for  homes with a replacement cost value at $750,000 or more, located in the “wind-borne debris region,” will be required to have all openings outfitted with shutters or opening protections to be eligible for coverage from Citizens.  If you are a  current customer of Citizens, you  will   be required to meet these requirements by  your policy renewal date, or no later than June 30, 2009 or your policy will not be renewed.

This means that if you don’t have shutters on your home and rely on Citizens for your windstorm policy, they WILL NOT renew your policy. In case you’ve forgotten, Citizens is the State of Florida’s homeowners’ insurance safety net, created in 2002 by the Legislature to offer property coverage to Floridians who were unable to obtain private insurance options..

This is huge! The entire County of Miami-Dade is located in this “wind-borne debris region! And  many of the homes in  Pinecrest have a replacement cost value above $750,000. Many of Pinecrest’s homes were built before the requirement for storm shutters and consequently many of the long time residents have not put on shutters. There are plenty of Pinecrest residents without shutters.

What this also means  is that this new law affects  ANY home currently under contract that will be closing after January 1, 2009. Therefore, if you have sold your home or are in the process of buying one, and it is closing AFTER January 1, 2009, you will not be able to obtain wind storm insurance from Citizens if the house does not have hurricane shutters or other approved window covering.   If the home has shutters, there is no issue. It it doesn’t, we all know that it takes months to get shutters, so if your home is closing in early 2009, it will be almost impossible to install shutters in time. Hopefully you will be able to obtain insurance from a private company.

Although the legislation applies only to Citizens, we can only assume that any private insurance company offering wind storm insurance in Florida will shortly follow suit. And although the Citizens coverage is for insurable dwellings  over $750,000, what’s to keep them from lowering the rate for insurable dwellings over $500,000? Or $350,000?  

If you click the link here, FAQ Wind-Borne Debris, you will be directed to Citizens website for more information.

I would be interested in your comments. If you have any real estate needs in the Pinecrest, Palmetto Bay, Coconut Grove or Coral Gables area, don’t hesitate to email me at Lynn@LynnCromer.com.

Note on Dec. 14, 2008: I have mentioned this new legislation to a couple of top producers in the Pinecrest market, and none of them had heard of it. I was astounded! Most Realtors aren’t even aware of the new legislation. So sellers, take note and protect your investment!

The Realtor Association of  Greater Miami & The Beaches has posed this question to its members and Realtors are voting on it:

Do you think the county appraisers should consider SHORT SALES when determining a property’s value?

My  answer posted on the Board’s site is:

If you’re talking about a closed short sale being used as a comparable, then absolutely, my answer is an appraiser should use it. But many appraisers use Active listings to help them determine value when there are not enough sales in an area.

Then my answer is absolutely no, because an active short sale is not an indication whether a bank will accept that price for the property. On the other hand, an active foreclosure could be used, as we know that a bank would accept that asking price for the property.

40% of the respondees said that short sales should not be considered as they are not a true reflection of the market while 60% said that short sales are evidence of true market conditons. The vote is still out, so we’ll see what my fellow Realtors decide.

I’d be interested in other Realtors opinion as to the question posted above.

Welcome to Lynn Cromer’s Blog! This blog will provide you with valuable information, tips, and general insight into the real estate market in Miami.