Florida Home Sales: Buyers can’t take their time anymore

Prospective homebuyers used to go slow, considering the size of the investment they were making. They wouldn’t sign a contract until they visited the home two or three times, chatted to neighbours and checked with local police to make sure the area was safe.

Who has time for that these days? …….. Hardly anyone.
The housing market has soared past recovery and is bearing down on chaos. Buyers in control during the bust now are on the defensive, racing from home to home and making offers on the spot before somebody else swoops in with a better deal.

The insanity has even created a new sales category of sorts: Flash sales. It’s a home that gets listed in the morning, and is under contract by nightfall.

“We’re literally running to houses and as soon as you get there, there are three other people,” said Terry Story of Coldwell Banker in Boca Raton. “Buyers are very anxious to get something quickly.”

The flash sales are becoming more common, practically out of necessity.

Pembroke Pines resident Angela Medina and her husband were driving north to look at two homes in Palm Beach County when her smartphone buzzed with a text alert about a three-bedroom home that had just been listed in Palm Beach Gardens.

The couple toured it, made an offer and signed the contract, all within 24 hours.

“From the time it hit my phone to the time we saw it, maybe an hour passed,” said Medina, 36. “You’ve got to be proactive.”

The sale of the Medina’s own four-bedroom Pines property went the same way. It was listed and under contract in one day. Both deals are scheduled to close July 1.

Stiff competition from investors and a shortage of properties for sale have cut the number of days a home stays on the market.

In April, the typical single-family home in Palm Beach County went under contract in 78 days, down from 90 a year ago, according to the Realtors Association of the Palm Beaches.
Broward County’s days on market declined to 34 from 45 during the same period, the Greater Fort Lauderdale Realtors said.

Real estate agents say many other attractive homes are getting snapped up sooner than that. Not every quick sale happens overnight, but in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties, 1,503 homes have gone under contract within two weeks during April, a 149 % increase from a year earlier, according to the Redfin real estate brokerage.

From March to April, the tri-county region had a 45 % increase in contracts within two weeks, the highest percentage of Redfin’s 22 markets nationwide. Overbuilding, speculation and easy financing combined to cause the housing crash. The recovery has been fueled by investors paying cash, a dwindling inventory and historically low mortgage rates in the 3 % range.

In the past week, rates have inched up to over 4 %, which will cause even more people to jump into the market, said Jim Heidisch, broker at Campbell & Rosemurgy in Deerfield Beach. “There’s a sense of urgency,” he said. “I always tell people, ‘You’re not buying a house, you’re buying money, and you want to get the cheapest rate you can.’”

Robyn Jackson, Redfin’s South Florida area manager, said the increase in quick home sales is not just a function of the market. The text alerts and other technology have empowered buyers, giving them access to listings and other details that used to be available only through a real estate agent.

Most buyers Jackson works with have found homes they want to see even before they meet with her.

“With all the information out there, we have more educated, savvy buyers today,” Jackson said.

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