There are deals and steals in the current Tampa bay area real estate market that were unheard of just 12 months ago. If you’re looking for your dream home, agents say now is the time.
Builders flooded the market with too much inventory and investors got too greedy. “They've purchased too many homes, they bought a house that was too expensive and they can't rent it and they can't make the numbers work,” says real estate agent Debbie Zito.
And those market forces are hammering home prices way down.
Kenneth Bryan put his home on the market and just mistimed the peak of last year's frenzy. He slashed his asking price ever since. “The market seemed to start dropping as soon as we listed it. And so we continued to lower our price, but never enough to get in front of the market,” says Kenneth.
Kenneth listed his home in the golf club community of Cheval at the going rate of 499- thousand dollars, similar homes were selling for as much...but he found no takers. He told us, “We did adjust the price probably three or four times. And the last time we adjusted it was at 30-thousand.”
And after nearly a year on the market, Kenneth became a very motivated seller, “Of course we moved to another house so we wanted to sell, needed to sell at some point, we didn't need two houses in this market.”
After crunching the numbers, Kenneth dropped the selling price of the home to three hundred 42-thousand five hundred dollars. Agents say it was steal for any buyer. It was an adjustment of more than 150-thousand dollars from the original asking price of 499 –thousand.
But, Kenneth says because he got in three years ago, he still made money.
“I think the people that are getting hurt are the ones flipping or buying investment homes and thinking they could make 50 or 100-thousand,” he says.
Bottom-line, agents say buyers are in charge, so sellers need to be prepared to deal. Debbie Zito says most people are asking for closing costs where last year they probably wouldn't have gotten them, “There are builders out there that are giving cars, and giving pools and giving elevators depending on what the project is. There is definitely room for negotiation.”
