A tale of two communities

If you are looking around Palmetto, Parrish, Bradenton and Sarasota you might think that short sales and foreclosures have taken over the market.

Not so.

The distress sales do make up almost half of recent sales but by a thin margin regular equity sellers still make up the more than 50 percent of the home sales in these areas.

You will also find that often some areas have been hit much harder than others.

For example River Plantation in Parrish was pretty hard hit by foreclosures and short sales. It was a bargain hunters paradise.

Not to far up the road on the other hand River Woods has very few distress sales and a healthy number of homes being sold.

One of the major differences is River Woods has a number of home sellers who bought before the real estate boom and didn't use their home as a check book via credit lines.

That means that homes can be sold at current market value and the homeowners still can walk away with a reasonable amount of return on their investment.

River Plantation is a relatively new community where the homeowners may have been stretched with their mortgage payments or may have been hoping to sell their homes quickly to make a profit.

The market turn around meant a number of the homes in River Plantation ended up as short sale or going back to lenders and on the market as foreclosures.

You can see this same situation all over Manatee and Sarasota counties. One community is hit hard by the turnaround and a similar one not far away can be relatively unscathed.

All the best
Greg Owens P.A.
Keller Williams On The Water
941.932.6343
greg@teamworksfla.com
www.teamworksfla.com