What are the three most important words to look for when shopping for real estate. LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION. That was true before and during the real estate boom and is now more important then anytime before. WHY? Location is #1 because when your buying a property you should want to buy in the best areas you can afford to because they will hold their values better then other less desirable areas. This is true through the good and bad times and that helps when you want to sell as well.
When people read stories about how bad the real estate market is, they think its the same all over the country. Well, ITS NOT and thats the mistake most buyers make, thinking that all real estate is in the same boat will do more harm to buyers then good. Thats because when they are shopping for a home many believe, they can low ball every home, that the seller is desperate to sell, causing many buyers to falsely believe they have the advantage over the seller which is not always the case.
I'm here to tell buyers LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION.
So lets talk about our Palm Beach County market because what happens in other parts of the country only matters as it relates to the impact it has on buyers of Palm Beach County property. What I mean by this is property values in the New York, New Jersey, Connecticut real estate markets will have a bigger impact on our immediate area then say Idaho, or Indiana because those are not our buyers, the North Easterners are. So what happens in the NE is more important to us then other areas. LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION
That being said we then have to look our Palm Beach market based on the same premise of LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION. You can look at one area of the County for instance the western communities, which have all been affected negatively by housing depreciation. However those areas with a higher average family income have weathered the storm better then the others because they have a better LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION. So not only will they have less deprecation on average then the other areas, their distress homes will sell faster and for a higher price because of the communities LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION.
As I've said many times before Palm Beach County real estate has been in a slow but steady recovery, not all areas have done as well or as badly. Our numbers had been steadily improving for the last 4 months, that was until Januaries numbers came out and then all the negative press started to paint a false narrative based on bad data relating to our median homes prices.
From a Feb 28th article "The Realtors Association of the Palm Beaches said Tuesday that the correct median sales price for an existing single-family home in January was $175,000, $25,000 more than what the group reported last week when sales statistics were released statewide and nationally.
Condominiums and town homes also saw a bump-up after the error was discovered, increasing from last week's $63,900 median price tag to $75,000."
So our local home prices where actually up and not down as originally reported by the national media.
On Feb 28 the Washington Post published an article with findings from Case Shiller concerning the condition of the national real estate markets" The Case-Shiller home price index showed that prices dropped between November and December in 18 of the 20 metropolitan areas that are followed. Together, the 20 markets covered by the index account for about half of the nation’s housing. The steepest declines were in Atlanta, Chicago and Detroit. Miami and Phoenix were the only cities to show an increase."
So while home prices where dropping all over the country they did not drop in the Miami area, so while the overall news wasn't good there was good news for the SE corridor of Florida, again LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION.
Not all markets are created equally, when looking at homes in Palm Beach County remember the three words to determine true market value LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION.
