Citizens First Bank being sold
 

Citizens First Bank is apparently being bought by Seacoast Banking Corporation of Florida.

I expect that the new bank will not be offering the free popcorn

For about $700 Million if I read correctly. I'm curious what is behind this decision. I would think that owning a bank would provide substantial profits... forever.

Maybe they aren't doing "enough" business to suit the developers due to the downturn in housing?
I wonder if Seacoast will offer a broader range of house financing than Citizen's First does.

No surprise...............The Villages is a land developer......They DEVELOP.

Land developers are not interested in banking, newpapers, radio stations, water treatment facilities, local government, etc., etc., etc.

:oops:

As I understand it when the father-son Schwartz-Morse team started out local appraisers and banks would not value the homes or grant adequate mortgages on them based on the relatively high prices at which homes were to be sold. To solve this problem they started their own bank.

No big deal. I never liked Citizens First to begin with. They don't offer the best services.

But, you can likely score a good deal on a used popcorn machine

Amazes me the nonsense that get posted, Like Costco moving here from 15yrs ago and also Trader Joes rumors that also went on for years.

Hopefully they'll offer a credit card

Are you suggesting the newspaper is printing false information?:1rotfl:

No worries for us only keep few thousand, in check account for local businesses. So far behind in modern technology for bill pay, statements, not worth anything else

May not have anything to do with financial loss or worth. For the right price, everything is for sale.

I love my wife, wouldn't take a million dollars for just one night. But...if the price is right

We have $46 in ours!

I keep the required $100 in my Citizens Savings and $250 max in my Citizens Checking. The return they offer is embarrassing and insulting.

All banks are looking to fleece customers anyway. I’ve never had problem with citizens hopefully that will continue with whomever the new shysters are…..

I opened an account a few months ago with the minimum to keep the account both open and free of fees. $25.

The young man (Banker, not Teller.) sitting at the New Accounts desk could not be more preoccupied with B.S.-ing with his desk mate, slower than molasses at moving my paperwork around, or better at asking personal and semi-offensive questions of which I had zero intention of answering. Lake Sumpter Landing branch for what it is worth.

I'm gonna go out on a ledge and say he is probably one of the ones whose position is considered "duplicative" and will be consolidated aka terminated. No loss.

Maybe it's a generational thing and his "personal and emotional state" were more important than hustling at his job. Maybe. Who's the guy on here with the signature that says, "Pogo was right?" Yep, he was. We have met the enemy, and the enemy is us.

Agree with a3..............been thru a number of "mergers" and it's a nothing burger.

:gc:

I've had nothing but excellent service there.

Agreed. I have a checking account there and love the free checks they provide me because I’m a veteran. Plus their interest rate is significantly higher than the paltry amount I get from my USAA account that I have had for 45 years!

Controlling the narrative (newspaper and radio) and getting favorable regulatory treatment (local government) has seemed to work very well for a certain developer.

Up north we started out with Bank of New England, until it was bought by Bank of America. That was like 40 or 50 years ago, still have BOA.

A bank is good for a checking account and a credit card. For investing, use Fidelity or Vanguard.

Send a picture

Ever increasing regulations and tight net interest margins cut into profits like you would not believe.

Although we bank with Citizens mostly for bill pay we don’t keep a lot of money there because the pay very very low rates less than 1%. Mid Florida CU is right Nextdoor and pays 3% on savings

We use Citizens and have for over 20 years. They are good for convenience as they have branches everywhere. Only have checking with them as a vehicle for some online bill pay. We keep a very low amount in there as online banks are paying 4%.

Wait did you say Trader Joe’s is moving here? 😆😆😆

Never used Citizens.

Beached Whale
 

Seacoast has bought a beached whale. Getting it back out into the ocean and having it survive will be a chore. More than half the mortgages they will acquire are lower than 2.5%. The housing market is at a major correction point and the demographic makeup of the Villages doesn’t matter after 250,000 in assets per villager household because of FDIC caps.

Wrong! They will!

IF true, it's factored into the price..........easy math.

:what:

The Villages is a for-profit corp.

The Villages does not pay for music.

Amenities are built & sold by The Villages at a profit....why make less.

Taxes rise now.

:shrug:

Sub prime is a difficult amortization
 

Not as bad as national figures I suppose that place subprimes at above 90%
Sub prime borrowers have little interest in paying anything off early….EASY Math…lol.
Their money earns more invested in money markets

Perhaps property of the villages got a good price for their banks and like most of us occasionally do with property for the same reason, just let it happen. A neighbor suggested that maybe they needed the money. I don’t think that was it and just believe it was a good business deal. For what it’s worth, I did check a few times Citizens best mortgage rates and found their 15 and 30 year interest rates above others. We have no “skin in the game” as we bank with Truist and Chase.

A few years ago, our bank up north was sold to another community bank and we had to do some “work” to get our bills being paid out of our account because the new bank gave us a new account number. We were not pleased with the new banks service and they soon lost a good customer.

It is easy math...........buy knows their targeted ROI, they know the effective yield on the banks assets, they know the banks cost of money, the buyer adjusts its purchase price for the bank. Very easy.

:024:

Who does pay for music? I thought it was Villages Entertainment which was owned by the Villages (or a subsidiary or a licensed entity or …). Is that not the case?

Whoa, take it easy there.. your enthusiasm to trash the current developers is impressive. But did it ever occur to you that your crystal ball may be cracked?

Beached Whale?
 

Wow, if I had known you could get $750 Million for a beached whale I would have bought one a long time ago. Thanks for the tip!

It does have the appearance of a beached whale. New generation banks are a fraction of the size of older banking institutions. The younger generation will primarily bank online and have little use for the brick and mortars. And as much as I hate to admit it, all those over 55 years old aren't really aren't all that long for this world and when banks are looking at the whole picture all this is taken into consideration. Twenty years go by in a hurry. I shouldn't forget what the future of AI will do to the banking process, it will be a whole new world.