Not easy selling houses
 

We sometimes think it’s easy to sell houses especially in The Villages. While The Villages is still the top-selling master-planned community in the US, the new home sales figures are a little anemic.

I thought for sure with all of the building down south and the larger numbers of new homes for sale that new home sales would start to climb to closer to 3,000 per year. Actual, 2018 sales were a tad less than 2017. What are your thoughts for new home sales in 2019?

Year Homes Sold (Home and Lot) Average Sale Price
1986 511 *
1987 543 *
1988 517 *
1989 542 $ 74,000
1990 502 79,000
1991 430 81,000
1992 562 87,000
1993 567 93,000
1994 686 98,000
1995 700 106,000
1996 753 115,000
1997 1,054 119,000
1998 1,321 129,000
1999 1,544 139,000
2000 1,776 151,000
2001 2,074 156,000
2002 2,260 163,000
2003 3,329 168,000
2004 3,955 204,000
2005 4,263 232,000
2006 3,935 257,000
2007 2,403 251,000
2008 2,236 231,000
2009 2,115 229,000
2010 2,208 231,000
2011 2,307 241,000
2012 2,850 244,000
2013 3,419 271,000
2014 2,601 304,000
2015 2,294
2016 1,966
2017 2,231
2018 2,134

Baby boomers peak starting in 2019
 

Many people like to call themselves baby boomers. In fact 1957 in the peak year for live births in this country. They will be eligible for social security in 2019. The vast majority of people claim SS before they reach full benefits. That is 66 for this age.

Starting in 2019 sales will increase well above the rest of the US housing market.

My thought is that there is missing data and that is the number of new homes that were for sale in each year.

I think your title sounds negative and in my opinion is not the case at all. We had five homes in our Village of 53 homes sell a short time ago and they sold quickly.

I would think that the number of existing homes that are hitting the market would start to affect the numbers on the new home sales side.

I think the missing piece is, How many new homes are being built and offered for sale each year. You can't sell more than you have/build.

I think a better metric of how easy it is to sell a house it median time it takes to sell one, not how many were sold. Statistics on time to sell though I think are hard to come by.

The number of houses sold is at least partially dependent on the number of houses there are for sale, but time to sell is not.

I think in the new areas the developer wasn't up to full speed building houses and that might have limited sales. If that's true 2019 should end up seeing a lot more houses sold.

I know we took a number of trips to the new areas just to see what was going on. It seemed like one time we would see some streets close to being built and then a month a later when we looked it looked like all those houses looked sold. So based on that kinda' not too accurate metric it seems that at least in the new areas houses were selling pretty quickly.

The sales data for new home sales in The Villages is correct as far as I know. It was taken from 2015 SLCDD Agenda information and the last four years from headline figures in the Daily Sun.

Note: I am not discussing the sales of pre-owned homes which are probably reducing the sales of new homes. The sales figures for pre-owned may once again be larger than new home sales.

The metric is year to year new home sales figures as I don't have the number of houses built each year. The Developer might have those figures:icon_wink:

Construction and sale of Fenney area houses started in late 2016/early 2017

I think the beginning of 2018 was slow as there were virtually no new homes for sale north of 44 and a lot people still were not sure what was going on down south, they didn't have the vision. Now that Marsh Landing is well underway with the recreation center and all of the amenities going up in that area along with golf courses, and golf car access coming soon, there will be a pick up in number of units for 2019. Even though 6 plus new homes per day 365 days a year is amazing, it will be interesting to see the figures a year from now.

:popcorn:

So in 2017 the developer sold 2,231 newly built houses. That is a huge number of houses to sell, especially in one development. For comparison I checked the worldwide sales of Roll Royce Motor cars for that year: 3,362 and Ferrari: 8,398.

I would agree with most that new home sales are dependent on what the Developer builds and that is dependent in part on how many new homes they project they can sell in a given year.

I as many others wish them success in future years to meet their sales goals. To what extent their sales will increase I thought might be an interesting topic to discuss. Past sales figures may or may not be an indication of what is possible but it’s a place to start. The lower 2018 new home sales figure was a surprise to me as I thought they had ramped up builds last year and would surpass 2017 sales.

IMHO, houses in the Villages with a good location, that are in good shape, and that are priced reasonably to market conditions, will sell like drinks during happy hour during a Rocky and the Rollers show on Market Night in a town square.

Were they new homes?

Bonus is eventually all new houses are sold. Fenney has to be close to being sold out. In 07 when we came here the houses had multiple people trying to buy, due to worry of the possibility of build out

We have more information about wher the next build will be than in 07, and build out is not in my future and possibly in my next generation.

So my thought why more homes sold so quickly in years past, was Fear Of Build Out