Homes selling like hot cakes
 

We have been coming down since 2016 and plan on retiring, buying and living full time in the very near future. I see that most or all homes appear to sell within hours of listing and the prices have skyrocketed with no end in sight. Who is buying all these properties??? Are these new retirees, are they snowbirds, or are they speculators looking to make a buck renting them out? Is this all a bubble or will this continue into 2022? A brand new home we looked at in 2017 was listed for $270,000 - that same exact home today is around $400,000. They used to discount some of the homes when they advertised them on WVLG, no more. Most homes they advertise are $500,000+. My home has also appreciated but not at TV rate.

My gut tells me that the recent rate of appreciation of homes in TV is not sustainable. My gut has been wrong many times.
When the housing market bubble burst in 2007-2008, I had been watching the market in TV for a couple of years. There was a brief downward movement, but nothing like what was happening in other parts of Florida, or other parts of the USA.
We all like to feel as if we bought at the bottom, the perfect time.

I guess the real questions for you is "can I still afford TV at the current prices?"
"Do I want to?"
"What if I buy and the market drops?" (if you aren't planning on selling in the near future, does this matter?)
"What if I don't buy and the market continues to rise, even if it is at a more reasonable rate?"

You will never have the chance again to buy in 2016, or 2017. Agonizing over that won't help you.
As has been suggested in other similarly themed threads, you could still buy in TV, but maybe not the home you dreamed of, or the neighborhood you originally desired. There are many different price points in TV.

Low interest rates and lifestyle. 2 powerful things that will keep driving sales in TV. We are in a bubble but TV will not suffer as the rest of the country will when the bubble pops. And it will pop.

I watched this run on TV homes begin around Spring 2020. I'd been seriously looking for a home for at least 1.5 years when I noticed they were beginning to sell faster and faster. Around July, selling so fast that there was no opportunity to book a flight and get there before the property went into pending sale status. The prices weren't rising quickly though. One came up, exactly what we had been looking for. We bought wo seeing the property in-person. Our realtor took us on a facetime tour 1 hour after the listing hit the market, and we had an accepted offer within 3 hours. So stinking risky but there was no other way. I don't know when the pricing began to increase like it has but it's insane. A villa just like ours, with no extras, in a very nearby Village, was new on the market just a few days ago for $89k more than we paid in 9/2020. Unbelievable.

I don’t see the prices coming down any but I doubt they will increase at this pace. Great time to sell if you are moving out of the Villages!

TV is unique in that the price of all homes is set by new construction. In other markets new construction doesn't exist or is just an influencer.

It makes complete sense that home prices have risen lock step with construction costs. Throw on some pent demand, political uncertainty, and low interest rates and here we are. Speculation is not a large factor as new homes can't be sold for more than paid plus improvements for a profit in less than 12 months of home ownership.

I overheard a guy the other night down at Brownwood say that the biggest factor driving the prices upward in TV and homes selling so quickly now is that Costco has applied for a building permit in Wildwood

Resales North of 44 are still affordable in many cases.

1) The real estate market is HOT in most parts of the country - in the northeast, anything under $1.5 million is under contract in a month.
2) Since COVID, people/companies realized the workforce can work from home - home can be anywhere, including Florida.

There are a lot of people still in the workforce, between 48 and 60, who are selling their primary home, relocating to FLA (some in the VIllages) and maybe renting a small apartment in their home town.
And still walking away with money in their pocket.

It's not just here, the market is hot all over the country. Low interest rates, and high cost of building materials are driving the prices up.

We came here last Jan. and spent a week looking at homes. We bought one and then went home and put our Texas house up for sale. It sold in 3 days in a bidding war at $10,000 over asking price -- and my asking price was $50K over the price I was asking the previous year when I gave up and took it off the market. I got enough on my Texas house to buy TWO houses in TV.

So it's not just TV.

Nobody will confirm it, but my theory is that millions of Boomers like me, with a lifetime of savings to lose, looked at 6 trillion in new deficit spending over that past two years and did the math on what another Carter inflation would do to their retirement plans.

They probably realized that storing several hundred thousand dollars worth of gold in their safe wasn't a great plan, and then noticed that mortgage rates were lower than their grandparents ever saw in their lifetimes. The only thing that holds its value long term through an inflation better than gold is real estate -- at least, assuming the country inflating the money survives the experience. And a safe full of gold isn't going to do you much good, either, if it doesn't.

Personally, I thought long and hard about putting my money into a prepper escape plan for my whole family. My kids thought I was nuts. Oh, well. I guess it's their world, now, and if they aren't worried, why should I be?

So we bought our little bit of heaven in this disneyworld-for-old-folks, where we plan to spend our last few years living it up, regardless of what happens. I bet a lot of people came to the same conclusion.

Whatever the true reason for this bubble is, I doubt that it will end any better than the last one.

I heard it was due to a new Hooters coming here

Hot Cakes.

My thinking was similar, to the extent that I figured with the stock market values as high as they are (talk about bubbles), and savings returns as low as they are, a home in TV would likely do as well, if not better, than either of those other two options, over the next decade and a half, which is likely the most optimistic time frame for DW and I to be actively living the Villages lifestyle.

Really?? That is great news!!!

I'll ask my barber when they are going to start building.