Marco Island Real Estate Report: Hot High-End Property Sales

This week, new president of the Marco Island Area Association of Realtors Gerry Rosenblum, and the association’s executive director, Shirley English, shared their opinions on the state of this particular South Florida housing market.

As for the Marco-specific figures, Rosenblum said it was a welcome innovation for the association.

“More than 30 percent of properties in the Marco MLS (Multiple Listing Service) are not on Marco,” he said. “Off-island properties in Naples, Port of the Islands and surrounding areas like Fiddler’s Creek and Hammock Bay were included.

“We wanted to see what was going on in Marco,” Rosenblum said.

The result of that, he said, is a set of figures just released that show a more realistic perspective. Among those figures (for all property types sold) are comparisons between the months of December, 2005, and November and December of 2006 in terms of Florida home mortgage activity.

Closings were 42 for December, 2005; 41 for November 2006, and 41 for December, 2006. Average sale prices for the same months and years were $1.35 million, $985,000 and $1.05 million. Median sale prices were $1.3 million, $1.6 million and $2.7 million. Total sold dollar volumes were $56.8 million, $40.4 million and $43 million.

Rosenblum said the interesting buying trend at the moment is that luxury homes are outperforming mid-range homes. Part of the reason for that, he said, is that investors/flippers are now out of the equation.

“They went for the mid-range market,” Rosenblum said.

Instead, he said, high-end buyers intent on staying here are coming to the forefront. On top of that, English said, the upper end of the high-end market is outperforming the lower high-end market for those applying for Florida home loans.

Both English and Rosenblum said the general outlook for real estate is looking better, though.

“It’s an opportunistic market,” Rosenblum said. “A lot of people who bought (in the 2004-5 boom) just don’t want those properties any more. They realize they’re not going to get the big profits, and in some cases will sell for break even or even moderate losses just to move on.”

English said insurance and property tax moves afoot at the state legislative level could turn out to be a huge boost to the market. Also significant, Rosenblum said, is that declines in real estate association membership are likely to be less than expected.

“I think, to be honest, we’ll see a decrease in membership,” he said. “But we have a lot of members from outside the county. They might drop out, but the core group will stay.”