Builders, Owners Cater to Florida Real Estate Agents, Borrowers

Somebody, please … Buy something!

That’s one way of interpreting the advertisements and Multiple Listing Service entries from builders and real estate agents in today’s Florida housing market.

From fire-sale prices to bonuses for real estate agents, homeowners and builders are pulling out all the stops to try to get buyers off the fence.

“Sellers are trying to price their homes attractively, aggressively,” Jim Higgins said. Higgins is a residential agent with RE/MAX Realty Group in Fort Myers. He and his team specialize in golf course and country club communities.

“They’re offering bonuses to buyers’ agents to get them to show their properties,” he added. “And they’re picking up the (homeowner’s association) fees or golf membership fees for a period of time. Say, six months to a year.”

For Higgins’ sellers these tactics seem to be a successful strategy. “I’m making some deals,” he said.

Builders are also doing what they can to move inventory.

Recently, Lennar began having a monthly happy hour event for real estate agents. They also offer a $5,000 bonus to agents selling new homes in Bella Terra. They’re running plenty of ads aimed at Florida mortgage hopefuly, too.

“We’re not only marketing ourselves to buyers, but through our incentives and bonuses, we’re marketing to Realtors, too,” said Mark Berry, a Lennar new home consultant at Bella Terra. “The happy hours are a great networking opportunity and we’ve had a great turnout.”

The events for agents are at The Grill Room at Coconut Point, the first Thursday of each month. About 70 agents attended their second happy hour last week.

“We went to a neutral place, instead of having them come here to our offices or models. It’s informal, but we’re still going to talk about business for two to three hours,” Berry said.

Price is the big thing for M.W. Johnson Construction as well, according to Kelly Palmer, division vice president of sales and marketing.

“We picked about four of our best homes and advertised to Realtors,” she said. Their agent incentive is a $2,500 bonus.

“If you’re looking for incentives like cars and trips, go to a car dealership or a travel agent,” Palmer said. “We’re not offering pools because these homes are already completed. We can’t put in a pool because then we can’t close in 30 days.

“We look at what we’ve got into the house with the land and everything. We were offering 3 percent for the buyer to use on whatever they want — closing costs or whatever. But now we’ve just lowered our prices as low as we possibly could to sell these homes. We can’t include that 3 percent toward closing any more because our discount is actually even lower than that.”

Palmer added that until more inventory comes off the market, things will stay slow for builders and resellers. With the deals builders are offering, she said Florida mortgage applicants should be going for the new homes.

“I like a new home because I know no one else’s toenails are in the carpet,” she said with a laugh.

Gerard Marino, commercial agent with RE/MAX Realty Group in Fort Myers and a Certified Commercial Investment Member, studies the market and reports on it for The News-Press.

“A builder has to make a very risky decision,” he said. “Does he sell at a discount, possibly angering past clients, or does he gamble that the market will come back and try to sell at the higher price? If he’s wrong, his losses could be horrendous. Most have decided it’s more prudent to sell at a loss and adapt to a changed market.”

On builders’ Web sites, the incentives are mainly big price cuts. Really big. More than $100,000 big.

Centex is offering these deep discounts during its summer clearance sale at The Plantation in Fort Myers. A 1,557-square-foot, “twin-villa” lakeview home with two bedrooms plus a den, two baths and a two-car garage was $401,407 — on sale now for just $269,990. That’s $131,417 off.

Real estate agents receive a lot of marketing e-mail from builders, like a recent one from D.R. Horton that included a coupon good for $20,000 toward the purchase of a new home. However, it appears that the coupon is only good at certain east coast communities and it expires on Aug. 19.

A myriad of freebies can be found in the resale market in listings in the Greater Fort Myers MLS: cars, plasma televisions and surround sound stereo equipment thrown in by homeowners, up to 6 percent toward buyers’ closing costs, bonuses to buyers’ agents, home warranties and, perhaps most valuable to Cape Coral buyers, sewer and water assessments paid in full.

Marino added that it would behoove buyers to take advantage of the incentives and price adjustments offered by both builders and homeowners.

“If you’re a buyer looking for a home to live in, and if you can qualify for a [Florida mortgage loan], with interest rates as low as they are, there has probably not been a better time to buy than right now,” he advised.

Whether it’s a reduced price or all the extras or a combination of both, it all comes down to the buyers’ perception of value. If it’s a good deal, they’ll buy it.

SOURCE: The News-Press