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A short life remembered on a small patch of Dunedin real estate

There are two golf courses in Dunedin, and we live in a condo right between them.

 Step out our front door and walk to the left, and in a minute or so you are in front of Dunedin Country Club. Walk to the right, and in about the same amount of time you are walking past a par-three public course, Dunedin Stirling Links.

 I usually walk east, in the Dunedin Country Club direction, when I walk Bo, our puggle. My husband usually goes in the other direction, and heads past Dunedin Stirling Links when it is his turn to walk the dog.

Down in that westerly direction, not quite as far as Alt. 19, there is a small tree. Its trunk is surrounded by white decorative blocks. We both have walked by that tree many times, but it was only recently that we noticed there was a small plaque in the ground at the tree’s base.

 As you travel around North Pinellas County, there are quite a few commemorative plaques, but you have to pay attention or they simply blend into the background and you never see them. All of them have been put in place for a reason, but they don’t always have room to tell the entire story.

 In this case, there isn’t much more than a name, a couple of baseballs, and a family’s loving sentiment. Here is what it says:

In Memory of
Elliott Richard Pape
Big L
2 – 7 – 87       12 – 5 – 05
We love you
We will see you again
Love Mom Dad and girls

 Someone went to some trouble to plant that tree in a young man’s memory, and I thought I’d see if I could find out more of the story.

 It didn’t take much work.  I went to the St. Petersburg TIMES website (okay, I know, its been called the Tampa Bay TIMES since New Year’s Day, but I don’t think I’ll ever get used to calling it that), and found a story published just before Christmas of 2005.

Elliott Richard Pape was an 18-year-old Dunedin youth who worked part-time as a bat boy for the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team. On Dec. 12, 2005, he was killed in a motorcycle accident as he rode home.

 Here is what the newspaper said about his death:

 “On Monday afternoon, Pape was riding his 2006 Suzuki motorcycle home to Dunedin. He took the Roosevelt Boulevard exit ramp off Interstate 275 at 4:08 p.m. when he lost control in the turn, the Florida Highway Patrol said.

“He hit the brakes, but the motorcycle skidded into the guardrail, throwing him over the rail and onto the embankment, troopers said.”

 So that’s the story of the tree. I don’t know whether Elliott Richard Pape liked to play golf at Dunedin Stirling Links, but hopefully his tree will grow and prosper, and golfers will stop there once in a while to read the plaque that his family put there.

Tags: Dunedin, golf, Pinellas County real estate, tampa bay rays

Rates down, but down payments up for Pinellas County real estate (and real estate everywhere)

I’ve mentioned here a number of times how low mortgage interest rates are, and how they – along with the lowest home prices in at least a decade – make homes really affordable right now.

But to be fair, there is another side of the coin (isn’t there always?) which makes home-buying more of a challenge than it was in the rock-n-roll days.

I’m talking about down payments.

Home prices may be down, and interest rates may be at historic (or near-historic) levels, but the demand for more substantial down payments is up. It’s all part of the tougher underwriting standards; lenders want to see buyers begin the home buying process with a bigger personal stake in the transaction, and that means larger down payments.

Just a few years ago, it seemed like down payments were going to become a thing of the past. Nothing-down and little-down mortgages were all the rage, and you could buy expensive homes and finance them with big mortgages without having to come up with actual cash – or not much of it, anyway.

Great interest rates are available now, as I’ve written about in the past. But if you really want that rock-bottom rate, you’d better be ready to come up with a 20 percent down payment.  It’s still possible to get a mortgage and put less than 20 percent down, but the rates are going to be higher.

LendingTree came out with a report last week that listed state-by-state average down payments, and the average of all of them was 12.29 percent.

(I know you’re wondering what the average rate is for Pinellas County real estate. Actually, LendingTree didn’t get that fine on rates, but the company DID say what the average down payment is for the state of Florida: 13.16 percent.)

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac want at least 10 per cent down.  If you want the very best rate, you’re going to have to also pay for private mortgage insurance – not part of the down payment, but an upfront cost you can’t avoid.

A Lending Tree spokesperson said, “The reality is when you put less than 20 percent down, you have to pay for some kind of insurance to protect the lender from the higher risk that you’ll default…but private mortgage insurers these days aren’t always willing to do business with low down payments.”

There is some speculation out there that if we are going to continue to have record low interest rates, the mortgage industry may increasingly move toward that 20 per cent down payments.

Tags: down payment, interest rates, pinellas county, Pinellas County real estate, real estate

Five things that can be done right now to stimulate Pinellas County real estate sales (and real estate sales everywhere)

We’re around five years into the recession, and the real estate market has been suffering all of that time. There were a lot of reasons for the downturn, just as there are lots of reasons for the slow recovery.

While I don’t have a magic bullet to right the ship and make everything okay real estate-wise, I think there are some things that could be done right now to stimulate sales and make things better, here in Pinellas County and really everywhere. Nothing is going to make up for nine percent unemployment or for the under-employment of millions more people, but I think we could do a lot for the national and the Pinellas County real estate markets to make home ownership more possible for thousands of would-be home owners by taking a few simple steps.

Here they are:

1. MAKE CREDIT STANDARDS MORE REASONABLE: Much of the problem in the first place resulted from very easy-going credit standards when it came to home mortgages – things such as incomes that didn’t have to be verified or 100 percent (and even 110-percent) financing. Lenders have reacted to those transgressions by tightening credit requirements to a ridiculous level. So let’s find a happy medium that works for buyers while protecting the interests of lenders.
2. BRING BACK THE 90 PERCENT MORTGAGE:  Where we once saw no-money-down mortgages, we now see lenders who want 20 or 25 percent down. There are many very qualified buyers with good incomes who should be able to buy homes with 10 percent down. Let’s make that possible for the right buyers.
3. STREAMLINE THE UNDERWRITING PROCESS:  Underwriting has become extremely tight and difficult, and it is not unusual for lenders to come back repeatedly for additional documentation. That takes extra time, and deals can fall apart during those long waits. Good, effective underwriting shouldn’t have to take weeks or months.
4. GENERATE MORE JOBS: Probably the biggest impediment to a housing market recovery is a lack of good-paying jobs. If people can’t earn adequate incomes, they can’t afford to buy new homes. This is something the government can help with by instituting encouraging policies; the private sector can contribute to it by investing in themselves in ways that encourage job creation.
5. CLEAR OUT THE FORECLOSURE INVENTORY: Banks have been slow to clear out the inventory of foreclosed homes. Short sales can take forever, and lenders seem to be in no hurry to get their foreclosed-upon properties off their books. Some observers even say that banks have withheld significant numbers of foreclosed properties in order to keep home values from falling even further.  If banks want to get back to the business of lending money for home purchases, they have to do their part, take the hit, and get that inventory back into the hands of private owners.

Got any ideas of your own? Send them along and I’ll post them on the blog.

In many ways, this is a great time to buy Pinellas County real estate, especially in certain market segments. Give me a call and we’ll discuss: 727-643-7100, or e-mail me at beth@bethfrederick.com .

Tags: First time homebuyers, Foreclosures, home sales, pinellas county, Pinellas County real estate, real estate, short sales

Tampa Bay, nation show some rallying in real estate prices

Every few months, people who are interested in the real estate market turn their attention to the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices, the most reliable measurement of home prices in the nation. 

That quarterly report came out today, and it contains some encouraging news – home prices were up in the second quarter of 2011. According to the Case-Shiller report, the U.S. National Home Price Index went up 3.6 per cent in the second quarter. In the previous quarter, the one ended at the end of March, the Home Price Index was down 4.1 percent. 

Any bad news in this report? Well, while the second quarter was up from the first quarter, it was down 5.9 percent when compared to the second quarter of 2010, one year ago. 

Nationally, home prices are about where they were in early 2003. 

Case-Shiller comes up with its national figures by keeping track of home prices in 20 metropolitan areas. One of those areas is Tampa Bay. Pinellas County real estate is not considered on its own, but the Tampa Bay real estate numbers should be very close to our own here in Pinellas County. 

Tampa Bay has taken a worse-than-average hit when it comes to home values for the quarter. Values are down seven per cent in this most recent quarter when compared to a year ago. That’s more than a percentage point more than the national average. 

Not as bad as such places as Minneapolis or Portland, Ore. or Phoenix, but worse than such cities as New York, Boston or Washington DC. 

“This month’s report showed mixed signals for recovery in home prices,” said David M. Blitzer, chairman of the Index Committee at S&P Indices. “No cities made new lows in June 2011, and the majority of cities are seeing improved annual rates.” 

Blitzer said the numbers show that regional markets have to be considered as separate entities – the national housing market is not rising or falling as one. So don’t simply go by whatever national real estate figures you see in the newspaper — remember that values of Pinellas County real estate may be quite different.

You can see the Case-Shiller news release here.

Tags: case-shiller, home values, Pinellas County real estate, Tampa Bay

200 posts about Pinellas County real estate

I started this blog about Pinellas County real estate a little over five years ago. Lots of things have changed since then — I started the blog under a different blog name, and I used a different blog platform back then.

I mention all this because we just reached an important milestone — 200 blog posts, all of which relate in some way or other to Pinellas County real estate. The blog entry about three entries back, entitled “What’s the outlook for first-time homebuyers in the Pienllas County real estate market?”, was our 200th entry.

Just for fun, I scrolled all the way back to the beginning and took a look at our first blog entry, back on May 4, 2006. It’s about Strachan’s Ice Cream. (I think I may have posted a few before that one, but I seem to remember that a handful of blog entries didn’t survive the transfer of content from one blog platform to the other.)

Anyway, that’s a lot of stories just about real estate in Pinellas County, even though a few of them have strayed a little bit from that single subject.

Feel free to page back through the old entries. Most of them are still informative about homes and real estate in Pinellas County, or more specifically real estate in Palm Harbor, Clearwater, Dunedin, Tarpon Springs, Crystal Beach, Ozona, Oldsmar and Safety Harbor.

Tags: Crystal Beach, Dunedin, Oldsmar, Ozona, Palm Harbor, Pinellas County real estate, real estate, Safety Harbor, Tarpon Springs

Animal laws in Pinellas County

 Back in the old days, having a pet was a pretty simple matter. If your doggie wanted to go out, you let him out. You knew he wanted to come back in when he scratched on the door. Every evening you’d open a can of Alpo for him. End of story.

Pet ownership is a lot more complicated now. You can tell by all the people who walk, zombie-like, through your neighborhood at all hours of the day and night, leash in one hand and plastic poop bag in the other.

Pet ownership can be especially problematic if you own a pet and hope to move into a condo. Make sure you check the condo documents before you buy and read all the fine print if you hope to take your doggie along when you move.  Some condo developments restrict pets to a certain weight limit; others simply don’t allow pets at all.

Bo

If you want to buy a single-family home, restrictions like that don’t generally apply. However, you should make sure to check the homeowner association regulations just to double-check. Some may limit the number or type of pets you are allowed to have; others might impose restriction by weight. Almost all of them contain some language pertaining to animal waste and what you have to do to clean up after your pet.

Just for the fun of it, I thought I’d check on the laws in Pinellas County that apply to pets and other animals. Some of them are a little surprising. For example, I knew it was against the law to let your dog run free, but did you know it is equally unlawful to let your cat do the same thing?

Here are some other things you should know:

• It’s illegal to leave food or garbage out where it can attract “cats, dogs, raccoons, coyotes or other wildlife and thereby creates a public nuisance”
• While it is illegal to let dogs run free, the law doesn’t apply to police dogs or to “any dog which is actually engaged in or being trained for the sport of hunting during a legal hunting season…” So if your dog is caught running free, tell the officer you’re training him to hunt squirrels.
• If you have a dog or cat that is in heat, and you don’t keep her away from male dogs and cats, you’re breaking the law.
• It is unlawful to “molest, harm, frighten, kill, net, trap, snare, hunt, chase or shoot” any animal, unless they are fish. So apparently you can molest all the fish you want without fear of prosecution. It’s also against the law to “capture or collect for any purpose any animal, nest or egg or any animal, whether dead or alive.” So forget about those yummy road kill buffets.
• It’s illegal to “place, dump, abandon or leave” any animal on park property.
• You can’t use gasoline or chemicals to drive off wildlife.
• You can’t feed pelicans or sand hill cranes.
• And I like this one a lot: You can’t shoot wildlife with remote-controlled guns “when that person is not physically present at the location of that gun.”

Now, just so you won’t think that I am above all this, I’ve included a picture of Bo, our year-old Puggle (that’s a dog that is half pug and half beagle) – 28 pounds of muscle and attitude.

Tags: animal laws, dogs, pinellas county, Pinellas County real estate, real estate

What’s the outlook for first-time homebuyers in the Pinellas County real estate market?

One bright spot in the recent residential real estate market has been the opportunities that first-time homebuyers have been able to enjoy. Falling home prices have made it possible for a lot of first-time homebuyers to finally enjoy the benefits of home ownership.

The Obama Administration’s first-time home buyer tax credit (remember that?) contributed to the opportunity, and quite a few people who had never owned a home before were able to buy. In the second quarter of 2010, 46 percent of homebuyers were first-timers.

So what’s happened?

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: first time home buyers, mortgages, Pinellas County real estate

Ready to buy some Pinellas County real estate? Mortgage rates are lowest in 20 years

If the sale of Pinellas County real estate was simply dependent on interest rates, we should be seeing a stampede of homebuyers, because rates are the lowest they have been in 20 years.

According to Freddie Mac, rates for 15-year fixed-rate home loans dropped last week from 3.66 percent to 3.54 percent, the lowest those rates have been since 1991.

Rates for other mortgage profits dropped as well. The average rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage dropped to 4.39 percent, the lowest rate for a 30-year mortgage this year.

Why are real estate mortgage interest rates so low in Pinellas County and elsewhere when there is so much economic uncertainty? Those uncertainties are part of the reason. Mortgage rates follow yields on 10-year U.S. Treasury notes. Weaknesses in the economy have led investors to take money out of the stock market and put it into Treasury bonds. That lowers the yield on the Treasury bonds, and that leads to lower mortgage interest rates.

Congress established Freddie Mac in 1970 to provide liquidity, stability and affordability to the nation’s residential mortgage markets. It provides mortgage capital to lenders.

Do those unbelieveably low interest rates make Pinellas County real estate ownership look more attractive to you? Why don’t you give me a call, and we’ll take a look what those rates can mean to you in terms of low monthly mortgage payments.

Call me anytime – 727-643-7100, or beth@bethfrederick.com

Tags: home financing, mortgages, Pinellas County real estate

Making the most of that Pinellas County open house

     There’s no doubt that the internet has made buying a home easier. You can look up all kinds of information about a given home or Pinellas County neighborhood, you can see what other nearby homes have sold for, you can even check to se if any sex offenders live nearby. 

     Still, there’s nothing that replaces the sight, smell and feel of an actual visit to the property. And one of the best opportunities for checking out that Pinellas County house for sale is to attend an open house.

    Open houses give you a chance to actually tour a Pinellas County home, look in all the nooks and crannies, and see if you can really picture yourself living there. 

     If you are going to tour a home that is for sale during an open house, make sure you take full advantage of the opportunity. Here are a few suggestions of things to do when you tour a home: 

1. Before you even park your car and go inside, drive around the neighborhood a little and check things out. What do the neighbors’ homes look like? Are they kept up and painted? Are the lawns trimmed? Are there abandoned cars parked in the yards?
    
2. What’s nearby? Is there an interstate highway a block away that’s going to generate noise and keep you awake at night? Are there any manufacturing plants or other commercial properties that will generate lots of noise or truck traffic? Here in North Pinellas County, we don’t have an interstate, but we certainly DO have some busy roads that can generate a fair amount of noise.
    
3. Are there schools within walking distance? Grocery stores? Parks?
    
4. How about the nearby neighbors? What do their homes look like?
5. How the home’s exterior? Is it well-maintained outside? Does it look welcoming? Does the roof look old and worn? 
    
6. Once inside, you may want to go through the home twice – once to get a general feeling for the layout and to get a good or bad first impression, then a more careful inspection. Notice the condition of the floors; look for signs of water damage; have the systems and appliances been updated?
    
7. Look for things that seem out-of-place or strange. We looked at a home once and immediately noticed that the living room furniture was arranged strangely; it turned out that the living room floor had been damaged by a refinisher, and the furniture had been moved to hide the gouge marks.
    
8. Have a talk with the agent on duty. If it is the listing agent, he or she should be able to tell you why the sellers are selling, how long the property has been on the market and if there have been any price reductions. If the home has been on the market for a long time, that may be an indication that it is priced too high. But it could also mean that the sellers are ready to listen to a more reasonable offer.

 Since open houses give you a chance to really see, feel and smell a home up close, the experience may allow you to have a strong feeling for the property. If that feeling is positive, maybe it’s the house for you. If the feeling is negative, well, move on to the next open house.

 What have YOU learned by going to open houses? I’d like to know – click on “Please leave a comment” up near the top of this post and share.

 And call me or e-mail me anytime – 727-643-7100, or beth@bethfrederick.com

Tags: open house, pinellas county, Pinellas County real estate, real estate

Tampa Theater is a Tampa Bay treasure

If you have seen the movie Casablanca, chances are you’ve seen it on TV. Nothing wrong with that, it’s a terrific movie and it comes across great no matter how or where you see it. But next weekend is a true treat for movie buffs — you get to see Casablanca at the Tampa Theater.
If you are not familiar with the Tampa Theater, it is a true gem of a movie theater that was built in 1926 and then lovingly restored in the 1980s to its original splendor.  The detail inside the lobby and theater itself are breathtaking. It is a true local treasure, and if you live in Pinellas County it is a fairly short hop across the Courtney Campbell Causeway or over Hillsborough Avenue to Tampa to take advantage of what it has to offer.
The Tampa Theater is home to many concerts and events, but it is still a great place to see a movie, especially on old black-and-white classic. We saw Keb Mo in concert there a few years ago, and we’ve attended everything from cocktail parties to receptions in the tiled lobby.
Oh, yeah — back to Casablanca.  It is being shown next Saturday (June 27) at 3 p.m., and then it is being shown again the following day at the same time.  If you’ve never been to the Tampa Theater, it’s a great time to go and admire it. It is on Franklin Street in Downtown Tampa — learn more at http://www.tampatheatre.org

Tags: Pinellas County real estate, Tampa Bay, things to do