About Tallahassee's Summerbrooke

Summerbrooke home sales are happening at the slowest rate on record, and this is not good for this Northeast Tallahassee golf course community. We recently performed a similar analysis on Golden Eagle Plantation and found it was having its best year since 2007. Currently, Summerbrooke has only recorded 16 home sales, which is 36% fewer than the 25 closed by this time last year.

Map Of Recent Summerbrooke Home Sales

Average Price Of Summerbrooke Home Sales

The average price of recent Summerbrooke home sales have fallen 4% from last year's average and 25% since the peak of the market, which still puts Summerbrooke in the "better than average" group of Tallahassee neighborhoods. Perhaps this resistance to falling market prices is why we are seeing sales slow and why we should expect competition and pricing pressures to rise.

Average Value Of Summerbrooke Home Sales

Unlike average home prices which spiked up last year when buyers opted for the larger homes, the average value of Summerbrooke home sales has continued on a steady decline since the peak of the market 5 years ago. This means that people who have already sold their homes in Summerbrooke have sold for more than the homeowners who decided to wait a year or two.

If you have to sell a home in Summerbrooke, just know that supply outweighs demand and will most likely be this way for many more years. It is highly likely that values will continue to decline, thus you should either sell your home now or prepare to hold the home another 5 to 7 years to get a higher value. Don't make the mistake of falling into the middle-ground, when the values will be lower than today.

Click -> List Of ALL Recent Summerbrooke Home Sales

If you need to sell a home in Summerbrooke, you might feel like it's 2002 all over again. Why? Because Summerbrooke homes are selling for the same values today as they were near the end of 2002, but unlike 2002, there is no housing boom in our immediate future.

Summerbrooke is a very popular Northeast Tallahassee golf course community which features fine executive homes both on and off the Summerbrooke golf course. Currently, there are 18 homes for sale in Summerbrooke, priced from $229,900 to $500,000.

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It is not hard selling a home in Summerbrooke if you execute an aggressive home selling plan. Several months ago, I met with a couple who needed to relocate out of town and wanted to get their home sold quickly, but without giving it away. We were able to sell it one day before it was to hit the market, by exposing it on our "coming soon" listings page.

Summerbrooke Home Prices Still Falling

Through August, there have been 13 homes sold in Summerbrooke (in the Tallahassee MLS) at an average price of $348,700. The pace of home sales is far slower than last year, where 35 homes were sold at an average price of $364,000. The average home price in Summerbrooke has dropped 25% since the peak of the housing market in 2006, and homeowners should expect the depreciation trend to continue several more years. Homeowners who sell a home now will reap more money than those who hold on trying to get a higher price.

Summerbrooke Home Values At 2002 Levels

Home values in Summerbrooke are falling, but slower than the average neighborhood in Tallahassee. Currently, homes sold in Summerbrooke this year have fetched an average of $124 per square foot, which is 23% lower than the $161 per square foot that was achieved in 2006. Unfortunately, this is the same value range sellers found near the end of 2002, and back then, we were heading towards a market boom.

If you would like to know how to sell a home in Summerbrooke, all you have to do is drop me a note to schedule a time to review our progressive home selling plan. Whether or not you choose to sell your home, it is great information for you to have should you find yourself needing to sell in the future.

• See the full list of recent home sales in Summerbrooke

Summerbrooke home sales appear to be slowing, and home values are dropping far faster than we have seen in the past. The Summerbrooke neighborhood is one that we have reported about often in the past, but today’s graphs are new.

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Below, we see that the average home price in Summerbrooke has dropped from a high of $466K in 2006 down to its current average of $331K. This represents an average price decline of 29%, which is one point better than average for all Tallahassee neighborhoods (single family homes), but this very clearly demonstrates just how much equity is gone from the Tallahassee real estate market. How many owners can afford to lost $135,000?

Recently, we saw the best buy in Summerbrooke lower its asking price by $50,000. Lately, it is taking significant pricing corrections for home sellers to get noticed by the fewer buyers who remain in the market. With most of our buyers in the price range for a Summerbrooke home, they first have to sell a home before they are able to buy a home, and with such a significant reduction in equity, many just are not able.

Home values have also declined 29% in Summerbrooke, where the average price per square foot of a home sold in Summerbrooke this year has dropped to $115 (compared to $161 in 2006). If you have to sell a home in Summerbrooke, you had better use the best home selling plan on the internet to squeeze every last dollar from your home. If you are only “thinking about selling,” you need to recognize the market is still heading lower and you will have to wait years before values even return to levels that we are seeing today.

Recent Home Sales In Summerbrooke

There are a handful of Tallahassee neighborhoods that I take the time to write about on a quarterly basis due to their significance in number of annual home sales or amenities, and Summerbrooke is a Northeast Tallahassee subdivision that I have included in this list for several years. The combination of location (NE) and amenity (Golf Course) make this one to watch.

While I am not partial to the Summerbrooke golf course (too narrow for my wide tee shots), there are many spectacular homes located in this upper-end Tallahassee neighborhood. Homes both on and off the golf course offer the kinds of bells and whistles that many affluent families in Leon County are seeking.

Are Home Values Stabilizing In Summerbrooke?

One of the hardest things to measure is price stability as we look higher and higher on the pyramid of home values in Tallahassee. When there is plenty of liquidity (many homes selling) in a price range, we can say with great confidence what is occurring as far as value movement. But when sales are sporadic, we have to look deeper into what the data really says.

In the real estate graph above, average values values (red line) appear to be stabilizing, while the number of homes selling each month in Summerbrooke (blue bars) has returned to a historically normal amount. While this appears to be really good news for Summerbrooke, I’m wondering why it is different than the rest of Tallahassee (which is still seeing price declines and unit sales are down to roughly 60% of historically normal rates).

Why Average Home Values Can Fool You

The problem with taking an average of anything is that “average” is so hard to measure. Average is even harder to measure when the “middle of the road” is not representative of either extreme. In Summerbrooke for example, homes are built on 1 of two types of lots. Either they are “premium” lots, meaning the home is directly on the golf course on or a lake, or they aren’t.

Premium lots are more valuable than non-premium lots and most often, the homes built upon premium lots had more features and amenities built into the homes than did their counterparts on non-premium lots. So why does this matter?

The graph above shows a rise in the rate at which premium homes are selling in Summerbrooke. Back in 2005, roughly 1 in every 4 homes was on a premium lot, while currently more than half of recent sales have been on these higher value sites. This means that the “average” home recently is different than the “average” home of the past.

The first graph paints a picture of price stability, when in fact we are seeing buyers move towards the premium homes on golf courses and lakes. Were we to do an analysis comparing “apples to apples,” we would see a similar decline in home values as we have in the rest of Tallahassee.

This case study is a graphic example of why working with an expert can save you money when buying or selling a home in Tallahassee. There are many opportunities in Tallahassee real estate right now, but there are also pitfalls that you should steer clear of. If you think now is the time for you to sell, or buy, or both, just drop me a note and we can get help you develop a winning plan.

Click Here For List Of Arms Length Home Sales In Summerbrooke

I have received a lot of feedback from my recent blog about how buyers are getting excited about the great deals on homes in Summerbrooke. While everybody knows that real estate depreciation continues and that values have dropped over 25% since the peak of the market, sometimes it takes specific examples for the scope of the adjustment to really hit home.

One reader was going through the list of home sales in Summerbrooke and found a foreclosure sale that really stood out.

Hi Joe,

Just a couple of minutes was all it took for me to see that 933 Summerbrooke sold for 565k in 2005 and that those folks were foreclosed by BOA. BOA then just sold the house in April for 404k. You better believe buyers are excited! I wonder how much BOA lost on this deal.

Keep up the good work on those NE neighborhoods and their huge mortgages.

This is not an anomaly in the Tallahassee real estate market. We are seeing short sales and foreclosures creep more and more into the mainstream of what is occurring in both active listings as well as recent home sales. Based upon our tracking of lis pendens filings and foreclosure sales, we know that the bulk of distressed properties is only now showing up in the Tallahassee housing market and is driving real estate depreciation.

Lis Pendens And Foreclosures Are Major Cause Of Real Estate Depreciation

When we look at the real estate graph below, we see that the number of lis pendens filed in Leon County is finally starting to drop, while the number of foreclosure sales continues to rise. While this might not sound good, the fact is that these actions are what our housing market needs as we move to return to normal conditions.

The drop in lis pendens filings means fewer loans are going into default now than in recent years, and the rise in foreclosure sales means that banks are moving now to take action and clear the books of these toxic assets. Unfortunately, this will mean more inventory coming into the Tallahassee housing market and continued pressure on pricing, but it is a required step as we move to return to the “good ‘ol days.”

We won’t see real estate depreciation return to appreciation until the supply of homes for sale in Tallahassee returns to an equilibrium level of 5 to 6 months of supply. Distressed properties entering the market only continues to feed the supply side, which currently registers at over a year’s worth of supply of homes for sale in Tallahassee.