I WIll Not Give It Away

"I will not give it away." is Parseltongue for "not really for sale" and is a phrase I hear far too often. It ranks right up there with "I won't play games." in popular self-defeating language I encounter in the often emotional business of buying and selling real estate. The "not really for sale" MLS listing (NRFS) is alive and well in our...

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Deception Becomes Reality

Outside the city limits looking south over unincorporated south Cocoa Beach towards Patrick Air Force Base where the land widens in the distance, Banana River on the right, Atlantic Ocean on the left. Now you know.Following up on my recent post, When There Are No Comps, I'd like to explore the trustworthiness of comps a little more. An oceanfront...

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Entering the Home Stretch

As of this morning the Cocoa Beach MLS is showing 52 condos and townhomes sold in Cocoa Beach and Cape Canaveral in the month of November. Just over half were purchased for cash and almost a third were on the market for less than two weeks. The inventory is hovering just above 200 existing units and sales for the year look to come up just...

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Radio Romance in Cocoa Beach

The Nashville boys killed it once again with an electric set on the big stage at the Cocoa Beach Art Show Friday night and followed up with an acoustic evening at Juice and Java Saturday nig...

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Red Light - Green Light

Can someone at the City explain to me why the Holiday Lane traffic light at A1A has a way shorter cycle than the much busier Cocoa Isles light? A1A traffic is repeatedly interrupted night and day for phantom traffic on Holiday. What's up with the light at Minutemen Causeway and Atlantic continuing it's cycle even while Minutemen is closed...

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A Couple of Shades of Grey

With my older and more frequently faulty memory I feel the need to write things down lest they become lost. Allow me to ramble about whatever is passing between my ears this beautiful November morning in Cocoa Beach. Last Saturday morning's sunrise from 1st St. South above.Directions to a Cape Canaveral condo listing; east on 528, exit Terminal...

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Condos, Traffic, Turtles, Betrayal and Art

Thanks to Jim F. for the south Cocoa Beach sunrise photoSomehow in a landscape of sparse resources my tribe has been able to find sustenance. Diligence has paid off and we have been able to pick off several excellent beach properties in the last month. Inventory of condos and townhomes in Cocoa Beach and Cape Canaveral has been in a ridiculously...

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When There Are No Comps

How much is that condo or house worth? The easy answer is whatever someone is willing to pay but in the real world it's not usually so simple. It's a rare day that I'm not pouring over recent Cocoa Beach and Cape Canaveral property sales to try to come up with fair current value for an unsold property. For properties with very similar, recently...

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Happenings Downtown Cocoa Beach

It's good to see new things happening in downtown Cocoa Beach ahead of the completion of the Minutemen Causeway streetscape project. It's been a long haul so far but I believe the end result will have been worth the inconvenience of the detours and closed roads. Speaking of, please support those businesses across from City Hall while their...

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After the Storm

One week ago we were breathing a sigh of relief having just side-stepped Hurricane Matthew's rush northward. Our northern neighbors were not so lucky but for the most part Cocoa Beach and Cape Canaveral suffered minimal damage. The main impact here was widespread landscape damage, scattered roof damage primarily on older buildings, blown...

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Sue the Association for Water Damage?

Thanks to Jewelry by Pam for the cool photoI woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of a huge crashing noise that sounded like it came from my bathroom. I grabbed the nearest weapon (a formidable broken post-hole digger handle) and tiptoed into the bathroom ready for imminent batting practice. I was relieved to find not an intruder...

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Calm Before the Storm... or Maybe Not

The boaters in the crowd will appreciate the photo above from last week in the Gulf Stream on a rare dead calm day. These were the conditions when I crossed over to the Bahamas from Florida. These same conditions lasted for six straight days. It's not often like this.Summer officially ended this week but you couldn't tell from the air or...

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Having a Record Year

Thanks to JewelrybyPam.com for the photoIt's not just Eric Church who is having a Record Year. The month of August set another record for the Cocoa Beach real estate market. The number of sales exceeded the last eleven years of same month sales including August 2005. It's the only month this year to have exceeded the same month numbers for...

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Is Your Agent Gambling With Your Money?

Pop quiz (all questions refer to Florida real estate transactions):1. From a seller's perspective is it better to have the buyer's escrow deposit held at the seller's title company?2. From a buyer's perspective, is it OK for the deposit to be held at the seller's title company?3. From an agent's perspective, is there a good reason for not...

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Turtles, Mangoes, Snook and Zika

The bumper mango harvest is almost finished here for 2016. It's been a good one.The little turtle pictured hatched early in the morning (not a good time) in south Cocoa Beach and was just making his way to the ocean as the sun was rising. There was a flock of crows picking off stragglers but with a little human scarecrow action this one...

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It's a Mango Year

I dropped off a few towels yesterday to guests from New York who were visiting south Cocoa Beach for the first time. I asked how their stay had been. They said that when they walked out onto the beach the first morning they were concerned that no one else was there. Was something going on they should know about?  By the second morning...

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2016 - First Half Recap

We are squarely in the daily afternoon thunderstorm season with dark fronts like the one pictured a fairly common occurrence. Independence Day fireworks are no match for the fireworks that usually accompany these afternoon storms.The first half of 2016 ended on a strong note with a record month of property sales in Cocoa Beach and Cape Canaveral....

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Approaching Halftime

Three days and we'll be halfway through another year. At the mid-point of 2016 there are 245 existing condo and townhouse units for sale in Cocoa Beach and Cape Canaveral and another 26 in buildings yet to break ground according to the Cocoa Beach MLS. At the same time there are 63 single family homes for sale. For perspective, ten years...

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2000 Sq.Ft...More or Less

There was an interesting comment from an anonymous reader directed at my  last post. It concerned the condo that I mentioned selling for $318 per square foot. The buyer actually paid $343 per square foot  because of an incorrect MLS listing but may not know that. This particular unit has been listed and relisted many times over...

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Seven Days in May

I thought a snapshot of the last seven days in the Cocoa Beach and Cape Canaveral real estate market might be interesting. I was expecting to find less activity than I did. In the seven days since last Wednesday, May 18, twenty nine residential properties have gone under contract in our two cities, five of those single family homes. Ten of...

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Sell in May

Beautiful palm tree bloom at the Cocoa Beach Country Club.Property sales in April in Cocoa Beach and Cape Canaveral, while brisk, declined year over year for the fifth consecutive month. The record low inventory levels we hit last summer were impacting closed sales numbers by year's end. We have since recovered somewhat in number of properties...

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