The Anna Maria Island Sun Newspaper

Vol. 14 No. 43 - August 20, 2014

REAL ESTATE

More luxury real estate news

 

When you’re hot, you’re hot, and Florida is hot in more ways than one. Last week we talked about 10 jewel box real estate markets in the world as reported by Christie’s International. One of the 10 is Sarasota, where 8 percent of the market is comprised of $1 million or more homes, a 15 percent increase from last year. This week there is another interesting market statistic which puts Florida in the hot arena.

Recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau identified housing markets with the largest percentage of resident CEOs in the local workforce. They analyzed 10 metro housing markets with the greatest percentage of resident CEOs and five of those markets were in Florida.

The metro markets came in as follows based on the percentage of residents identified as CEOs: Bridgeport-Stanford-Norwalk, Conn. 1.82 percent; Boulder, Colo. 1.45 percent; Sebastian-Vero Beach, Fla. 1.37 percent; Naples-Marco Island, Fla. 1.28 percent; Cape Coral-Fort Myers, Fla., 1.27 percent, Oxnard-Thousand Oaks-Ventura, Calif. 1.21 percent; Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach-Deerfield Beach, Fla. 1.20 percent; North Port-Bradenton-Sarasota, Fla. 1.20 percent; Barnstable Town, Mass. 1.13 percent; San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, Calif., 1.10 percent.

In addition, even though the five Florida metro regions all came in lower for median asking home prices than the other five, Florida still maintained a higher percentage of CEO residents. Florida is, of course, a popular destination because there is no individual state income tax, an especially attractive draw if you’re from New York and California. Also many of these home purchases start out as vacation homes and end up being primary residences even before retirement, since the ability to work remotely is becoming more and more standard for businesses.

Do you think CEOs who successfully climbed the corporate ladder know a thing or two? Chances are they know about making sound financial decisions, so keeping an eye on these markets can be very educational.

Since we’ve been talking about the luxury real estate market the last couple of weeks, there is one more area I would like to touch on and that’s open houses. Most homeowners who are in what is considered the luxury market for their region do not encourage brokers to conduct public open houses, but this could be a mistake.

In real estate you never know where your sale is going to come from. It may not be from the person you’re talking to, but from their sister’s friend that she happened to have lunch with last week. Word gets around and everyone loves to talk about real estate, especially in an appreciating market. Open houses in all price ranges attract a fair amount of nosy gawkers, but pricey homes could attract even more. Never-the-less, that’s not a reason not to have open houses. You just need to take a different approach.

Invitation-only open houses sent to targeted areas is one way. Adding wine tastings or raffles for high end gifts or vacations also will sweeten it up. In addition to having broker-only open houses, brokers could be encouraged to bring their buyers to an invitation-only open house on a special property. Naturally, large homes with expensive furnishings and art work require a large staff to be on hand to monitor the traffic at an open house even one that is by invitation.

Don’t discount public and especially broker open houses if you’re trying to sell your luxury home. The emotional pull of seeing a home in person rather on a computer screen can’t be emphasized enough especially in our cyber world.

Luxury is hot, Florida is hot and our region is hot. The news keeps pointing to a continued housing recovery.


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