It’s been six months since Hurricane Milton invaded us and every day we still feel the effects of the storm. Most of us are either continually rebuilding, cleaning up or juggling finances to get our lives back to where they were before the storms.
Last week we talked about buyer and seller remorse, but the deeper emotional issues are losing your home and your possessions. Most people have an emotional attachment to their homes and their community. Seeing disruption or actual loss has a lasting effect. A home is part of a community of friends, family, neighbors and memories.
Adding to the emotional loss is the sudden financial hardship of losing one’s home or experiencing major and costly repairs. Most people invest a huge portion of their net worth into their home and have accrued a great deal of equity, so watching it go literally down the drain leaves many homeowners worrying about their future financial security.
For Island people who have made the decision to move, selling after a major disaster can be challenging at best. These are the sales numbers the Realtor Association of Sarasota and Manatee provided for the two zip codes on Anna Maria as of February:
Zip code 34217, Bradenton Beach and Holmes Beach single-family homes: The median sale price in February was $1,105,000, down 39% from last February. The average sale price was $1,414,583, down 52.4% from last year, and new listings are up 33.3%.
This is the report from The Realtor Association for condos in Bradenton Beach and Holmes Beach. The median sale price was $535,000 this February, down 13.7% from last year and the average sale price was $553,333, down 26.1%. New listings are up 6.7%.
Obviously, the single-family numbers look far worse than the condos, likely because there are so many single-family homes that were not elevated and had severe damage selling for reduced numbers compared to last year. The majority of condos are elevated and experienced less damage, at least from flooding.
Anna Maria, zip code 34216, had a median sale price of $1,750,000, down 12.5% this February compared to last year. The average sale price was $1,808,333, down 27.6% from last February. Finally, new listings in Anna Maria are up 31.6%.
Selling your home in the aftermath of a disaster requires patience and a fair amount of creativity. These properties need to be marketed as the future value, not the present value. There is great investment opportunity on the Island and based on the number of visitors in the past month, people still want to vacation here.
Buyers, especially younger buyers, are very much influenced by climate change and the effects that it will have on a barrier island. So, a balance has to be struck when listing the benefits and financial investment available on Anna Maria Island. You can’t hide that we experienced a serious series of storms, and you have to be honest about damage sustained, but here again, we’re looking at future growth.
The effects of the storm, both physically and monetarily, are deeply unsettling. The physical landscape of the community changes and people move away, leaving a constant feeling of loss. It’s important to stay focused on how Anna Maria Island was before the storm and know it will come back right along with property values.
