Jacksonville | St Johns Co. Real Estate Blog

Jacksonville FHA and VA Foreclosed Homes

Another good source of foreclosed homes in Jacksonville can be FHA and VA. Look here for Jacksonville FHA Homes for sale and here for Jacksonville VA Homes These homes have gone through and completed foreclosure. They are usually sold “AS IS” and repairs will not be done. Both the FHA and VA will have additional paper work to complete. They will also often add Deed restrictions prohibiting the sale of the home for a period of time.

Jacksonville REO Homes For Sale

Real Estate Owned (REO) is a term used to describe a property that has gone all the way through the foreclosure process and is now owned by the mortgage holder. The homes can usually be shown by a buyers agent and the title and liens issues should be cleared at this point. You can find Jacksonville REO Homes in the MLS on this page I set up. REO homes can also be found on this Jacksonville Home Foreclosure page too. The short sale and foreclosed homes are mixed together because of the way the listing agents entered the homes into the MLS database.

Jacksonville REO Houses Can Be Great Deals

REO houses can be fantastic buys for both the investor and the personal homebuyer. Banks do not want to hold onto these homes, they have already spent thousands foreclosing on the house and are ready to cut their losses. The REO homes are likely to be roughest looking house for sale in the area, dead lawn, some trash in the house from a fast move out, and possibly in need of a paint job. If you are willing to look past these defects and want to buy a house potentially below market value, then take a look through the REO homes for sale in Jacksonville. If you see something that interests you, send me an email.

You can not pick up a newspaper or turn on the news lately without hearing about the sub prime mortgage meltdown and the impending surge of home foreclosures. Locally, the number of Jacksonville foreclosure homes is going up. If you think you might be interested in buying foreclosure homes, here are some tips to help you find the homes.

Pre-Foreclosure | Short Sale Homes in Jacksonville

Right now many homeowners are under stress from their adjustable rate mortgages coming off of the teaser rate. For example, if a homeowner took out a $300,000 2/28 loan two years ago, their monthly mortgage payment might have been as low as $1,264 for principle and interest. Today, this loan might be readjusting to $1,995 for principle and interest, an increase of 58%

The homeowner unable to make this larger payment starts to fall behind with payments and the foreclosure process starts. This is an opportunity for investors to buy the house in preforclosure. If you have ever wondered about those signs around town advertising “We Buy Houses Fast!” it’s to find people who need to sell because they face foreclosure. During this time, it may be possible for the investor to buy a home in a short sale. A short sale is when the bank (the mortgage holder) agrees to sell the property to an investor for less than what the bank is owed for the mortgage.

Why would the bank take less than is owed to them for the house? If the bank is convinced that homeowner will no longer make payments on the house and is walking away, the bank knows it will spend thousands of dollars during the next year to complete the foreclosure. In the end, the bank will own the house and be forced to sell the foreclosed house, spending even more money. The challenge is to have the bank convinced they are better off selling now to an investor then going through with foreclosure.

Finding Short Sales In Jacksonville

I set up a search on kristafracke.com to help clients find homes going into foreclosure. This home foreclosure page shows both homes in pre-foreclosure and foreclosed homes.
If you need to see any of the homes let me know.

More Information
If you would like more information on short sales, I would look at this real estate investing website They have an excellent podcast on being a real estate investor.

I just setup a new fast search for finding oceanfront Ponte Vedra homes for sale. So far this year 12 homes have sold on the ocean in Ponte Vedra, the prices have ranged from $790,000 to $5,975,000 Most of this activity was in South Ponte Vedra Beach.

Ok, this is definitely an out of the ordinary post for my blog. But I just had one of those moments where a company so blows it at customer service that I have to just tell a couple of people

The company I am talking about here is none other then Microsoft and it involves my account at the Microsoft adCenter. adCenter is Microsoft’s answer to Google and Yahoo’s legendary pay-per-click business. Pay-per-click is an advertising method that places your ads next to relevant searches users make in the three search engines Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft’s new live.com search engine. The ads display next to search results and the advertiser pays only if the user clicks on the ad.

Google reigns supreme in this market, followed by Yahoo, and in a very distance third place is Microsoft’s adCenter. I have accounts at all three search engines, but I barely use the Microsoft’s adCenter account.

So I was a little surprised today when I got a call from Microsoft about a billing problem with my account. Microsoft called and told me they wanted permission to charge my checking account to correct an over-credit due to an error that occurred because certain clicks were inadvertently excessively charged. My impression was that Microsoft had some how credited back to my checking account an excess amount and wanted it back. I asked the amount they were talking about and the representative said it was around $600.

I told the rep I needed to look at my account because I don’t spend anything near that on adCenter. So I got her name, number , and extension and told her I would call her back as soon as I reviewed my bank records. I pulled up my banking record and saw there were no transactions pending or posted for the $600 amount. I looked at the adCenter account and can only find $50.80 worth of charges year to date.

So I call back the rep at adCenter, enter her extension, get told she is busy, and then the call was rolled over to another rep. The other rep tells me she will go get the first rep because she can’t find a ticket for my account, she returns and tells me the first rep will call me right back.

The first rep calls me back (with a trendy WebTv caller ID), I explained to the rep that there are no charges from Microsoft in the $600 range posted to my checking account. In fact, I had only spent $50.80 YTD, but in my adCenter account, it is showing a $580 credit. So I tell the rep, there is nothing posted to my checking account showing any overcharge so I am not giving Microsoft permission to charge anything to my account right now. I press her again as what the problem is with my account.

She finally explains that there was error where I was charged $32 per click for an ad where I had bid just $1 Microsoft then tried to fix the problem, but credited my adCenter account back DOUBLE the amount, leaving me with a credit in my account. The rep then says Microsoft can’t remove the credit from the adCenter account and wants permission to charge my checking account for the CREDIT they gave me by mistake! Microsoft wants me to pay them for the credit they gave me by mistake but can not reverse.

They are asking me for permission to charge my checking account for amount I won’t be spending for the next 30 months(YTD=$50.8; Monthly Budget = $50.80/2.5 Months = $20/month; Microsoft proposed charge = $600 = $600/$20 = 30 Months)

I went ballistic! I tell the rep you wasted a half hour of my time trying to get me to prepay the next 2.5 years worth of pay-per-click charges because you messed up and can’t reverse the credit you gave me!

Give me a break. I only kept my account open because I now have a $600 credit that Microsoft can’t remove.

After years of rocketing sales, the housing market is beginning to finally settle down into a more stable pattern but one kind of property which is persistently bucking this trend is waterfront properties which puts Jacksonville in an unbeatable position.

With approximately 1000 people relocating to Florida each day, many people end up gravitating north. The south sees its fair share of hurricanes so many people move north for calmer weather and a waterfront property which is cheaper than their previous home. This enables them to put some money away for a rainy day.

It doesn’t matter what kind of water the property sits next to. It can be something as large as an ocean or something as small as a pond. The property in question doesn’t even need to be physically right next to the body of water - it could be several blocks away with a view of the water. Nevertheless, a buyer will always be found because there is always a buyer out there looking for a property with a water-front or water-view. The fact that these kinds of properties are also in very limited supply also adds to their appeal - and their price-tag.

Some prime examples of Jacksonville waterfront properties include of course the St Johns River (and its tributaries), the Intracoastal Waterway and miles of oceanfront.

So if you are a water-fan looking for a waterfront property, Jacksonville is the place to look. If you’re a seller with a waterfront property, you should have no problem selling it.

An interesting article has appeared in the local newspaper about the difficulties of trying to sell a house during holiday periods, in particular Christmas and Thanksgiving. Although it is now the beginning of the year, I thought it was still an interesting subject to try to broach as holiday periods naturally occur all throughout the year. For example, Easter is almost upon us.

As a general rule (and most real estate professionals agree with this), selling your home during a holiday period can be extremely tricky. Most people who are out to buy a property generally don’t have the time or the inclination to browse open houses during a holiday. Instead they will have family events to go to, dinners to prepare and so on.

But the same could also be said for sellers. Who wants a buyer coming around to look at the house when you have a private family event going on? So even sellers may not be so inclined to have an open house during say Thanksgiving.

But if the buyer and seller ARE so inclined to consider a bit of house-selling during a holiday period, many realtors agree that there are some things that you should bear in mind.

First, you should make sure the house in question is not too cluttered. It’s easy during a family event for rooms to get messy and this can have an adverse effect on the prospective buyer who may not see the advantages of the house because they are too busy tripping over the kid’s toys.

Second, you should make sure that your realtor is available during the holiday period! You never know, I may be away on vacation when you need me to schedule a house-viewing.

Thirdly, and this is very important, make sure that any promotional photos you take of your property doesn’t show any seasonal decorations. If you take pictures of your house in December complete with tree and decorations, having those same pictures circulating in June creates a bad impression. It reminds prospective buyers that your house has been on the market for quite a while and may therefore be unsellable.

With a little bit of preparation and thought, you can even sell your property during the holidays.

Many buyers are under the mistaken impression that a condo is a fancy apartment only for rich people. However, condos are becoming more and more affordable, bringing it into the price range of a single-family home. But some of the extras currently being offered to some condo communities in Jacksonville don’t help to dispel the “fancy apartments for rich people” myth.

To take a prime example, Berkman Plaza 2 has been compared to the Ritz-Carlton. The 23-story building which sits alongside the St Johns River will have various luxury amenities such as a concierge service, a marina, heated indoor pool, a putting green, tennis courts and valet dry cleaning.

Then there are the condominiums at Palencia. With price-tags starting in the higher end of $100,000, these condos also have extras such as swimming pools, a poolside family snackbar, tennis courts and golf courses.

Berkman Plaza 2 even has its own guest suites so if residents will have overnight guests, they can reserve a guest suite to offer their visitors their own space. This has been hailed as a unique new idea when considering what new amenities to offer condo residents.

It seems that by buying a condo, the homebuyer is making a statement about the kind of lifestyle they are looking for.

Sales of homes are brisk in the heavily wooded North Jacksonville area of Oakbrook but there could still be the possibility of snapping up a residence there if your luck holds.

The available residences were built by Mattamy Homes and sales were quite brisk as soon as the majority of the residences went on the market.   But more residences could soon become available from a minimum of $190,000.

There are various floorplans available including the Catherine floorplan which consists of a two-storey property with four bedrooms and three bathrooms.   The Catherine has little touches such as ceramic tiling, recessed kitchen lighting and a 36 inch ventless gas fireplace.

If the Catherine doesn’t take your fancy, you could instead consider the Avery (three bedrooms, two bathrooms), the Augustine (four bedrooms, two bathrooms) or the Savannah (five bedrooms, three bathrooms).

Oakbrook is surrounded by woods, parks and ponds, a perfect quiet community for all the family.

Builders Showcase is reporting that The Strand condominium tower will be completed by “winter 2007″.

The condo tower, which will be located on Jacksonville’s Southbank, will have 28 storeys and one of its biggest selling points is that residents will have an umatched and spectacular view of the St Johns River. You would also be within walking distance of wherever you need to go in Jacksonville, whether it be entertainment, shopping or dining.

You would think that prices for condos in this area would be too expensive and unattainable, thereby making it only possible for the super-rich. Not so! Pricing will start in the $200,000 price range going up to a maximum of around $800,000 if you want a penthouse suite. So, affordable condo living in a prestigious address that is sure to be highly desired and much sought after.

There are 14 differently designed floorplans with up to three bedrooms and two baths per condo. Each condo also comes with a modern kitchen with high quality amenities. Floors are covered with ceramic tiles and carpets and the master bathrooms come with a 42 inch bathtub.

If this sounds like the kind of place you’d want to live in, act now to get more information and to get your name added to the priority list.