Jacksonville | St Johns Co. Real Estate Blog

If you have a home which has been on the market for some time, maybe you need to get a realtor to give the place a makeover?   Or before you even put your house on the market, have a good hard look at it and let a realtor make the place look inviting and a treat.  Welcome to the emerging world of “staging” a property.

With lots of homes on the market, prospective buyers can afford to be picky about what they want and if a room is say cluttered with junk, that can be enough to make them think “no, not this one.  Let’s move on”.   But if you get your home “staged” beforehand, you could find yourself with a contract to sell your house faster than you think.

“Staging” is basically strategically arranging the components in each room to make the room look asthetically pleasing to potential buyers.  This will make them enthusiastic about your home, making them seriously consider buying it.  “Staging” can be something as simple as moving the sofa to a different part of the room to make the floor-space look bigger.  Or acquiring a small coffee-table with a few small ornaments to give the room a cosy feeling.  But you can go much further than that, completely de-personalizing the room, cleaning each room thoroughly to make it sparkle & shine, replacing the furniture, polishing the glass surfaces, replacing the carpets and the curtains…the list can go on and on.    So when a potential buyer comes around, all they see are clean, sparkling spacious rooms which they would love to live their life in.  Not a dirty cluttered room where they trip over the lawnmower, stumble over the stack of Playboy magazines and smell the spilt beer on the rug from the week before.

Your realtor can help you to modify your home to make it look more attractive and pleasing to visiting viewers.  It doesn’t have to take much to change a non-selling home into a hot in-demand home.   Just talk to your realtor for ideas or tune into HGTV’s “Designed to Sell” for inspiration.

Plus you can reverse the situation and think to yourself “if I was the buyer looking at my home with a critical eye, what would I find appealing and not appealing?   What would turn me off from buying this home?”.   Be honest with yourself and you’ll find half the battle to sell your home already won.

A company called Rayonier has paid just over $28 million for 1,950 acres of land near Jacksonville.

The deal, with home building company ICI Homes, is one of three simultaneous deals, totalling around $54 million. The Jacksonville deal however is the largest of the three and it involves development properties with ICI.

http://tinyurl.com/kohw2

In other news, Collateral Real Estate Capital LLC has financed a $272 million loan for a portfolio of fourteen apartment complexes, five of which are in Jacksonville.

It is the largest loan in the company’s 73-year history.

http://tinyurl.com/f8323

A 21,500-square foot building located in Ponte Vedra Park Drive, Jacksonville, has been sold for $4.5 million.

The buyer was the Asutosh Group LLC of Jacksonville and the plan is to convert the building into office condo units.

http://tinyurl.com/r93bt

$3 million has bought ZE Regency LLC the Regency Square Shopping Center in Jacksonville.

The company owns four other similar shopping centers and this one has six tenants including Subway. The previous owners of the center bought the property 5 yeara ago for $350,000 and it is now estimated to be worth $1.3 million.

http://tinyurl.com/hgapn

This newspaper article gives some interesting facts and figures about the state of the Jacksonville housing market. Most of it is very upbeat and optimistic including the 12% rise in property median prices, the high quality of life here and the availability of housing for people moving into the Jacksonville area. Well worth a read if you’re considering venturing into the property market in Jacksonville.

http://tinyurl.com/h9d6e

The DZ Plaza Shopping Center in Jacksonville has been bought for almost $11 million but the buyer has kept their identity withheld.

The buyer was represented by the Jacksonville office of Marcus and Millichap. M & M refused to name the buyer. However, it turns out that the property was assessed last year and was valued at just $7 million. The shopping center is almost completely occupied by tenants such as Baskin-Robbins.

http://tinyurl.com/qtzh9

In a national survey, it has been revealed that four out of the top ten areas in the US to boast median-price gains are in Florida – and Jacksonville is one of them with an increase of almost 19%.

Also, even though statewide unit sales have dropped sharply, the median prices statewide have gone up 9% to just under $255,000. Statewide condo re-sales also dropped sharply but the median price managed to hold steady at around $219,000.

http://tinyurl.com/k27hl

It seems that cheaper is not always the most desirable. According to a survey carried out by Metrostudy, Jacksonville house sales under $250,000 have been declining, especially in the area of single-family housing.

Where the growth spurt has taken place is in new construction of houses over $250,000 which has seen a startling jump of 74% in the second quarter.

Metrostudy has concluded that overall the housing market in Jacksonville remains strong with factors such as job growth, affordability and demand contributing to the rise in prices.

http://tinyurl.com/ofz46

The Florida Association of Realtors reported a 3% drop in Jacksonville home sales in June but the median price rose once again by another 5%, making the median price now $213,500.

However, condo sales went UP in June by 10% as the condo median price fell 9%.

These figures may not be 100% accurate though as the stats from St Johns County are apparently not yet in. But they give a general enough picture of the real estate outlook for June 2006.

http://tinyurl.com/h77nn
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