St Simons Island Real Estate

A Career in Real Estate? Now?

by Midi on February 27, 2012

Why not now? Things are slow, sure… but if I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times… Now is a great time to get into real estate.

Anyone new to this business will tell you… there’s a heck of a lot to learn when starting a real estate career. Little do people realize that real estate licensees are literally small business owners. And being a small business owner, it is up to each owner to develop and grow their business. That takes time. Establishing and building one’s reputation is a slow process. Gaining the knowledge and expertise to succeed requires hands-on experience out in the industry.

So why not get started while the market is slow and the some of the competition is wandering about in semi-shock without focus, still wondering what happened.

To that end… I’d like to announce that we are officially enrolling for our next real estate prelicense course!

Classes start Monday, April 2 and we will meet Monday and Thursday nights with 2 full Saturdays. Final exam is currently scheduled for the week of June 12. Tuition is $525 which includes textbooks and a full weekend study cram session (other schools often charge extra for this).

This course fulfills the Georgia Real Estate Commission’s requirement for anyone wishing to get licensed to practice real estate in the state of Georgia.

Click here for to view the schedule and see more information. Contact me for more information and take the first step to starting your new career!

See you in April!!!

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A Promising Sign?

by Midi on January 30, 2012

St Simons Island Real Estate Activity on the Rise A year ago, if a buyer asked me about five listings that had fallen out of the MLS, upon closer inspection, I would have found that those five listings had all expired or had been withdrawn by the owner. The other day, however, I looked into five listings for one of my buyers and discovered that two had recently sold, two were under contract and only one had been withdrawn by the seller.

To top things off… of the other five properties I tried to show the same buyer, two of them were actually under contract when I called to set up appointments. That hasn’t happened in a long while.

There had been a time during the ‘boom’ when every other property I called on to show would be under contract – many agents don’t bother to change the status of the listing and let them appear ‘active’ when in fact they are pending sales but that’s another story. More recently, any active listings I’d call to show were pretty much all available and the agents sounded relieved someone wanted to show it at all.

I firmly believe it is an indication that the market is changing and activity is on the rise. Just last week while sitting on the panel of the Glynn County Board of Equalization, one of the county appraisers, in defending the value of a property under appeal, cited several noteable land sales in the West Glynn area of the county where during the ‘boom’ growth had been rampant, but since the collapse, things had come to a halt. Hearing about all the land sales out there and then encountering the increased activity here on the Island makes me feel that things are definitely shifting.

I’ll pull some numbers and perhaps make some sort of graph for a future post soon… stay tuned!

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2011 Market Stats so far…

by Midi on September 28, 2011

Spoke at the Kiwanis Club of Brunswick’s luncheon yesterday on behalf of the Golden Isles Association of REALTORS® and of course, the topic was real estate and what’s going on. Thought I’d share the numbers here.

Essentially, I was looking more at activity versus prices – which I’ll get to later. Here is a ten year activity trend and you can see for the Mainland where activity peaked and where we stand now. It’s a bit tight but the main green line below tells the tale…

As you can see, activity peaked in 2006 then dropped drastically in 2008 / 2009 with the market’s near total collapse at the end of 2008 – can anyone say TARP? Then, you can see the ups and downs more normal for real estate though I bet you those ups and downs can be correlated with major economic news at the time.

Taking a look at St. Simons Island -

The constant ups and downs are common on the Island where sales trends follow a seasonal path. 1st and 4th Quarter then to be quiet while the heavier tourist months tend to show picked up activity. This is common of the second home/resort market. But notice when the low hit… the low REALLY hit.

But if this tells you anything – it’s that both paint a clear picture that the bottom was hit at the end of 2008 and beginning of 2009 and things, despite the ups and downs, are going back up.

So far in 2011:

Single Family Sales in Mainland Glynn is up 23.2% with the average sale price down 16.8% to last year.
Single Family Sales on St. Simons Island is up 14.2% with the average sale price down 3.1% to last year.
Condo sales on St. Simons Island is down 2.0% with the avergae sale price down 18.5% to last year.

Condos tend the be the heart of the resort/second home market and that is the area hardest hit by this economic downturn. With uncertainty comes fear and with fear comes a natural reticence to splurge on ‘luxury’ things like… a second home.

Also – a good chunk of what’s selling right now – almost 70% of sales – is bank-owned – which means it has been foreclosed upon. Much of those foreclosed properties have been sloughed off to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from the originating banks – just take a look at our property records and you can see where banks, both local and national, have transferred deeds of ownership NOT to individual buyers but to Fannie and Freddie! Well, Fannie and Freddie offer different incentives to buyers who would use the home as a primary residence versus a buyer who would use it as a second home or investment.

Of course, that’s all in an effort to ensure that the available properties go to support basic housing… but in a market like ours that is mixed and reliant on second home sales… well, it’s not always the best deal.

Tagged as: Brunswick, Fannie Mae, Foreclosures, Freddie Mac, Glynn, Market statistics, Second Homes, st simons island

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Things You Really Ought to Know: GSEs & QRMs & What Congress is Up to!

25 May 2011

A couple of weeks ago I spent a week in Washington DC at the National Association of REALTORS® MidYear Legislative Meeting. One of the key things I came away from this meeting is how terribly ignorant we really are when it comes to issues affecting us and the business being conducted by our elected [...]

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New Things Coming & Going: St Simons Island & Brunswick, GA

8 April 2011

As with all communities, businesses here are coming and going. Here’s some of the latest things going on around St. Simons Island and Brunswick.
First of all, anyone coming on and off the Island recently knows that the barrier construction is fully underway. For those of you unaware, they are building a barrier along the length [...]

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What’s Selling in the Golden Isles? Bank-Owned versus Regular Sales

16 March 2011

Looking back at the what’s sold in our market for the year so far and decided to investigate just what percentage of the properties being sold are bank-owned/foreclosures. According to the Golden Isles Multiple Listing Service, 192 properties were sold in our market. Of those 192, approximately 54% of them were bank owned properties. 37% [...]

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Real Estate PreLicense Class about to start!

16 March 2011

After last fall, I really told myself I would not hold another real estate prelicense course for a while. I thought I’d take a break in 2011 to focus on other things. But, when people start asking me when my next class is going to be… and folks are kind enough to let me use [...]

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Real Estate PreLicense Course Spring 2011

2 February 2011

Usually by this time of the year, our Prelicense course is about to begin. This year, I had to delay things a bit, knowing the beginning of the year would be a bit busier than normal. I was also waiting to find a new location to hold the prelicense course. Given the smaller size of [...]

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Cannons Point on St Simons Island SAVED!

8 January 2011

Thanks Hank Paulson, Jr. St Simons Island is lucky to have friends with deep pockets…
In the disintegration of the Sea Island empire… one of the victims was an untouched, beautiful 600 acre tract of land called Cannon’s Point on the north end of St. Simons Island. Property owners across Jones Creek from Cannon’s Point [...]

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Good Bye 2010 and Hello 2011

31 December 2010

I know a lot of folks in real estate are happy to see 2010 behind us… but viewing 2011 with a rather skeptical eye. Me, I’ve been surprised to find that somewhere along the way, I’ve become an optimist.
I’m looking at 2011 with the belief that it will be a better year than 2010 was, [...]

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