PALM COAST, FL – November 11, 2015 – There are currently 855 single-family residential Flagler County homes listed for sale via the Flagler County Real Estate Association’s Multiple Listing Service (MLS). That’s the lowest inventory level in two years. But the number of agents has grown during that period. It’s now hovering around 1,100.
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Look at it this way. We have more than enough agents to staff an Open House at every listing six days per week. Of course that would take a lot of scheduling and it’s not likely to happen, but it highlights an obvious imbalance. I know agents or agent teams that are carrying more than 20 home listings, implying that many agents have none.
A recently released Coldwell Banker Home Listing Report compares the average listing price of 81,000 similar-sized four-bedroom, two-bathroom homes in 2,722 different markets across all 50 states.
Newport Beach led the list as most the expensive U.S. market with an average listing price of $2,291,764. (Only one Flagler County home sold for more than $2,000,000 in the past 12 months.) Cleveland, Ohio, brought up the bottom, ranking 2,722th with an average listing price of only $74,502 (not including a snow-blower). Palm Coast ranked 2,092nd with an average listing price of $196,653.
Doral led Florida with an average list price of $552,399. Hastings was at the bottom with an average list price of $95,267. Palm Coast ranked 90th of 127 markets analyzed within Florida.
SERIOUSLY, it costs more to buy the subject home in 76.8% of the markets studied across the country than it does to buy the same home in Palm Coast. And 70.1% of the Florida markets included in the study are more expensive than Palm Coast.
Perhaps Palm Coast’s general beauty, access to uncrowded beachs, sunshine, trail system, championship golf courses, sports venues, excellent schools, Interstate access, job growth and population growth are a turnoff to prospective buyers.
Or maybe we just need more real estate agents.
*Be sure to listen to me and co-host David Alfin on our weekly half-hour radio show, Real Estate Matters, every Sunday morning at 9:00 on WNZF News Radio. David and I discuss a wide range of real estate topics. Listen on 1550 AM or 106.3 FM or streaming live at http://player.listenlive.co/36561. Past shows can be found at http://www.flaglerbroadcasting.com/wnzf/#archives.
And someone planted explosives in the World Trade Center then got a group of Saudi terrorists to fly airplanes into the buildings. The other two were just to throw us off.
For example, I sold a Seagate house and was paid a good commission. However, our MLS classifies my income as a referral fee from Seagate, not a commission. It is not recorded as a "sale" for me. I believe this is the case for all new home sales by real estate agents.
The proportion of listings vs the number of real estate agents is generally true; but one needs to also consider that some real estate agencies (and this includes the largest one in Palm Coast) have many listings that are generated by the brokers themselves who list houses that their agents then sell. So I could have no listings but sell one house a month of my broker's listings.
And there are team member agents such as some who work for Keller Williams who just work with buyers and have no listings in their name.
And then there are brokers who find they get more marketing clout by putting all listings in under the brokers name.
And there are many "House Listings".
I work primarily as a "Buyer's Agent" and do very well-generally having only 1-3 listings to which I give much personal attention.
The market is moving toward Listing Specialists and Buyer Specialists and Team Administrators; but the long standing bias at the Agency and the MLS level is still toward getting listing contracts.
Minor points to a good article I will be passing on, but my comments are worth knowing I think.
Ted Lesher