Key West Real Estate Update

 

Frequent readers of my blog may have noticed fewer posts than normal. I have not been ill or away - there just is not much available for sale. As of July 25 there are only 69 single family homes for sale in Key West. Usually there are around 400. This is crazy.

I dug deeper. Only one house was priced below $500,000. It is a bank owned fixer in need of significant repair. Twenty five of the houses were priced below $1,000,000.  The median house is a 1,312 sq ft on a 4,750 sq ft lot priced at $849,000 or $608 per sq ft. Then I looked at the particular houses. One is located on a very nice street in Old Town. But this one house has a notorious past about which I will not write. Another house a block away sits at the back of a large yard filled with trees that the city probably will not allow to be taken down even though the State of Florida enacted legislation to prevent local tree commissions from letting property owners do just that. The remaining houses are scattered about the city. They probably don't look like million dollar homes in other parts of the country.

Buyers able to pay between one million to two million dollars have a better but not larger selection. The median house in this range would price at $1,545,000 or $962 per sq ft. That is $258 per sq ft higher than homes priced below $1,000,000. I have written about several of these houses over the years. Only a couple are priced way too high for this or any market. A couple of these are new to the market and will probably go under contract fairly quickly. a couple of the others have location issues that do not go away. Those houses will sell. It just takes time for a buyer willing to settle for these properties to sell.

The remaining twenty three homes are priced between $2,150,000 to $8,450,000 and are primarily located in Old Town, Truman Annex (five houses here), Sunset Key, and Casa Marina Areas. The median house in this selection is priced at $3,275,000 or $1,178 per sq ft. A couple of these are way over priced in my opinion. I sometimes wonder whether it is the owner or the agent who dreams up the pricing.

Housing prices in Key West have been high on a price per square foot basis for the past couple of decades. That is because of the limited supply of houses and the inability to build more. Now the demand has exceeded the supply to the extent that there is little left to choose from. Will that change? No. There won't be more houses built. Period. Will prices go down? No. Will they go up? Yes. When will more properties become available? Let's see what happens in October. That is my best guess for more new listings. In the meantime call me, Gary Thomas, 305-766-2642, to show you one of the 69 homes available for purchase in Key West. I am a sort of full time Realtor at Preferred Properties Key West.