Hojin’s SW Orlando Perspective

I just filled up my car at the gas station and the shock of what it costs got me thinking about how this is affecting the home buyer.With gas prices reaching ridiculous levels, consumers are adjusting their behavior to compensate for the inflation.

They’ve obviously cut back on the amount of gas purchased, but also have increased spending on smaller cars, scooters, mules for farming, bicycles, locking gas caps, and homes closer to work or near public transportation.

Economists call this phenomenon the cross price elasticity of demand.

If gas prices continue its climb, real estate values for properties closer to places of work should increase in value more rapidly then properties further away. There’s no good source of public transportation in Orlando and the proposed commuter rail looks like it’s a long shot, so communities near major places of employment should fare better in the future.

Location is the name of the game in real estate, and closer to work will be the most sought after location in the future.

I can’t figure out if this is a clever marketing scheme or a wacky idea.A real estate agent named Deven Trabosh is including herself in the sale price of her home in Palm Beach Gardens on Ebay and Craigslist. The headline on the ad reads “Mary a Princess Lost in America”. Bidding starts at $0.99, but you gotta look out for the $500,000 shipping charge.

Old Deven is a licensed real estate agent, but actually hasn’t practiced in years according to CNN. I really do think they make it all too easy to get a real estate license in Florida. It promotes incompetency and just makes the industry look bad. Stunts like this makes the industry look bad.

Although I’ll have to admit, she’s generated a lot of free press. I’m not quite sure it’s good press, but she’s definitely getting the word out so kudos at least for that.

Watch Devon’s Interview on ABC News Tampa Bay

I think I found my new dream gadget. It’s the Life|ware digital & home automation control. It controls practically everything in a home. It controls the music, lighting, thermostat, television, kitchen appliances, security system, and more. Homes of the future will have a digital network that controls everything and that technology is available today with this product.

The controls can be integrated through any device with a Windows Vista Media Center operating system which includes televisions or personal computer. The Life|point Touch Screen Controller is another option that can integrate into your home like any light switch. It’ll just look way cooler.

Disney integrated Life|ware technology into the new House of the Future attraction at Disneyland which is scheduled to open this month. It is ironic that it integrates technologies that are available today.

I’m not too sure of the pricing, but I’m sure it’s not cheap and only the finest new homes will have this technology for the time being. All I know is I want one.

see the slick interactive demo: Life|Ware

Today is the first day of hurricane season and we already have a named tropical depression called Arthur. When Orlando experienced 3 hurricanes in 2004, the greatest real estate boom ever took place in Central Florida as well as around the country when all the supposed experts were predicting a severe downturn in the real estate market here. It just goes to show ya, you can’t time the market no matter how much you know. I’m not saying there’s any cause and effect here but that’s just how it went down. Maybe they’re not so bad. The good news for Central Florida is that this is where everyone on the coast comes to get away from the hurricanes and there’s plenty of rooms because of the tourist industry here. When the 3 hurricanes came through our area in 2004, most of the damage came from fallen oak trees which have a wide but shallow root system and poorly built roofs that were damaged from the heavy wind and rain. We had a lot of homes with blue tarps on the roof for quite some time in 2004. To protect your home from a hurricane, experts suggest these 5 precautionary measures:

1. seal down loose shingles
2. fill cracks along the exterior with caulk
3. seal windows, doors, gables, and vents with hurricane shutters
4. be aware that the garage door is the weakest part of your home
5. install barrel bolts and at least one deadbolt on double doors

The Weather Channel has some must have resources for hurricanes which includes an alert to warn you of coming storms and Hurricane Central for all the information one could ever want about an approaching hurricane.

Homes in SW Orlando are either built with concrete block construction or wood frame construction. Many buyers prefer concrete block construction but is this preference valid?

Actually, wood frame construction is more labor intensive and requires more skill with framing and trim work. It also provides better insulation and you don’t get those pesky settlement cracks that you get with concrete block construction. Virtually all concrete block homes have them or will get them eventually because the ground in these parts are porous and sandy.

The climate in Dr. Phillips and Windermere is plain hot and muggy. It’s the perfect environment for termites, old house borers, wood decay fungi, powder post beetles, etc.. So it can pose a problem for anything made of wood that’s exposed to the elements.

Home buyers that come from outside of the area fear alligators and termites. I’ve been living in Florida so long that to me these things are just a part of life.

These things can be a problem but it’s not a problem most of the time. I’ve never personally witnessed an alligator attack and neither has anyone I know besides what we see on the news. I’ve also only witnessed people losing their home to termites on the news. It happens but it’s pretty rare.

Insurance companies fear termites too and will charge you a higher rate if your home is wood frame construction but not much more.

Some buyers speak of homes with wood frame construction like the plague and it’s just not true. You’ll probably want some type of regular termite treatment like Termidor or Sentricon but that’s it.

Homes with wood frame construction are just as good as concrete block homes in my opinion so let’s dispel the urban myth right here.

If you’re one of those people who’d like to consider your house a work of art, you may be interested in the Nautilus House created by bioarchitect Javier Senosiain in 2006. It truly is a work of art, although you may want to make a little less of a statement. It’s definitely not gonna go over so well with the homeowner’s association, but if you’ve got a plot of land overlooking the ocean or mountains or something then this could be the home that makes you stand out from the pact. World Architecture News describes it as “The metaphor was to feel like an internal inhabitant of a snail, like a mollusk moving from one chamber to another, like a symbiotic dweller of a huge fossil maternal cloister. This home social life flows inside the Nautilus without any division, a harmonic area in three dimensions where you can notice the continuous dynamic of the fourth dimension when moving in spiral over the stairs with a feeling of floating over the vegetation”. I was never gonna come up with a description like that, so I decided quote their description. In any case, I really like it because I’m one kooky son of a gun or more of a real estate geek than I thought. Whether or not I’d live in the darn thing is another argument altogether. It would definitely make a nice beach house somewhere in New Smyrna, Melbourne, or Ponce Inlet and everyone in Central Florida would know about it. I guess the question of the day is would you live in the Nautilus House? As crazy as it sounds, I think I would depending on the price. Some family in Mexico definitely would because they’ve been living in it since 2006. I wonder how it would do for resale. Probably not so good, but you can always say your house is a work of art and no one could argue. Anytime someone asks if you’ve been living in a shell, you can always say yes and have an excuse for not being up on current events.

see video: Nautilus House

One of the most common questions asked by home buyers is how’s the school district in a particular area and the most accepted measure of quality is the FCAT score. The FCAT test is administered to students in grades 3-11 and measures 2 basic components: criterion reference test (CRT), which measures benchmarks in Florida with regard to Math, Science, Reading, and Writing; and norm reference test (NRT), which measures Reading and Writing against national benchmarks. Whether or not the scores accurately reflect a school’s quality is another debate altogether but this score does provide a comparative measure. Good public schools are always in demand and in turn affects real estate values. Communities with high scoring school districts appreciate more or in this market, depreciate less than communities with low scoring school districts. You also want your kids to going to a good school. As a result, many eagerly await the FCAT scores which are released around this time every year. Here’s a handy tool to look up FCAT scores for schools of interest.

click this link to find FCAT scores from 1998 to present

Say goodbye to ever running out of how water. The Eternal Hybrid Water Heater produces an endless supply of hot water and is the most efficient water heater on the market today. So it’s green, but not so good for the other green, your pocketbook. It runs around $3,000 and it’ll take a long time recoup the added costs from its efficiency. At least you’ll never run out of hot water and doing some good for planet earth. It’s a wonderful luxury item to consider for new construction or remodeling projects, but it’s not cheap. It costs twice as much as a normal water heater but really within reach of most consumers if you gotta have it. If price is no object or you’re getting sick of running out of hot water, then you gotta have it. All homes over a million dollars should have it and hopefully we’ll all have it eventually.

The latest statistics for the Orlando real estate market were released by the Orlando Regional Realtor Association today and surprisingly it shows some improvement. Perhaps the traditional pick up in activity between Spring and Summer will take place this year. We haven’t seen it in a few years, but maybe it’ll happen this year. The inventory of homes on the market declined to 23,547 from 24,435 in the previous month. The number of new contracts increased from 2,346 to 2,434, the number of sales increased from 1,530 to 1,779, and the average days on market decreased from 97 to 90 days. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen improvement in any of these numbers and hopefully it’s a signal of things to come.