Sunday, July 20, 2008

Yet another look at The Retreat

After spending a weekend watching the British Open I though I would take a peak at my favorite golf course community. WOW, the prices there are coming apart like Greg Normans game did today. Back in late April I wrote a post about the first home to list under $500k in The Retreat. Here we are, only 3 months later and there are 17 homes listed under $500k and of those 5 are under $450k. There are 32 homes listed under $600k. Some of those are short sales but enough of them are REOs and those will set the comps so the when the shorts do become REOs they will be priced in the same range or probably even lower. On a square foot price basis many of those sub $500k homes are in the $130s s/f with the lowest priced home being a short sale listed for $122 s/f. As the selling season winds down I'm starting to wonder if the lenders will start dumping these homes soon. I've been seeing quite a few new listings in this tract every week. The inventory could start to balloon if they don't start selling some of these.

The price leader on a square foot basis is this home at 22586 Secret Way. This home is 3676 sq/ft and has 4 bedrooms and 3 baths. These were built by KB homes and this one sold new for $841,500 in 2005. Today it's listed as a short sale for $122 s/f or $449,999. That works out to a loss if $391,501 (less costs) if they can get is sold.



My personal pick would be 8024 Sanctuary. This is another KB home. It's 3760 sq/ft and has 4 bedrooms and 4 baths. I like this floor plan with the exception of the fact that it only has a 2 car garage. That actually is a deal killer for me, I need at least 3 and preferably 4. Other than that, this is a very nice floorplan. The home was purchased for an even $1 million February of last year. Today it's listed as a short sale for $499k. If the bank will go for that price (and they would be smart to take it) that would be a loss of 50% or $501k in 16 months. KB is still building this tract (well they were as of a month ago) and they were still asking over $600k for this floorplan the last time I stopped at the models.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

For me, the real deal killer might be the high special assessments fees in The Retreat. The few houses I've looked at have the special assessments fee which ranges from $3900 to $5400. 5k for a house selling for a million dollars may not look like a lot. But a house listed under 500k, like the one you mentioned in the post, $5400 is actually slightly more than the property tax one has to pay. There is also another 2k or so for HOA on top of these special assessments fees. I don't know what other folks think. These 7-8 grand per year for the next 20 years or so certainly get my attention.

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golfer_X said...

I agree the taxes and HOA in that community are quite high and must be factored in when looking at buying in there. I don't mind the HOA so much, although it is a little high compared to many other tracts. Of course you are paying the salary for the gate guards that most tracts don't have. But the tax rate with the assessments is just crazy. Of course most new tracts have those assessments and they effectively bump your property tax up to 1.6% to as high as 2.0%.

dirtfarmer said...

Yet another member of the 500 k club