Aol Money and Finance posted an article about the Best Places to buy a second home or vacation home. I decided to do some research based on their criteria for a smart Vacation Home Buy.
What Makes a Smart Vacation Home Buy?
1. Affordable: homes for less than $350K
2. Convenient: less than three hours from a major city
3. Active vacation rental market
4. Plenty to do.
5. Room to grow: an unsaturated market, situated near upscale destinations
Anyone would agree that the Tampa Bay area fits into their criteria of top 10 list of best places to buy a home. Based on the article, the recommended price of a vacation home investment to be no more than 350,000.
First, I searched our MLS database for homes for sale, which includes townhomes and condos. I based my search on a tri-county area Hillsborough, Pinellas and Pasco Counties.
For those of you not familiar with counties in our area the citites include: Tampa, St. Petersburg, Clearwater, Palm Harbor, Safety Harbor Land O’ Lakes, Wesley Chapel, Brandon, All the Beaches, Harbour Island and Davis Islands.
The first thing I wanted to know was how many homes were on the market. Are you ready for this?
The numbers for housing inventory at 350K or under. The average home is a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom, 1,454 sq ft.
in August of 2008 there were: 29,874 active homes for sale.
The average sales price was $154,616.
Moving ahead to May of 2010 the inventory has decreased to 21,404, indicating our market is stabilizing.
Our average sales price is now $130,501.
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