Springfield in Florida Trend Magazine

[iloveionia]

What a great article for Historic Springfield!
We are survivors in this economic downturn!!

http://www.floridatrend.com/article.asp?page=1&aID=54090

[letters and numbers]

How about that! I have friends moving here

[nvrenuf]

How about that! I have friends moving here

Great! Nice to have new neighbors.

[finehoe]

Good article, thanks for posting.

Of the 43 homes that sold in Springfield in the first nine months of this year, half were foreclosures, bringing the median sales price down to just over $40,000, says Raymond Rodriguez, market consultant at the Real Estate Strategy Center of North Florida. While that sounds bad, it's double the median sales price for homes in the larger downtown region, according to data from the Northeast Florida Association of Realtors.

Can anyone confirm this?  Is the median sales price of homes in "the larger downtown region" (whatever that means) really around $20,000?

[letters and numbers]

sounds off to me! they are paying almost $200,000

[Springfield Chicken]

I can go back and crunch actual numbers but a couple of things skew the result.  There are homes and there are homes.  Good livable homes ARE selling around $200,000 and above.  Unlivable structures that need to be rebuilt from almost scratch are selling for incredibly low numbers.  And foreclosure prices vary dramatically from lender to lender.  Also, depending on what data they used, a lot of times the definition of "Springfield" takes in a much larger area than the historic part.  My agents who work in Springfield, as well as other agents I talk to, continue to see demand for good livable homes at the higher prices.  And we are beginning to see more buyers who are interested in using renovation financing to buy one of the "needier" homes and have the repairs and restoration work done by professionals.

[strider]

One of the positives of the economic downturn is that once again you can find a home in Springfield in need of some TLC, buy it right, fix it up and end up with a very nice home for under 100K.  Want a REALLY nice home, then you can go higher or spend more on updating it.  This is allowing a bunch of adventuresome people to discover the urban vibe.

[letters and numbers]

i wouldnt call my friends adventurous really. weve all spent a lot of time in the neighborhood looking at houses and think 'cool' might be better name for them  =)
me, the wifey and baby like what we see!

[Springfield Chicken]

I did pull some numbers and here is what I got from the MLS:

During the first 9 months of this year, 53 homes closed in the Historic District.
33 of them were bank owned foreclosures.  23 of those sold for under $75,000.
4 sales were short sales.
The remaining 16 sales were "normal" seller-owned properties.
The lowest priced home sold in that time was for $3000 for one of the little Redell St bungalows.
The highest priced home sold in that time was $260,000 for an SRG home.

However, since the end of September, 20 more homes have sold.
Only 5 of those were foreclosures, and 2 were short sales. 
And the highest price during that time was $299,000.

There are 68 homes listed for sale right now.
Only 9 of them are foreclosures and 17 are short sales.
So 42 are "normal" seller-owned sales.
That represents a healthy trend to Springfield sales.