Wellington Short Sale Market Report - An Overview from 2007 to 2013
Wellington Florida is a great place to live and is the first choice of many people moving to Palm Beach County Florida. When the South Florida market took a hit in the beginning of 2007 it affected every town in the tri-county southern part of our state.
We started to list short sale properties at an increased pace starting in September of 2007. There were a lot of short sales in 2008 through 2010. In 2011 Wellington was getting back up and prices started to stabilize. But of course, there were still many homeowners over 50% under water. You could easily find 200 short sale listings back in 2008 and 2009. In 2012 the market turned around and the prices started to go up again but not at the toxic pace from before the bust.
Today we are down to only 19 short sale listings for sale in Wellington. That is a huge drop.
There are three reasons for this:
1. The market has turned and so people are deciding to keep their homes and not selling them even though they are upside down. After all, a home is a home. It is not just an investment to many families and retirees.
2. Many homeowners have not paid their mortgage payments in several years, some upwards of 4 years and still get to live in their homes. This is going to stop soon because of new legislation to help speed along the courts processing the foreclosures. But of course, when there is no incentive to list a home as a short sale when you can wait it out as long as possible and save up your money to move.
3. The banks are not foreclosing on homes as fast. Wellington has a tough code enforcement division and the banks don't want to pay the city for all the fines and code violations that REO properties are known for.
The highest priced short sale is listed at $1,499,000 on Sea Mist located in Palm Beach Point- an awesome equestrian gated community with homes on 5 acre lots. 
The lowest priced short sale is listed at $179,900 and is an approved short sale that was just put back on the market in an older area of Wellington.
There are two short sales available in Buena Vida a 55+ community in Wellington. 
This is very unusual to have a short sale in Buena Vida. One home is listed at $350,000 and the one is listed at $280,000.
The Isles of Wellington is another nice gated community. There is one short sale available and it is an approved short sale. This home is listed at $325,000.
There are only three short sales now listed in Olympia of Wellington.
Now that is the lowest number of short sales in Olympia in years! Olympia was the short sale factory as well as heavily dominated with REOs. This is because so many people bought on speculation in Olympia. Many people including agents bought 6 to 7 homes pre-construction and flipped the properties before they were built. But many people got caught holding the bag. They could not sell those properties when the bust happened. It appears that Olympia has come out of that phase and is now doing well.
Comments(6)