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Letter to the editor

In down market, builder seeks bids online

By Judy Stark, Times Homes and Garden Editor
Published August 4, 2007

Five years ago, prospective buyers were signing $1,000 checks just to have the chance to make an appointment to meet with a builder and reserve a homesite at MiraBay, in the Southshore area of Hillsborough County.

At communities all around the Tampa Bay area, buyers camped out overnight when a new group of homesites went on the market. There were lotteries to get a chance to buy. Builders raised prices after every five sales. Investors bought homesites they'd never laid eyes on.

Remember those golden days?

How times have changed. Through Tuesday, David Weekley Homes is selling some of its inventory homes online at www.realtybid.com, an online auction site similar to eBay.

The homes are at MiraBay and at Longleaf and Wilderness Lake Preserve, both in Pasco County. Award-winning Wilderness Lake Preserve was once the fastest-selling community in the bay area.

The homes had been priced at $360,000 to $739,000 including homesite, but opening bids are as low as $255,000. Spokeswoman Jennifer Cole said the homes "are not discounted or a fire sale." The reserve, or minimum, price is what a buyer who walked into the sales center would be quoted, she said.

"We're doing it to broaden our pool of prospects," Cole said. Eighty percent of buyers shop online before they visit a community, so this was a way to reach out to prospective buyers, locally and outside the area.

Lennar Homes conducted online auctions at some of its California properties, where it listed 16 homes and sold 11, Cole said, "so we thought we would give it a try."

Weekley has just a few homes left in each of the communities - five at Longleaf, 11 at MiraBay, six homesites and an inventory home at Wilderness Lake Preserve. "These are communities we are phasing out of," she said. That's a time when builders are motivated to move homes quickly.

Isn't everybody these days?

Shades of distress

What color is a foreclosure?

Well, blue, sure, but also brown and green.

That's the report out of California, according to a recent story on All Things Considered on National Public Radio.

Six of the top 10 metro areas with the most foreclosures per household are in California, surely a dubious distinction.

According to the story, real estate agents can tell when houses are in foreclosure because the front lawns are brown. Either the owners have already moved out, or they can no longer afford lawn service, or they've just given up.

Backyard pools turn green for the same reason. Owners, if they're still around, have more important things to worry about than pool service or balancing the chemicals. Untended pools turn into giant mosquito hatcheries, to the dismay of local mosquito control officials, the story said.

One way or another, we all get stung by a downturn in the real estate market.

Judy Stark can be reached at 727 893-8446 or stark@sptimes.com.

[Last modified August 2, 2007, 15:50:21]