'No pets' can mean 'no deal'

3 BR, 21/2 BA, pets welcome.

That's the "condo wanted" classified that lots of potential buyers would write, says Sue Dudenhoefer, an agent with Coldwell Banker's Belleair Bluffs office.

If the condo won't accept a dog, buyers say, forget it: I'll look elsewhere.

"It's so disheartening," she said, "when you have a nice customer, a $500,000 customer, and I have dreams of making money flashing in my eyes, and then they say, "I have a dog,' and it's like being stuck with a pin."

Many of the luxury properties around here prohibit pets. Some people don't like animals, some are allergic, some want to avoid the smell and mess that can come with pets.

"People don't think about it. It doesn't dawn on them to mention" that they're pet owners, Dudenhoefer said, but that fact will limit what's available to them.

Just more than 63 percent of all American households own a dog, cat or bird, for a total of 124.6-million animals.

Dudenhoefer knows an older couple who likely will put their waterfront single-family home on the market after the turn of the year. "They want three bedrooms on the mainland, and they have two dogs. There's almost nothing I could show her" in a condominium. "She'll have to buy another house."

At Building 4 of the Belleair Country Club, where pets have long been prohibited, four units languished on the market. Residents of that building organized a vote to change the rules and permit pets. It passed, 51 to 49 percent. "And the minute that passed, three or four apartments that were just sitting there sold right away," Dudenhoefer said. Of eight units in Building 4 that changed hands in the last year, five are occupied by pet owners.

"The question is, "Can I bring my dog? The heck with the wet bar,' " she said.

Dudenhoefer is marketing a new project on West Bay Drive in Belleair Bluffs, the Vista del Mar. This 18-unit project, ranging in price from around $300,000 to more than $600,000, will be pet-friendly, she said.

She told the Belleair Country Club story to one of the developers and said, "You've got to have dogs." Another of the principals owns two border collies.

That settled that. Dogs will have their day at Vista del Mar, and so will cats. Pets welcome.

It's affordable, but . . .

Time for another of our Dubious Achievement Awards. The winner is . . . Kokomo, Ind.

For the 11th time in the past 18 quarters -- these figures are for the second quarter of this year -- Kokomo was No. 1 in the rankings of the nation's most affordable housing produced by the National Association of Home Builders.

Kokomo scored 94.7 on the Home Opportunity Index, which means that families earning the median U.S. income of $52,500 could afford to purchase 94.7 percent of the homes for sale in that city. The median family income there, $57,600, is above the national average, while the median home sale price, $99,000, is below the national median price of $156,000.

Which is to say that prices and incomes are pretty low in Kokomo and the market is essentially flat.

Lakeland-Winter Haven came in 17th on the list of most affordable metro areas (score: 83.3; median price: $91,000; median income: $45,000), followed by Melbourne-Titusville-Palm Bay in 18th place (score: 83; median price: $103,000; median income: $51,200). The Tampa Bay area ranked 70th out of 187 markets (score: 74.5; median price: $110,000; median income: $47,700).

The least affordable metro area was San Francisco, where only 6.7 percent of the homes sold were affordable to households earning the median income of $80,100. The median housing price was a pulse-pounding $530,000. Median, of course, means that half the homes sold for less -- and half for more. Funny how the exciting cities people love to visit on vacation are often the most expensive to live in.

You'll leave your heart, your wallet and your shirt in San Francisco if you try to buy there. No Florida cities made it on the list of the 25 least affordable metro areas.

More room, please

What do empty-nester buyers want? Space.

The popular assumption is that buyers whose kids are grown and gone want to downsize, but a survey of 800 buyers 55 and older in four Western states showed that 30 percent of them want a house of 2,000 to 2,500 square feet. Twenty-two percent of them already own a house that big. The survey found that 34 percent of those buyers have lived in their current home for more than 20 years. (Bet they've got lots of stuff stored away.)

Sue Dudenhoefer, the Coldwell Banker agent from Belleair Bluffs, said her empty-nester buyers "want to retire from the lawn" and other home-maintenance chores, but "They don't want to give up their dining room set and piano or their beautiful desk."

They also want three bedrooms so they can have "an office, a place for the computer," which may double as a guest room. That means they pass by a lot of two-bedroom condos.

They want 9- or 10-foot ceilings, not the huge volume ceilings of a few years ago (too expensive to heat or cool those giant rooms). They want storage. They want two assigned parking spaces.

Older buyers want single-story living when it becomes difficult to take the stairs, and they want to live on the mainland, out of an evacuation zone, rather than on the beaches.

And they don't want to move far. "Their doctors, dentists and friends are here. You get to a certain stage in your life, and you're not willing to make those shifts."

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