In just 48 hours on the market, a fixer-upper house in a subdivision off Goldenrod Road drew more offers from prospective buyers than entire neighborhoods get in the course of years.
During one weekend in late October, 64 prospective buyers submitted offers for the bank-owned house on Seville Pointe Avenue in east Orlando. First-time buyers, investors and families all competed for the home, which was discounted to $69,900 after an earlier sale fell through.
In the end, the sellers accepted an $86,000 offer – about 23 percent above asking price — from a New York private equity firm offering cash. It closed on Wednesday.
“I don’t think I’ve ever come across one with that many offers,” said agent Abby Nelson, who represented the buyer, FREO Florida LLC. “I’m used to seeing 20 to 30 offers on some of my bank-owned properties. Some bank and asset managers price it low to get multiple offers right away and you can get offers for double the list price, especially on some of the cheaper $10,000 to $20,000 condos, which are almost impossible to find now.”
Even though the deal was an anomaly, it demonstrates the pressures at work in a recovering market. Central Florida has an emaciated supply of listings and plenty of investors betting that prices will rise and tenants can pay rent until that happens.
The core Orlando market has about 8,000 existing homes on the market – about a fourth of the inventory it had in 2007 — the peak of the housing frenzy.
The three-bedroom house, built in 2001 with 1,240 square feet, on Seville Pointe also has an audience of buyers who had bid on it earlier. It was listed in late August and quickly drew 27 offers, including an above-asking price offer pitched by Nelson on behalf of the private equity firm she represents.
But the seller instead selected a buyer who would actually live in the home. A month after the onslaught of offers, the deal fell through because the house’s lack of appliances and disrepair disqualified it for an FHA mortgage.
So when it was listed again on Oct. 22, the dozens of buyers who had previously made offers were primed to do so again. Even more alluring: The seller dropped the price by about 20 percent the second time around.
Listing agent Lee Acker, broker with Re/Max 200 Realty in Winter Park, said the original price had been based on comparable sales and the seller dropped it further to ensure it would sell.
So many offers began pouring into his email that Acker enlisted additional staff to help input all of the offer information. Despite the slashed sales price, Nelson said that she convinced her buyer to increase their previous offer.
Part of the Re/Max’s Great Homes Group, Nelson is affiliated with Acker’s brokerage but said she said she had no knowledge of the amounts of other offers and was unaware of even how competitive it was until the day before the closing.
Most of the offers, Acker said, were within $2,000 of each other and reflected buyers looking at pending sales and houses on the market instead of relying on past sales. Normal buyers, first-timers and institutional hedge funds all submitted offers. Freo Florida LLC, the New York-based company that purchased the house, has acquired at least two other foreclosed houses in Orange County since the end of October.
“We’ve always had investors in this market but these hedge funds have millions in place,” Acker said. He added that the sale represents a total turnaround from five years ago.
“I could not give away a home in [late] 2007,” he said.
mshanklin@tribune.com or 407-420-5538
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