… and 600 Closed Sales in January
Naples, Fla. (February 20, 2015) – The Naples area housing market is off to a solid start according to broker analysts who evaluated the January 2015 Market Report released by the Naples Area Board of REALTORS® (NABOR®), which tracks home listings and sales within Collier County (excluding Marco Island). Inventory declined a moderate 5 percent from 4,776 homes in January 2014 to 4,515 homes in January 2015, and overall closed sales in every price category above $300,000 increased by double digits in the 12-months ending January 2015. Overall median closed price increased 13 percent to $273,000 in the 12-months ending January 2015 from $242,000 in the 12-months ending January 2014.
As typically seen during the first three months of the year, cash sales are also on the rise. In January, the 394 cash sales reported accounted for 70 percent of home sales transactions in the Naples area. The report also showed sales of foreclosed homes in January were at their lowest – 64 – since NABOR® began reporting home sales activity in July 2009 when foreclosures numbered 240.
According to the report, pending sales, based on signed real estate contracts, for single family homes in the $1 to $2 million category increased 53 percent from 36 pending sales in January 2014 to 55 in January 2015, while in the same price category in the condominium market, pending sales decreased 22 percent from 36 in January 2014 to 28 pending sales in January 2015. Not surprisingly, the inventory for condominiums in this $1 million to $2 million category had the largest decline too at 26 percent.
As pointed out by several broker analysts during NABOR®’s 2014 annual media conference on January 16th, buyers looking for single family homes in 2015 will be pleased. In fact, according to Cindy Carroll, SRA, with the real estate appraisal and consultancy firm of Carroll & Carroll, Inc., affordable single-family homes are not appreciating out of control, as often speculated. “The median closed price for single-family homes in the $300,000 and below category increased 16 percent from January 2013 to January 2014. Yet the January report showed an increase of only 8 percent from $178,000 in January 2014 to $193,000 in January 2015.”
The NABOR® January 2015 Market Report provides comparisons of single-family home and condominium sales (via the Southwest Florida MLS), price ranges, and geographic segmentation and includes an overall market summary. The NABOR® January 2015 sales statistics are presented in chart format, including these overall (single-family and condominium) findings:
- Overall pending sales decreased 1 percent from 1,117 in January 2014 to 1,103 in January 2015.
- Pending sales for single-family homes increased 5 percent from 510 in January 2014 to 536 in January 2015.
- Pending sales for condominiums in the $300,000 to $500,000 category increased 51 percent from 82 in January 2014 to 124 in January 2015.
- Overall closed sales decreased 1 percent from 9,835 in the 12-months ending January 2014 to 9,759 in the 12-months ending January 2015.
- Overall closed sales for single-family homes in the $2 million and above category increased 37 percent from 213 in the 12-months ending January 2014 to 292 in the 12-months ending January 2015.
- Overall median closed price increased 13 percent from $242,000 in the 12-months ending January 2014 to $273,000 in the 12-months ending January 2015.
- Overall inventory decreased 5 percent from 4,776 homes in January 2014 to 4,515 homes in January 2015.
- Average days on market for January 2015 were 85.
According to the report, the inventory of homes for sale in the $300,000 and below category in January 2015 encompassed about 33 percent of the market at 1,479 units. And while overall inventory fell 5 percent from 4,776 in January 2014 to 4,515 in January 2015, the $300,000 and below category experienced the largest drop in inventory (-24%) from 1,938 in January 2014 to 1,479 in January 2015. Despite a sinking of inventory in the $300,000 and below price category, there were increases in inventory in three other price categories: $330,000 to $500,000 increased 15 percent; $500,000 to $1 million increased 8 percent; and $2 million and above increased 12 percent from January 2014 to January 2015.
Buying a home in 2015 could give you one of these tax breaks.
Sevilla model home by Ashton Woods at Marsh Cove in Fiddler’s Creek community, Naples, Florida | photo: AshtonWoods.com
So you didn’t buy a house last year. That’s OK—you haven’t missed the boat yet on low mortgage rates or a healthy inventory of homes. In many ways, 2015 is a great time to buy a home, not the least of which is for certain tax breaks.
Here’s how you could enjoy three significant tax benefits if you purchase a home this year.
1. Use points for even lower interest rates
Deductible points are a standard tax break, but 2015 might be a good year to buy points. Interest rates have been at all-time lows, and many experts believe the only direction they can go is up. With 30-year rates hovering around 3.6%, an extra point or two can knock those low rates down even further.
One point typically lowers your interest rate by about 0.25%. (A point costs about 1% of your loan amount, and it’s paid at closing.) So if you buy two points off a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage of $350,000 with a 3.8% interest rate for $7,000, you could reduce your interest rate down to to 3.3%.
Points are considered a form of interest and are tax-deductible in the same year for first-home purchases as long as you meet a few standard requirements. So even if buying points doesn’t drop your monthly payments by much, you can still get a sizable tax break.
2. Take advantage of energy credits
If you buy a home in 2015, you may want to outfit it with some energy-saving systems—because you can write off 30% of the cost as part of the Residential Renewable Energy Tax Credit. Examples of eligible items include the following:
- Geothermal heat pumps
- Solar panels, solar water heaters
- Fuel cell property
- Wind turbines
With the exception of fuel cell property, which has a limit of $500 per kilowatt, there are no maximum credit limits for qualifying items.
The tax credit is good until the end of 2016. If the amount of your tax credit exceeds your tax liability—meaning if you can deduct more than you owe in taxes in 2015—you can roll the credit over to your 2016 taxes. (There’s no word yet on whether the credit will extend to 2017.)
3. Say ‘goodbye’ to renting (which offers no tax breaks)
If you don’t own a home, you most likely rent. And renting has gotten very expensive, with no signs of slowing down. According to the Wall Street Journal, rent has been rising for the past five years—specifically, by 15.2% since 2009.
Renters don’t get many tax breaks, but home buyers do. 2015 might be the year to call it quits on paying $1,800 for a studio apartment with nothing to show for it. Check out the Realtor.com app to see what’s available, and use our Rent or Buy calculator to see how long it will be before renting becomes more expensive than buying in your area—you might be surprised.
Note: Some tax breaks are in limbo
The following buyer-related credits will expire by the end of 2015 if Congress doesn’t act. Don’t count on them, but don’t count them out either.
- PMI deduction: This credit allows you to deduct money paid on private mortgage insurance.
- Energy upgrades: The Nonbusiness Energy Property Credit allots you a lifetime cumulative cap of $500 in deductions for energy-efficient upgrades (with a $200 lifetime cap for window upgrades).
Slogging through your financial records and hoping to find a few tax deductions to ease the pain? Don’t despair, here are a few potential pain relievers.
Insulating a home ceiling
If you are anticipating a rough year when it comes to filing taxes, don’t turn those forms into new year’s confetti just yet. Several key provisions for homeowners have been retroactively renewed for 2014—and they might provide you with some much-needed tax relief.
If you did any of these three things in 2014, you still have reason to celebrate (OK, maybe not really celebrate, but celebrate as much as anyone can while doing taxes).
Short sale
In the third quarter of 2014, 8.1 million homes in the United States were seriously underwater, according to the real estate research firm RealtyTrac. If you were a homeowner who decided to short-sell your home last year, it’s not all bad news: Congress once again extended the Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act.
The act made it so qualifying homeowners did not have to pay tax on debt forgiven by a lender. Without the act’s tax shield, that forgiven debt—up to $2 million—is seen as taxable income by the government. For homeowners owing hundreds of thousands of dollars on a loan, that could be a crippling amount of money owed to the IRS.
The act is retroactive, so when Congress finally renewed it in late December, it covered short sales in 2014. Short-selling a home in 2015 is a gamble—if Congress doesn’t renew the act, you’ll have to pay taxes on forgiven debt.
Private mortgage insurance
For people who couldn’t provide a 20% down payment, private mortgage insurance (PMI) is a familiar expense. But if you bought your house in 2007 or afterward, you were given a break if you earned less than a certain amount of money each year. Luckily, that provision is still around. The bill was set to expire in 2014, but two weeks before the end of the year, Congress extended the provision into 2015.
So if you bought a home (including vacation homes, but not rental properties) in 2014, or any other year since 2007, you can still deduct PMI from your taxes.
However, the PMI deduction begins phasing out when the adjusted gross income (AGI) of the head of household, married filing jointly, or single earner passes $100,000. For married filing separately, the phaseout begins at $50,000 AGI.
The deduction is phased out by 10% for every $1,000 earned over the threshold. If you pass $109,000 AGI (or $54,500 for married homeowners filing separately), the deduction phases out completely.
Energy upgrades
If you waited until 2014 to make energy-efficient upgrades, you may be in luck. You can claim up to $500, cumulatively, in tax credits for energy-efficient upgrades involving the following:
- Exterior windows
- Heating and cooling systems
- Insulation
- Exterior doors
- Biomass stoves
This tax break is cumulative for previous years. If you claimed $400 worth of equipment in 2013, you still have only $100 to work with.
The extension of these tax provisions will help some home buyers for 2014, but there’s no guarantee that Congress will renew them for the 2015 tax year.
RISMEDIA, Wednesday, February 04, 2015— Contributed by James White, homeyimprovements.com.
Here’s a startling statistic: a burglary occurs every 15 seconds. Though not all of us have the time or ingenuity to pull off a Home Alone and set elaborate traps and hook up ziplines to our tree houses, here are seven ways to burglar proof your house — without setting Joe Pesci’s head on fire.
1. Buy Laminated Windows
This was the number one tip from this Reddit AMA, in which a former cat burglar gave a thief’s perspective on home security. According to him, the easiest way to rob a house was to smash a window, climb in and climb out before any alarm could alert the police. Breaking laminated windows is very time consuming and noisy — two things burglars want to avoid. Once their crow bar doesn’t break your window on the first or second swing, chances are the crook is going to make a break for it and target someone else’s more vulnerable house.
2. Buy Sturdy Doors
It would be foolish to buy sturdy windows but ignore the most common point of entry to your home. It’s smart to have a door made of solid material that can’t be smashed in with only a little more difficulty than a window, but the way in which your door is secured can be just as important. All exterior doors should have a deadbolt that goes into a solid strike plate. Make sure the strike plate is attached to a stud and not just the door jamb. The sturdiest door can be opened if you expose the hinges — the thief could just remove the whole thing with a screwdriver.
3. Don’t Rely on a Pet
Whether you have a guard rabbit, dog or snake, the truth is animals don’t act as much of a deterrent to thieves. Assuming you’re not at home, a dog’s barking won’t alert any neighbors that someone is breaking into your house. Think of it this way: How many times have you ignored a neighbor’s dog’s annoying yips? They’re just background noise at this point.
Plus, an experienced burglar will carry pet treats with him and make friends with your supposedly fearless sentinel before robbing you — that’s what the thief in the Reddit AMA did. In fact, some thieves even target homes with dogs because it means the house probably does not have a motion sensor alarm system.
4. Consider a Home Security System
Even if you have a pet who will tip thieves off that you don’t have a motion sensor, a home security system that notifies police as soon as someone attempts a forced entry could be worth the investment. It’s true the authorities would likely arrive after a burglar has made his or her escape, but it’s also possible the moment an alarm starts blaring, the average burglar will scuttle away before having the chance to grab any valuables. Besides, even just being able to put that sign in your yard or sticker on your window that your home has a security system could be enough to convince thieves to try a different house.
5. Don’t Leave Valuables Out in the Open
Back to that Reddit AMA — thieves are interested in getting out as quickly as possible. That Reddit burglar repeatedly mentions how the most common thing he’d take would be cash left out in the open or in drawers. Don’t make things this easy for the burglar. Don’t leave cash lying around and consider investing in a safe for jewelry and other valuables.
6. Don’t Tell the World You Aren’t Home
Allstate Insurance had a commercial during the college football playoffs this year in which their reoccurring anthropomorphized Chaos was auctioning off a couple’s valuables while they weren’t at home. The couple in the commercial had been so excited to score tickets to the playoff game that they announced it on social media, giving Chaos the tip he needed to know they wouldn’t be home.
Try your best to avoid broadcasting when your home will be ripe for the picking. If you’re going on vacation and have a newspaper subscription, cancel it for the duration of your trip or have your neighbor pick it up so the papers won’t pile up and make it obvious no one is at home.
7. Buy Security Cameras
These can work as a great deterrent if the cameras are visible on the outside. The real trick with these is to make them upload their footage online automatically so a determined thief can’t destroy them or tear apart the tapes and make you lose the footage. Then, even if they don’t work as a deterrent, you’ll have great evidence to show the police and can greatly increase the chances of recovering your property.
View this original post on RISMedia’s blog, Housecall.
