Tough competition for the British & Irish in Florida

Florida has spent most of the past 10 years near the top of many Irish & British buyers list of places to purchase holiday homes and property investments.

According to a carried out by the National Association of Realtors (NAR) and our own anecdotal evidence from the ground, the international buyer has never been more important in Florida but they are being led not by the British and Irish, but by the Canadians.

Torcana has never had a bigger variety of international clients than we have now. For example, we sold 25 properties to 7 different nationalities in October this year in one single Orlando community alone, which included Americans, Canadians, Spaniards, Swedes, Germans and of course, British and Irish.

According to the NAR survey, 36% of international buyers in Florida were Canadian, followed by 16% in Latin America, 15% in the UK and 14% from the rest of Europe.

Setting aside Florida´s natural strengths as a holiday, retirement and investment destination, the combination of a huge drop in property prices (up to 70% from 2007 levels) and a weak US dollar are attracting huge numbers of international clients whose pounds, dollars and euro have never stretched so far.

Another key trend we´ve noticed among our key overseas buyers is the disappearance of the new property purchase and the dominance of the cash buyer. Agents and developers who are depending on sales of brand new properties and/or sales to buyers who need mortgages are in for a very tough time on both counts. There simply isn´t an adequate demand for it.

The statistics bear this out: 81% of all international buyers and 73% of UK buyers in Florida paid for their properties with cash (i.e. no mortgage financing) while 89% of all international buyers and 81% of UK buyers purchased a second hand rather than a new home. These are both enormous changes from just 3 years ago.

The typical two bed apartment we are selling now for $65,000 to cash buyers would have been previously sold for $195,000 to buyers availing of cheap finance. These are prime properties in great locations which can be sold either vacant or with a tenant already in place, depending on whether the buyer is a pure investor or somebody seeking a holiday home.

So it would seem that the buying opportunities are still there for our international friends with the means and ends to get them.

They just shouldn´t be surprised to see keen eyed Canadians and Latin Americans joining them in the taxi queue at Orlando International Airport next time they pay the Sunshine State a visit…

Regards

Colin