Summit Valuations, LLC, a full service valuation company, and its executives are challenging media reports that the Florida real estate market is “melting down” are not indicative of the overall market but rather localized events specific to those Florida markets.
A Florida Realtors publication wrote recently about Jacksonville, and CNBC recently wrote that the Miami housing market was “melting down." Both publications wrote about investors taking a step back from the housing market, including big firms that have been buying up residential properties to rent back to consumers.
“This is an opportunistic business and the big firms that are playing here are using a wealth of data, including current home pricing information, to decide which markets to pursue next,” Summit Valuations Chief Operating Officer Mark Melikian said in a press release. “Real estate is local. While Realtors in Jacksonville are seeing homebuying activity by the nation’s largest single-family investors slow and Miami is seeing signs of stress, other markets we’re tracking are now picking up.”
CNBC cited a recent report released by Douglas Elliman and Miller Samuel Real Estate Appraisers & Consultants that showed the number of sales in the Miami Beach area fell by 21 percent, with the median home price falling 6.6 percent to just over $400,000. Melikian, who recently released a report showing national real estate data indicating a relatively stable market overall, said that price volatility in the luxury housing markets is common.
“The capital markets firms that are most active in the residential purchase for rental market are very sophisticated investors,” Summit Valuations President Ron Ahlensdorf, Jr. said. “They understand the value of the real estate they are investing in and they are very unlikely to take actions that will reduce those values. Property value is a key metric that they track and it drives them from one market to the next in search for profit. We should take care not to let stories about local real estate markets lead us to conclusions about the national market.”