Florida Property

I assume you are talking about a bricks and sticks home.

A $50,000 property in Florida won't likely be any better a deal than a $50,000 property anywhere else.

Florida may still have more homes taken over by the bank than some areas, but my experience has been those deals take forever and more than 90% of the deals never close.

There is a common life cycle for typical new subdivisions in Florida. A new sub is built and occupied by roughly 60% retirees and 40% non-retirees. 25 years pass and most of the retirees have either died, moved into assisted living or moved back to their home state so their families can assist them. Those homes become rental properties or are sold cheap. These subs then go into serious decline and become ghetto like in no time.

We recently sold my parents 8-year old modest 3 bedroom home in Hudson FL for $145,000. So good properties in well kept subs still hold their value.

Now the Florida home they had before this one was a little bigger and had a pool. But it had already run the 25-year life cycle and they only got $98,000 for it.

Bottom line, if you find a home in Florida for $50,000 chances are that is all it is worth. And it won't go up in value.

The best deals I have seen involved homes sold from estates (not bank owned)where the children want to take the cash and run. These homes often need some work (paint and carpet mostly) but are easily repairable. The price would likely be $100,000 to $125,000.

We have been looking for a deal in Florida everywhere from the Pensacola area in the panhandle, to Fort Pierce on the ocean side, to Sebring in the middle, to Crystal River further north and Fort Myers further south, as well as in the keys.

After seven 6-month long winter vacation searches we threw in the towel and bought a piece of vacant land to build on. We want to be on the front end of that 25-year life cycle. We paid $35,000 for a 1/3 acre lot backing up to a Florida land preserve.

Also, do your homework on sink holes and flood zones. Insurance can sometimes be unattainable at a reasonable price.

Try weichert.com and input the city that you are interested in and view the listings. You just may find what you're looking for. Good Luck.

C, Are you looking to flip properties?

I can't help you on that, but we winter in Florida in our travel trailer, and I can tell you there are lots of places in the interior of central Florida where you can get two bedroom older small houses in the price range you are looking for.
Many of them are on small lots.
Anything near or on water will be much higher.
Also there are newer subdivisions with low price two bedroom ones, but the catch with them is that you don't buy the land, but pay a yearly fee/club fee etc, and there are all kinds of rules you must abide by.

Jack L