Fellow local investors in the central Florida area

[Matthew Binns]

Hello Everyone,

 I plan on moving back to Ocala, FL to look for single family/multifamily homes, preferably multifamily, as a long term rental. I'd like to get some feedback as far as how the market is over there?  Is the Ocala area a good place for long term rentals? Are there any group chats or pages that post local meetups? Also, I am open to networking.  

[Clay Lehman]

@Matthew Binns good morning!! I am a fellow investor in the Ocala market. I also own a property management company as well as a real estate brokerage. We manage a large portfolio of rentals and work with investors to find rentals in ocala. Not a sales pitch, just saying that we have a lot of exposure to the ocala market.

The ocala market remains red hot. If a house is priced right it will receive multiple offers and sell above list. In the last 60-90 days, it seems like we aren’t getting as many multiple offers, meaning instead of 8-10 or 12 offers we are getting 2 or 3. It could be somewhat of a seasonal phenomenon but it also could indicate that things are cooling off. The next few months will be telling.

Rentals are also still moving very quickly. In the last 6 months, the average days on market for our rentals has been 3 days. We also are able to fill many of our vacancies before we put the house on the market because of the backlog of applicants. I personally use that as more of a gauge of the health of the market because home sales can be deceptive. We had tons of sales in 06 and 07 but they were speculative sales of vacant homes. Rental demand means we have people that need places to live and as that remains strong that tells me the market is still healthy.

Multi family is really tough to find and in my opinion is over bought/over priced. It is such a popular product that people are pricing the listings well above anything that can be justified by the rents. That is just my opinion.

2022 will be an interesting year. There are a number of new projects that have been approved in the last 18-24 months that will start delivering houses sometime in 2022. This will start to test how strong the demand is in the market or said differently if it is strong enough to absorb the new inventory. Interest rates going up will be another factor to observe. I think at least initially the increase in rates might get anyone that was on the fence about buying a home to get off the fence and buy. Overall, I think we will see continued appreciation in 2022 but at a slower pace, which I believe will be good for the market. You can’t see 25% increase in pricing forever.

Welcome to the Ocala market. Good luck and hopefully I will see you around!!!

[Matthew Binns]

@Clay Lehman Thank you so much, this is all very valuable information. Do you mind if we connect in case I have any questions in the future pertaining to the market?