Brokers are reporting more and more inquiries into vacation homes than they have in years, the Wall Street Journal reported, and now may indeed be the time to buy.
The median sales price for a second home was $150,000 in 2010, down 11 percent from 2009 and about 25 percent from 2006, according to data from the National Association of Realtors, but prices have held up better on the luxury end. “At the top of the market, particularly luxury homes, prices have proven very elastic, and have sprung upward quickly,” said Douglas Duncan, chief economist at Fannie Mae.
Buyers are paying attention: On Palm Beach Island, sales were up 50 percent in the year ending June 30, in the Hamptons, transactions jumped 59 percent and in Aspen, sales were up 10 percent. Foot traffic is also seeing an uptick. In Vail and Palm Beach, it increased by at least 30 percent this year, according to local real estate agents. [more]

The Kennedys and Palm Beach, Fla.

From the Florida website: According to Barron’s, the town of Palm Beach, Fla. is the ninth-best place for a second home in America. “This pedigreed place — the Kennedys and the Vanderbilts had oceanfront homes for decades — got its groove back in 2010, as residents recovered from the Bernie Madoff scandal and the ravages of the credit crisis,” the magazine proclaims. It calls the town part of the so-called “Iron Triangle” or American high society, along with New York and the Hamptons. First on the list was Sea Island, Ga., with Maui second. [more]

From left: a home in Woodstock, N.Y., Bermuda and an Aspen, Colo. condominium

From the February issue: With the mercury low and snow continually hammering the city, escaping the five boroughs on weekends has become a must for many New Yorkers. But they may be taking cold comfort in their getaways, since their second homes aren’t worth as much as they used to be — sometimes by a long shot. From the Rockies to Central America, home values in destinations popular among New Yorkers are off by as much as 30 percent, with little price recovery seen in 2010, according to an analysis of sales data. A slew of real estate offices that lined main drags in ski-friendly towns in Vermont are shuttered. Buyers in Bermuda seem to circle endlessly without purchasing, which keeps inventory high and depresses prices, according to real estate analysts. [more]

Palm Beach

From the February issue: Filled with high fashion and high society, Palm Beach can seem like Manhattan but with palm trees. So it’s no surprise that New York-area real estate firms have gobbled up space there to compete for a constant stream of New Yorkers flying south to find second, third and fourth homes. Two of New York’s premier brokerages, Brown Harris Stevens and Corcoran, have operations there. Another with New York ties, Fite Shavell, formed two years ago and jumped to the top ranks of Palm Beach’s real estate world. Cofounder Wade Shavell opened the firm after helping launch Corcoran’s Palm Beach branch. He was joined by former Prudential Douglas Elliman CFO David Fite. [more]

From the South Florida website: It’s that time of year again, when the temperature falls and the northern snowbirds come down South to roost. Brokers say they’re seeing increased movement in the snowbird sector early on in the season especially from Canadian buyers, with the season already a few weeks underway.  “We’re certainly seeing increased activity, with more buyers coming through,” said Bill Yahn, the Corcoran Group’s regional senior vice president for South Florida. “It’s manifesting itself in all the markets we serve.” While snowbirds — Northerners who have second homes or long-term vacations in Florida for the winter — tend to look for homes in a fairly broad range of prices, right now it’s the higher end that’s seeing the most interest. [more]

At a time when many Americans are having trouble affording the mortgages on their primary residences, developers of vacation homes are getting creative in their efforts to convince buyers to take on second homes. According to the Wall Street Journal, one popular tactic is to offer cabins and cottages — dubbed “affordable housing for the affluent” — that are pre-built instead of custom and located on smaller lots. Home builders are “offering discounts by doing almost everything except for slashing prices” in an effort not to bring down the property values of existing homeowners in vacation communities, said the Journal’s Juliet Chung.

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Vacation homes regained some of their popularity last year, while investors increasingly shied away from real estate, according to a new survey from the National Association of Realtors. Vacationers bought 553,000 homes in 2009 at a median price of $169,000, up 7.9 percent from the 513,000 homes sold in 2008 at a median price of $150,000. Roughly one-fifth of those sales were condos. Primary home sales were also up 7.1 percent during the year. Investors, meanwhile, bought 15.9 percent fewer homes, down to 940,000 last year at a median of $105,000 from 1.12 million in 2008 at a median of $108,000. Of those investment home sales, 27 percent were condos. Investors also captured only 17 percent of the market share of U.S. home sales last year, compared to the 21 percent they commanded in 2008. Vacation homebuyers, NAR said, are generally planning to use the home themselves, whereas investors are more likely to seek rental income from the property. TRD

Baby Phat clothing line executive Kimora Lee Simmons just took a hit out east. Her East Hampton home, which had an original asking price of $800,000, just sold for $650,000. Simmons, who’s been looking to shuffle some real estate around over in the New York-New Jersey region, had originally bought the home for $690,000. But while Simmons might be hurting in her transaction, a recent ranking shows that the overall Hamptons market may be making a comeback for second home buyers.

Prices for Miami real estate have dropped as much as 43 percent from the 2006 peak

From the February issue:
For some Manhattan renters, buying a second home is coming before buying a first. While New York real estate has seen severe discounts (Manhattan prices are down roughly 20 percent from their peak), some New Yorkers are going to real estate markets like Miami or the Hamptons that have been burned by even deeper discounts. In the Hamptons, prices have dropped as much as 30 percent since 2006, said Barbara Weber, managing director of Nest Seekers International in the Hamptons. In Miami they have dropped as much as 43 percent, compared to the city’s historic high in 2006, according to Peter Zalewski, a broker with the Bal Harbour-based Condo Vultures Realty. “You can literally buy five condos in Miami for the price of one in New York,” said Ron Shuffield, president of EWM Realtors in Miami. New Yorkers are also taking advantage of foreclosures and short sales in the Miami-Dade area, said Alfredo Vizcarrondo, president of the AV Group in Doral, a real estate company. “In the last quarter of the year, there [was] increased interest from New Yorkers,” said Vizcarrondo. He said he recently closed on properties in Miami’s Brickell area and in Aventura for prices as low as $160,000.  [more]