New Real Estate Ads in OKC

Last night, while driving home, I heard a radio advertisement for local real estate. The ad said something about "you may have heard about a housing bubble in other parts of the country" and sought to assure listeners that "real estate prices in Oklahoma City have grown at a steady and measured pace." The ad also pointed to the fact that interest rates are still historically low and that "now is a great time to buy."

Compare this to news coming out of Key West, Florida (from Mish's site, see links on the side of page) from poster FreeThinkerKW:

As longtime readers of this board know, I live in Key West where Real Estate tripled, quadrupled, and quintupled in the past 6 to 7 years. I alerted this board to the most unprecedented "happening" in Key West in my 16 years down here which took place yesterday, Saturday: an attempt to sell 22 homes at auction in a stalled real estate market.

Last week in Key West, only 1 home sold. The week before, 2 homes sold. The week before that either 2 or 3 homes sold.

Mind you that we now have 1400 to 1600 homes on the market, depending on the source of your information. Know too that there are approximately 300 to 600 homes being sold by owner which are not even listed in the MLS.

If we sold 2 homes a week in Key West, this inventory would last, oh, about 14 to 19 years at this rate. And as you will read, the asking prices of these homes are so out of reach for most people that the sellers must now face either foreclosure or drop their prices even more rapidly than they have already dropped.

I am about to lay the results on you from yesterday's auction. I am hoping you will be able to read the entire article without the Key West Citizen truncating it. If you cannot read the entire article, let me know, I'll send it to Mish, and then he can post it on his blog.

I can hardly wait. What I wouldn't give to be a bankruptcy attorney in Key West right now.

Anyway, Mish's Friend goes on to post:

Furthermore, I know someone mentioned in this article. I will not divulge his name as I don't want someone to google a reference to this auction and then they see my post come up alluding to his pain with his name prominently displayed. I don't want to add to his embarrassment and dismay. But I will say this: his remarks to the paper are not what he is telling me personally.

This builder is so underwater with unsold homes that he recently put his own luxury home on the market. He also has 7 brand new homes up on Stock Island, the next island up from us. Those homes, when first completed, were on the market for $550,000 to $700,000. They are on the market now for $400,000 to $500,000 with no lookers whatsoever. He might get lookers at $250,000. And he might actually get some buyers in the sub-$200,000 range, IMHO.

Mish posted a link to the article (free registration required). But he posted a significant amount so that you probably get a pretty good picture of what happened.

So, I wonder how long it will take to reach Oklahoma?