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FEATURE a na ly t ic s Se r v ic i ng Or ig i nat ion SERVICING points to increase and demand to create new condos." "I would guess that over the rough patch of three Less Investors, More Fams or four years, people O have just been kind of squirreling [money] away. Now people feel better about the economy and how things are kind of rolling along. The other thing is money is so cheap to get." s e c on da r y m a r k e t — Patrick Werry, Realtor in a robust way, especially on the ocean front and coastal areas. You would not know there is a recession going on." Much of Florida was hit particularly hard when the housing bubble burst in 2008. And many parts of the state are still reeling, especially inland away from the beaches. But South Florida—and Miami in particular—is witnessing a robust rebirth in vacation home sales. Sure, housing prices are still 15 to 20 percent off their peak. But vacation homes are moving so quickly that new building projects are under way. "Miami is really just an incredible city," Pordes said. "Everyone expected a five-year supply of inventory and a real slow comeback. It ended up being a two-year situation. It is amazing how it has recovered so fast and so strong." 54 | The M Report Roughly half of Miami's vacation home buyers are coming from Latin America. Others buyers hail from more traditional areas like the Northeastern United States and Canada. The buyers are, according to Pordes, the usual suspect: in their late 30s to early 50s. They want, Podres said, "your typical Florida getaway." Some vacation homes on the market qualified as distressed, Pordes said. But those properties are gone, bought up early in the recovery. "We're a year-and-a-half on the good side [of the recovery] already," he said. "We're getting stronger. Each quarter, the numbers are going up. Each quarter, we are reporting larger sales increases in prices and fewer available units. Supply has shrunk and that is causing price ne thing that has changed is that the number of investors buying vacation properties has decreased. Today's buyers are families purchasing for personal use. In Sandpoint, Idaho, Realtor Patrick Werry said most of his buyers are people looking for quality of life. "They're looking for that place to go vacation [in] but [that] is still close to home—getting out of the city and being in the mountains, that whole kind of lifestyle that people look for," said Werry, a Realtor with Century 21 Riverstone. As with most places, vacation house prices dropped significantly after 2008. The price of a three-bedroom, 2.5-bath house in Sandpoint, known for skiing in the winter and its lake in the summer, fell from $350,000 to $210,000. Prices have begun to inch back up into the low $300,000s. "The prices have leveled off, and through the media there is information out there that the market is starting to increase and no longer declining," Werry said. "Within the last year, we saw the spike of people going after properties and trying to pick them up now. And in the last year, I have started to see values increase per appraisals." Many of Werry's clients are in their late 20s and older and are upper middle class professionals who are more educated about purchasing property and the costs that go along with it. Many, he believes, have been simply waiting for the right time to buy. "I would guess that over the rough patch of three or four years, people have just been kind of squirreling [money] away," Werry said. "Now people feel better about the economy and how things are kind of rolling along. The other thing is money is so cheap to get." Summer Rentals A nd while upwards of 90 percent of Werry's clients don't intend to rent their vacation homes, the NAR study found that almost all vacation home buyers expect to do so this year, with 60 percent feeling they can make enough to cover half their mortgage. While half of Breckenridge's vacation home owners come from what Coloradoans call the Front Range—Denver, Boulder, Colorado Springs—the city also attracts a sizable number of Texans who buy mostly to escape the summer heat back home. They rent their homes to skiers from November to April. Of course, vacation home owners in a group of towns on the eastern tip of Long Island known as the Hamptons don't worry about such things as covering half of their mortgage payment because, well, many don't have a mortgage. Sales did lag a bit during the heart of the recession. But the average sale price for a vacation home held fairly steady. "I don't think prices have changed much," said Diane Saatchi, SVP of Saunders and Associates. "I could sell something for $700,000 to $28 million. For several years, the only things selling were either things that were so well priced or so out of the ordinary that the buyer had to step up." The enclave's typical buyer, Saatchi says, is a young family with both spouses between 30 and 40 and working in the financial business. Sellers tend to be downsizing baby boomers, going from $20 million and $30 million vacation homes to more modest $7 million chateaus. "My experience is 2012 was the best year ever, and 2013 is looking even better than that," Saatchi said. "I don't see what can change the trajectory of this market. As long as people want to vacation in the Hamptons, then I imagine [those] who want to do that will do that and the market will just be fine for another couple of years."