Multiple Hurricanes: Can Florida's Housing Market Survive?

Well, as the days go on, the devastation from Hurricane Milton is becoming more and more apparent throughout Charlotte County, unfortunately. This is the YMCA, former YMCA, across from the water right there in Gilchrest Park. But this is nothing compared to what we have seen down in Manasota Key. Look at this, guys. This is right across the street from Englewood Beach. This is footage from a resident, Hudson Dalton. He's been quadding all over Manasota Key. I encourage you guys to check him out on Facebook, give him a follow. He's got a lot more great footage. That's Englewood Beach's pavilion here. The lock and key across the street, you can see everything hit here very, very hard. There's Circle K, pods are in the street. But wait until we get down into the southern part of Manasota Key. And I've got a couple other pictures here people have posted around Facebook, just of the absolute decimation down there. Boats moving are kind of par for the course at this point, but I haven't seen stuff like this on the coastline anywhere near me. I mean, look at the houses covered in sand. Halfway up, that's a kayak launch sign. That's usually four to six feet high, buried. And you can see just the inundation from the sand being moved and the power of all that water and sand coming in, just blowing out the lower floor of that building. It's unbelievable. It's unbelievable. And this is some of the tamer stuff. I'm sure you guys, if you want to Google on the news, the drone footage and everything, you'll see, you know, it's much worse than this. And even this for me is absolutely unbelievable. Just to see how much sand moved in. I'm going to take you back to Hudson's video here because this is him coming into Manasota Key across the first bridge. So you can see the island here, boats everywhere. And then when he goes into the southern section of the key, it looks like another world. Look at this. This is the white elephant area over on the left. And then it's like he's driving through the desert. It's it's it's unbelievable. I I'm speechless. Never mind the debris, just the amount of sand that will need to be cleared here before really any reconstruction can even start. And, you know, the water can be very powerful. It's even moved homes, as you can see from his video here. That is a house in the middle of the street, guys. So it just mind blowing. So there's really no way around it, guys. The cleanup county wide, statewide, coast wide is going to be long and difficult. What's happened in Manasota Key is unimaginable. As you guys saw, sand filling houses that is all going to need to be bulldozed out of there. It's going to take a very, very long time to get back to normal, especially if if Ian was any indication. I mean, unfortunately, as Milton road in, I was showing you guys homes and complexes and areas that were still damaged from Ian in twenty twenty two hadn't been fixed. So I know there was open claims in on them and now they're hit with Helene and Milton and maybe an insurance person in the comments can clarify. How does that work? Now you've got multiple claims on properties. You know what gets paid out for what? And or even here, even here, like across the street, when Helene hit, not two weeks ago. I feel like I just made this video because I did when Helene hit not two weeks ago. All these houses flooded. People cleaned them up. They probably put in claims if they had flood insurance and now they got to do it again. How does that you know, it's beyond my grasp. If anybody can explain in the comments, let me know. Now you have multiple claims on a property. And, you know, unfortunately, even here, many people, as I was walking around in the chaos of the first morning of getting back here, they were returning to their properties from just miles away like me. They just got away from the water. Most of some are still coming back, though. These boats in Gilchrist Park are becoming a big tourist attraction. I think I hope they get rid of them soon. They're coming back and I could hear them on the phone. They're calling either their owners because some of them are investments or they're calling their relatives or they're calling their friends and they were saying it's a total loss. It's a total loss. If you want to spend the money, it's going to cost X amount of dollars. I'd advise just listed as is and see what happens. And that is what I anticipate a lot of people are going to do. Guys, this is really it's not even like a one to punch anymore for the state. This is like four or five punches at this point. And people we saw again, like I mentioned, after Ian people left, there was an exodus. We had a high, high, high, high listing season that was starting to slow down. I believe these two back to back hurricanes, as I've told you guys, will occur. We'll make that occur again in come January. We're going to see a lot of listings, a lot of as is listings. And because the cost of living and insurance has gotten so crazy here that has left a lot of long-time residents self-insuring. So they don't have flood insurance. They don't have any sort of insurance on the home. And this is going to be, I think a lot of people are going to find themselves in this scenario. Unfortunately, even prior to the storm, as you guys know, there was debris everywhere. There was no way for the, they tried, there was no way for the cleanup teams to be able to get out here and get this debris before Milton came. You guys have to understand too, they have to go out and they have to prep as well. They have to protect their families. Maybe some of them had to evacuate. So it was a short staff situation on top of everything. And unfortunately that debris did move around, caused a lot of damage, but there was a video of a woman on Facebook and she was driving around Inglewood before the storm, you know, pleading with people to come pick up all these debris because she doesn't have flood insurance. She has no insurance at all because she can't afford it. And she knew that this was going to end up in the destruction of her home. I don't know how she made out, but this is the scenario. A lot of Floridians are finding themselves in right now. Some people who are never going to leave, they're always going to rebuild. Other people who didn't have insurance are probably considering maybe not doing that this time. And unfortunately, this is the story of not really even the state of Florida, the whole country right now. The whole country is getting absolutely crushed, Floridians especially, with insurance rates and tax increases and cost of living increases and their food's going through the roof. Their grocery bills are unaffordable. I unfortunately saw a lot of people post on Facebook asking for help because they lost everything in their fridge just from the power going out. They took no damage, but they can't afford to restock it because the price of groceries is so insane. So you pile all of this on top of it and it's going to be enough to break a lot of people. They're going to be done with Florida and they're going to sell. The riverwalk by the Tiki is still completely closed down. The Tiki is messed up, guys. They don't know when they're going to be back up and running. A lot of the places around here, I'm not sure when everything's going to be back up and running. We lost so much and there was so much damage. And last time from Ian, it took so long to get everything going in this area. I mean, I don't anticipate those boats that I showed in Gilchrest Park to be gone for quite some time. The pier is not going to be rebuilt for quite some time. I don't know when the riverwalk is going to get open. There was stuff that's still damaged along parts of the riverwalk in Port Charlotte from Ian that's not fixed yet. It was two years ago. So it's going to be a very long road, a very slow road to recovery for a lot residents here. And I don't think at this point, I don't think people are going to want to stick around to, you know, roll the dice a fourth, fourth or fifth time for some now. And when we see this rush to the exits, which again, I'm like, I made this video last year at when the Ian effects were happening. When we see this rush to the exits that I believe we're going to have in the spring, what they're going to run into now is a new flood disclosure law that was just recently passed, which couldn't have had better timing for buyers or maybe worse timing for sellers. Though I always believe you should be on the up and up. As of October 1st, you are now going to be mandated by law to disclose if you have ever had a flood claim with the national flood insurance policy or received assistance from FEMA. So anyone who made these insurance claims is going to be required by law to disclose that when they sell. Now we have basically mandated disclosure in Florida. That's no matter what, you know, if there's something that materially affects a property, you have to disclose it as a seller. There's no form or anything for that. Florida realtors has a seller's disclosure that we like to use, but again, you're going on what the seller says. I saw an article with a guy in Tampa who he lives in an area that has flooded four times since he purchased the home just two and a half years ago. I think it was Gulf shore acres or something like that. I may be getting that wrong, but I'm thinking to myself, who's going to buy that house? At what price is that place worth it? Even to an investor now who knows this thing is flooded four times and the guy made claims. He's going to have to disclose that he wants to leave. Who is the purchasing audience for that? Who's going to take that risk on nevermind? What is your insurance policy going to be at that point? If it's the fourth time that this has happened and even if an investor wants to Airbnb it, I mean, you got to buy cash. You got to know that it's going to get flooded, probably have to self-insure what what's the value of that property. Now it's certainly not what it was a month ago. It's definitely not what it was two years ago, but where is it going? That's what's going to have to be determined here with something like that. And I think that the new flood disclosures are going to put a lot of sellers in that scenario where what's the value of the house like we're dealing with on the condos. Maybe there is no value. Maybe it's worthless at this point. You know, some of these condos that used to go for 40, $50,000 and shot up to 200 grand and their HOAs are now 900 bucks are in the same boat. They don't even need to flood. It's just a cost. It's a cost of living thing, guys. How much is your condo worth? Your one, one condo, 600 square feet. When the HOA is a thousand dollars a month, how much is your house worth when it's flooded multiple times and your insurance is 10 grand, 15 grand, who knows? We could even see $10,000 on the water. People were like, oh, that's crazy last year. That might sound reasonable after this. That might be a reasonable proposition. Yeah. We might be looking at 15, $20,000 quotes. If you have a history or a risk of flooding, and we know this is not something new guys, storms happen here. We haven't seen surge like this. Obviously. Um, some people tell me ever, so I don't know. I don't have the history on that, but it's going to be all that comes into somebody's minds for the next, probably six months to a year. If they're looking to purchase in Florida, this was all over the news. You guys have seen the destruction, but even beforehand, it was really, really, really hyped. Some would argue rightfully so for, for areas like this. And unfortunately, Manasota Key, but that's going to stay in people's minds for quite some time. It's going to be how they feel about it. And sometimes people react on feelings. And if they feel an area is at risk for something like this again, even if it's not, even if your house was way inland and it was safe, but it was still getting hurricane winds or it got hit by Ian. There's just too much going against it to have people overcome that. I think in the short term, in the long term, people will most likely forget that we get hurricanes here. Um, big ones, sometimes pretty drastic and you know, the circle of life will continue, but in the interim, I believe that's most likely what's going to happen is what happened right after Ian. Uh, it was a little different time with Charlie, Charlie hit in 2004. And I was not here for that personally, but it was in the midst of a rising housing market here, a housing boom across the country. Uh, this area specifically was super hot. So we've got all the reverse ingredients on that. This time we already had our housing boom. Our prices have skyrocketed. Things have stagnated. Prices are declining inventories piling up this time. So in Charlie, there was a lot of investment. People came in, bought up everything they could and probably within a year or two doubled or tripled their money. I don't see that happening here this time. Uh, and the damage is so much more widespread. It's not just Punta Gorda as you guys have seen. So all up Venice, Siesta Key, all up the West coast, people up North in the panhandle are still dealing with Helene. And I understand guys, a lot of people would like to come on, come on and comment that, Oh, you haven't seen anything. You should see North Carolina. I'm not trying to make it a contest. What happened up there is horrible as well. There's suffering going on all across the country right now for various reasons, physically, emotionally, and economically, but it's not a contest on who's getting it worse. I feel for the people in North Carolina. I feel for the people anywhere dealing with stuff like this, but here, this is where I am. So this is what I report on. It's, you know, I can't go up. I'm not a storm chaser. I can't go up to the panhandle and assess damage. I did try to get down to Inglewood beach. And right now they're just letting in residents and business owners. And honestly, rightfully so, because I got no business being down there guys. This guy got the right idea. He's building a way up. I don't know if you guys can see that water line in the garage. It gives you the idea of where, how high it was up. It's crazy. It's crazy. And it could happen again. It could happen again. You don't know if it's going to be two years, 20 years, 50 years can happen at any time. That's the risk of, you know, living down the streets from the water. And I think you're going to see a lot less people that want to do that. More people that just decide I'm okay with a 15 minute ride down to the beach, 45 minute ride, hour ride. I think more and more people are going to kind of lean in that direction. So it's tough out there for everybody right now. And specifically Southwest Florida. I think it's going to get harder. Obviously we've got a lot of work to do here. We're going to get it done, but the combination of everything going on just natural disaster wise, cost of living wise, and now even mortgage rates back up at 6.5, 6.7% recently, even though we had a rate cut from the fed, which is confusing a lot of people and you guys know why that's, why that's occurring. It's going to be a tough market here. It's going to be a tough market here for sellers. I think if you've got again, new construction, probably going to continue to do pretty well guys, but it's going to be a strange fall. It's going to be a wild, wild spring market. And you guys know I'll be here keeping you posted and we'll see how it shakes out.