Found 217 blog entries tagged as buyers.

Seventeen More Closings, and a Pipeline That Went Quiet

Labor Day weekend on this coast has a particular feel to it. One last surge of traffic on 98, coolers coming off boats at the ramp, and everybody knowing that by Tuesday the beach belongs to the people who live here again. School is well underway and the rentals are turning over more slowly. You can just feel the difference in the mornings.

The closing table did not slow down for any of it. 17 homes closed across the Forgotten Coast for a second straight week, holding the pace they set to close out August. What changed is what they cost. Not a single sale crossed $1.6 million, and that has not happened in seven weeks.

What is the Forgotten Coast real estate market doing this week?
For…

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Do Florida's condo milestone inspection and reserve rules apply to the condo I want to buy on the Forgotten Coast?

Only if the building is three habitable stories or taller. Florida's milestone inspection law and the Structural Integrity Reserve Study requirement both key off that three-story threshold, and plenty of the low-rise condo and townhome buildings on this coast sit below it. For buildings that do qualify, the milestone inspection is due by December 31 of the year the building turns 30, and the reserve study gives you a written, dollar-by-dollar picture of what the building needs. Both are genuinely good news for a buyer, because they turn what used to be guesswork into documents you can read before you ever write an offer.

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What does a home inspection actually cover on a Forgotten Coast beach home?

More than most buyers expect, and it is usually three separate reports rather than one. The general home inspection covers the whole property from roof to pilings and is written for you. A 4-point inspection covers roof, electrical, plumbing, and HVAC and is written for your insurance carrier. A wind mitigation inspection documents the hurricane-resistant features already in the home so you can earn premium credits, and it often pays for itself in year one. On an elevated coastal home, the pilings, the connectors, and the corrosion on the metal deserve as much attention as anything inside the walls.

By Billy Joe Smiley | September 3, 2026

Buyers who have owned…

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The Corridor Carried August Out the Door

Every year the last week of August gets written off before it starts. The renters are checking out, the buyers are supposedly waiting on Labor Day, and nobody expects much to happen. Vacation traffic has thinned enough that you can get a table at lunch without planning around it.

Quiet on the sand, busy on the closing table. 17 homes closed on the Forgotten Coast, the most of any week in August, and 10 of them came from a single stretch of road. This was not the top of the market doing the work. It was the middle.

What is the Forgotten Coast real estate market doing this week?
For the week of August 24 to 30, 2026, the Forgotten Coast recorded 17 residential closings and 2 land sales across Port St.…

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Do You Need a License to Rent Your Forgotten Coast Home Short-Term?

Yes. If you rent a whole home for stays under 30 days more than three times a year, Florida requires a state DBPR vacation rental license, and your county adds its own layer on top. On the Forgotten Coast that means a Gulf County STR business license, a City of St. George Island business license, or a Bay County Short-Term Vacation Rental Certificate, depending on where the property sits, plus sales tax and tourist development tax registration.

By Billy Joe Smiley | August 27, 2026

I get this question from almost every investment buyer I work with, and it usually comes up late, right after they have fallen in love with a house and started running the rental numbers in…

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School Started, and the Big Money Came With It

The buses started running again last week, and you notice it on the beach before you notice it anywhere else. Weekday mornings out at the Cape go back to walkers and a couple of people working the trough with a rod. Traffic on 98 thins out before ten. This is usually the stretch of the calendar where the market gets quiet right along with everything else.

Not this time. 15 homes closed on the Forgotten Coast, four more than each of the two weeks before it, and the dollars moved further than the count did. Residential volume landed at $13.68 million against roughly $8.06 million a week earlier. One island sale carried a good piece of that. The rest came from a coast that went back to work about the…

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What Should You Check Before Buying Vacant Land on the Forgotten Coast?

Once you are under contract on vacant land on the Forgotten Coast, your due diligence period should confirm three things: a wetland check and current survey establishing your buildable area and legal access, a realistic estimate for utility hookup and well drilling costs, and a land loan that fits the down payment and terms lenders actually offer for raw property. Florida's Vacant Land Contract gives you a generous due diligence window built specifically to run these checks before you are locked in, and working through them in order turns a promising lot into a confident purchase.

By Billy Joe Smiley | August 20, 2026

More buyers are calling me about vacant lots than…

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What Happens If the Appraisal Comes in Low on a Forgotten Coast Waterfront Home?

If your Forgotten Coast waterfront appraisal comes in under contract price, you have four real options: renegotiate the price, cover the gap in cash, request a lender-facilitated Reconsideration of Value with stronger comps, or use Florida's appraisal contingency to walk away with your earnest money. Waterfront and one-of-a-kind homes appraise low more often simply because there are fewer recent comparable sales for the appraiser to work from, not because anything is wrong with the property. In today's buyer's market on this coast, you have more leverage to resolve it than buyers have had in years.

By Billy Joe Smiley | August 18, 2026

You found the right…

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Eleven Sales Again, and a Very Different Eleven

The count did not move. Eleven homes closed on the Forgotten Coast last week, the same number as the week before. Everything underneath it moved.

Mid-August has its own rhythm out here. The weekday beach thins down to walkers and a few surf casters, and the afternoon pop-up storms have gotten regular enough that you learn to run your errands before two. Weekends still fill up. Tuesdays belong to the locals again.

Under that quiet, the money shifted hard. Residential volume came in around $8.06 million on those 11 sales, up from roughly $7.5 million a week earlier on the identical count. The average sale climbed to $732,565 from $682,382. The reason sits out on the Cape, and it is a story about…

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How Does a 1031 Exchange Work When You Sell Investment Property on the Forgotten Coast?

A 1031 exchange lets you sell a qualifying investment or rental property and roll the proceeds into your next one without paying federal capital gains tax right now. You defer the gain instead of losing a chunk of it, as long as you use a qualified intermediary, identify a replacement property within 45 days, and close within 180. Florida has no state capital gains tax to worry about, but documentary stamp tax still applies on both sides of the exchange. Get the timeline and the paperwork right, and this is one of the most valuable tools an investor on this coast has for building real wealth over time.

By Billy Joe Smiley | August 13, 2026

If you own…

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