The Journey to Lakewood Ranch, FL
2016/2017 |
 Ken Turkington and I bought new construction, townhome in Harmony at Lakewood Ranch. Mattamy Homes was the builder, and we went to contract in late 2016. The Townhome was completed in 2017. We decided this was the best way for us to get “boots on the ground” in Florida for our mortgage brokerage. The Ranch had just started to boom again starting in 2014 and we felt this was a good price point to enter. We did extensive upgrades to make the place comfy and the price came in at $255,000. Smaller units with fewer upgrades could be had at that time for the 220s. Lakewood Ranch was just getting on the map nationally. When we would fly down on Delta, they had a two-page spread right on the inside of the front cover promoting the development. All the national and regional builders were here splitting up the land and the community exploded for the 2nd time in its less than 20-year history at the time. Ken and I started to randomly commute back and forth from Michigan until July 5th, 2017, when I decided to move full-time with my family to LWR.
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2017/2018 |
I moved into the Harmony townhome with my family in August of 2017 (about 6 days prior to hurricane Irma) after we decided Florida is where we wanted to be full-time. I began looking for a new home to purchase and we found one quickly in Esplanade at Lakewood Ranch. The townhome was a great short-term crash pad for us. After I closed on the Esplanade home, we rented out the townhome for a year at $1,850 per month. We used a local property management company to handle the details.
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2019 |
A co-worker from Michigan moved down to Florida to work on our Florida office and purchased the townhome from us. Values were flat and about the same price we paid for it.
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2020 |
Covid hits in March and changes everything. We no longer owned the townhome, but Florida began to boom due to the work from home and Harmony was the most cost-effective place to be in Lakewood Ranch. This pushed prices up above 300K in the community quickly.
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2021 |
Demand remained insane due to the pandemic and prices rose above 400K. It was almost hard to fathom but the central location of the community inside the Ranch played an integral role in the price explosion.
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| 2022 | Prices peaked in the low 500s in the spring and then started dropping in July of 2022. Average pricing is around 465k as this goes to press 9/1/22.
So where do you think the prices will go next in Harmony?
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Thanks for reading,
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