Customers often ask me if I think that values of home and land in the Bird Section of Punta Gorda Isles will go up? Lot owners are hoping that the creation of Buckley’s Pass (see other Blogs that discuss this) will greatly increase their value and of course homeowners as well are hoping for the same benefit. Many lots are significantly over-priced and perhaps the owners are hoping and waiting for a big jump in price. Having a short boat ride is a nice benefit but its also important to the sailor that the home or lot has sailboat access or for a trawler or sport fisherman plenty of water in the canals and its exit waterway.
With that said, I never had a strong opinion as to how the creation of Buckley’s Pass, making a shorter boat ride into the harbor would affect property values. With that said, it is implied I was not convinced it would, so I decided to look at current market trends as presented below.
Home Comparison
The metric I chose for comparison to the Bird Section’s currently long boat ride to open water was in contrast to the old (or original) sailboat section. The old sailboat section in PGI has the closest access to the harbor, with deep water. Most travel times to the harbor are 10 minutes or less for the old sailboat section. Most travel times from the bird section to the harbor are 40 minutes or less with some much longer at over an hour at the north end of the bird section.
Looking at the 2018 home sales statistics from the MLS database, I chose to consider sales that involved only 3+ bedroom homes with a pool, which constitute the largest number of homes in either location. Here are the stats:
Bird Section: 48 sales (as of December 1, 2018) at a median sales price of $520,000
Old Sailboat Section: 40 sales (as of December 1, 2018) at a median sales price of $465,500
So, the median sales price was significantly higher in the bird section and the total number of sales was higher. The people that live in the bird section bought their home knowing that they might have a long boat ride out. Obviously, they would not have bought if they didn’t like the house and location and most of these homes were not new construction.
You can read into this what you want but does this make you think property values will go up once Buckley’s Pass has been created? There is a lot more vacant land in the bird section than the old sailboat section. If shortening the boat ride times in the bird section occurs will this affect the lot values in the old sailboat section since they won’t be the only location in town with really short boat ride times?
