What I’m Seeing: Watercolor, Florida
Recalibrate the Noise
Of course you took the time to get out of the presentism mindset with the broader conversation of our last Monday Post. If not check it out here.
Ok — here’s one on the Watercolor, Florida market. Watercolor is super popular of course.
Here is what I think is the only way to see what’s actually happening rather than reacting to headlines written for other markets, other product types, and other buyer psychologies.
Because here is what I keep hearing:
People who aren’t ready to make decisions — which is fine — speaking with great confidence about a market they’re reading completely wrong.
Being undecided is ok.
Being wrong about the market is not. Could my ideas and conclusions be wrong? Of course but with no opinion what so ever how can you measure a persons skill at interpretation?
I haven’t made anything resembling a “market call” in a long while. But this moment is clear. The tea leaves are right in front of us, and a surprising number of people are missing them at exactly the wrong time.
We are not collapsing.
We are normalizing.
We are right back inside the long-term buyer range.
What Do You See?
Here’s what I see:
A market that looks remarkably similar to 2010 when I made my first purchase here. Not in distress — in shape. In rhythm. In the way cycles behave when price discovery resets and then settles into something sustainable.
Yes, sales spiked for a bit. Then they came back to normal or near-normal.
And by 2016, 2017, and 2018 — this was the market.
That’s the part I need people to really sit with:
We keep acting like we’ve never been here before. We have.
And if you look at the chart without panic, without wishful thinking, without TikTok “macro experts” in your ear… you’ll see it too.
And If “It” Never Happened
This is the exercise I’m encouraging across every submarket on 30A.
Imagine nothing unusual happened.
Imagine no anomaly, no bubble, no pandemic surge existed.
What would this chart tell you?
You’d probably shrug and say: “Not much. Looks balanced.”
Because from 2018 forward — which is when the emotional narratives get loud — the actual data shows neither alarm bells nor cliffs. It shows a market behaving like a market if you realize that Covid was not real as a market for real estate. We are back to real
No frenzy.
No collapse.
Just… balance.
HINT: The chart leaves our the Surge Years and otherwise mostly wiggles and zig zags as it always has and does.
The Real Difference Between “Offering” and “Buying”
This is about to become obvious again:
There is a massive difference between making offers and buying a home.
And the people who genuinely want to be here — to live here, to vacation here, to invest here — are about to reveal themselves. While others will talk themselves in circles watching YouTube channels that have nothing to do with discretionary luxury second-home markets. If you really are committed to market collapse take a look at the Reventure App.
So let me say it cleanly:
Yes, I guess I am on record now.
It’s ok to buy.
Are we perfectly at the bottom? I can’t say that with certainty — and no honest person can. But I can say this: we are close enough so that five years from now it won’t matter.
And for those who bought in 2022?
Five more years probably won’t matter for them either. (although they might not have made much appreciation)
Because time, not timing, is what ultimately rights the ship.
If You’re Feeling the Pull… Pay Attention
A subtle truth is emerging:
People who don’t want to buy right now are using macro fear to justify it. And truth be told I am sure most readers of this will think I am wrong. And you know what? I am ok if I am, but my job is to read tea leaves. I have said I can use two kinds of people for decisions about things. A person that is always or mostly right is valuable and just as valuable as one who is always or mostly wrong.
What I cannot use is a weak realtor that cannot give an opinion based on some data and a factual view of that data. “Don’t you just love it and isn’t it pretty?” let’s make an offer is not advice.
People who do want to buy are starting to feel the window reopen — even if they can’t yet articulate why.
Data has a way of nudging intuition and intuition for many is justified by data that is about to become clear later for others.
So if you’re looking at these charts and feeling that small shift in your gut… that sense that the noise is fading and the opportunity is settling into view… you’re not imagining it.
That is exactly what the early part of normalization feels like.
“By the way you cannot build sandcastles with your grandbabies on a pile of bitcoin.” - Clark B.