Strategies for today’s market – Texas Gulf Coast Online

The primary risk for a coastal investment is that highly improbable hurricane damage: Could Destroy the structure, Could remove beachfront, and Insurance could become cost prohibited.

These un-probable risks can be mitigated today by:

• building Hurricane Resistant Structures: high off the ground to protect from water surge and flood damage, building to intense construction standards to survive high wind damage, and to have such structures certified by the insurance industry.

• also by protecting the beachfronts with concrete walls or artificially enhanced dunes (geo-tubes), and implementing beach re-nourishment in areas where there is erosion. Or by building homes far enough back from the shoreline and/or behind an anchored structure such as a roadway.

The metro housing market fundamentals for the large potential buyer pool for the Texas Coast is doing well and outperforming the rest of the nation. This includes Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Austin.

New Rules for Buying a Home Before It’s Built

As the housing market has cooled, the developer’s mindset has changed. Rather than construct new developments quickly and wait for the buyers to flood in, more developers are relying on preconstruction sales to determine whether or not to break ground.

Here’s some advice for any buyer contemplating a preconstruction purchase:

• Negotiate an exit strategy in your sales contract, especially as lead times for construction grow longer in some markets. For example, state that if the builder doesn’t break ground by a certain day, you can get out of the contract.
• If you’re deposit money is going to sit there for an extended period, as the developer to pay interest.
• Get in writing what changes that can be made to the project once the sales contract is signed. Finishes and appliances might not be set in stone at the time you sign the deal.
• Try to find out the current state of the local market and gauge whether the developer is offering incentives to lure new buyers – which, though attractive to buyers in the short term, can put a downward pressure on prices.
• Check out the Texas Gulf Coast Online Buyers Club for an even better way atTexasGulfCoastOnline.com/BuyersClub.aspx