Picture this: it’s time to buy your first home. You’ve got a new baby on the way and need a bit more space. After saving for years and after months spent looking for a nice home in a good area to raise a family, you find a place. The loan got approved, and you make an offer. Then your real estate agent calls with bad news: A competing buyer willing to pay a lot more for the house just beat you out.
That’s an all-too-common experience lately for a lot of home buyers in the Tampa Bay region. And they aren’t just competing with other people looking for a place to put down roots. Investors are looking to snag up properties, too.
WUSF’s Gabriella Paul has been talking to renters, homeowners and investigators to find out what’s been going on with the housing market. She says investors are changing the market by adding competition on houses deemed affordable – the ones typically around $200,000 to $300,000.
She said they’re also changing the fabric of the neighborhood.
“That can mean that there's more short-term rental listings. It can mean that there's homes that have a quick turnaround on the market.”
But she says there’s also an upside.
“There's homes that may have been vacant or may have needed to be rehabilitated, that a family might not have been able to finance, but an investor is happy to.”
But it seems the concerns outweigh the good.
Large corporations often display predatory behavior or simply don’t keep up the homes that they rent out.
One renter Paul spoke to moved into a house that he was told had passed inspection and was ready to be lived in. However, a few days in and the walls started leaking with the shower on.
“The water was moving throughout the whole house, and his master bedroom is attached to this bathroom and the guest bathroom. Come to find out that there was a huge mold infestation that had to basically turn their house into what looks like an active construction zone.”
Paul said she visited him seven months later and the home was in the same condition.
“It had not been fixed to the point where there's only one working bathroom. Currently, there's no working showers, and their sinks are actually detached and currently sitting in their backyards,” she said.
Another issue homeowners face is having investors try to purchase their homes from under them. Often, they’re not even offering enough to purchase a new home.
Kristin Washington is a Realtor in Tampa. She works to get lower-earning families into homes. She says when it comes to cash offers, her clients are getting smarter.
“I've noticed that they're understanding the real estate game and what's going on around them. A lot of that is actually educating them,” she said. “Educating the community on what the pricing is in the area. Because if they do sell at those prices, where are they going to go?”
Paul says it’s a lot more nuanced when it comes investors.
“It really comes down to the intention of investors with single-family homes and with all of the homebuyers, potential homebuyers and homeowners who I spoke to, I think there was this sense of, ‘It feels better when I'm renting from somebody who cares about this community, rather than a corporation whose stocks and everything {are) being tied up with Wall Street.’”
