Too Long Away

I'm back from my annual trip to visit my sister and her family in Florida. The nighttime temperature was 28 degrees when I left West Palm Beach, so there was no shock when I had to scrape frost off my car windows this morning before leaving for the Realtors' meeting. My son and his wife will notice much more contrast when they return to Michigan from their vacation in Hawaii.
In my sales area (Sunnyvale and Cupertino) we get a weekly list of recent home sales published in the Mercury News. The recent sales price is almost always higher than the last selling price. In the Real Estate section of the Palm Beach Post, the situation is reversed. Invariably, the new sales are dramatically lower in price than the same property's sale price of a few years ago. For example, a five year old condo that sold for $592,600 in 2005, now sold for $220,000. A single family house, built in 1996, sold in 2008 for $665,000 and resold recently for $113,800.
Even more frightening, the property tax on a $430,000 condo there is more than $10,000 a year! I'm glad to be back in Northern California.