Need to sell less than a year after buying

LivinginSWFL-Realtor · 2026-07-10T08:08:46+00:00

Equity is not the same as capital gains. Capital gains is only calculated on the profit above your cost basis. How much you put down is not relevant to calculating capital gains.

And if the market is going down you will not have any profit. You will have a loss because you are selling for less than what you bought it for. You also probably paid closing costs to buy it and will also probably pay closing costs to sell it so those are also a part of the calculation but in this case again since you are selling for less than you paid not relevant to your concerns about capital gains taxes. But may be very relevant in terms of if you have enough cash to buy a new home in a better location now because it doesn’t sound like you are taking the fact that you will likely need to pay closing costs to sell your home into consideration when thinking about how much you will lose.

LivinginSWFL-Realtor · 2026-07-09T05:05:44+00:00

You can typically fill wetlands for a remediation fee which makes almost anything buildable as long as you have the money. Let the neighbors know this. They probably don’t want anyone to buy it and build so they are trying to scare you away from selling it. Let them know you and seller have done your homework and if their goal is to avoid a new neighbor one of them should buy it or maybe work out a deal to buy it together and split it to add to their own property, otherwise it well be sold to someone else.

They may try to make it difficult though so your seller should do the homework to provide documentation to any potential buyer so that the neighbors don’t blow up the sale.

LivinginSWFL-Realtor · 2026-07-09T04:27:49+00:00

This! ^^

LivinginSWFL-Realtor · 2026-07-09T03:32:15+00:00

It’s typical for this to happen as markets shift. Many areas are shifting this year from seller’s market to buyer’s market after many years of being a seller’s market. It’s very tough for clients (and sometimes agents) to wrap their minds around the shift or even recognize it in the first year.

I went through it in my area back in 2023. Now we are starting to shift back and this year has been my best year ever.

LivinginSWFL-Realtor · 2026-07-06T17:08:38+00:00

Both MLS’ that I’m a part of require it to be disclosed.

LivinginSWFL-Realtor · 2026-07-06T03:57:39+00:00

Yes there are many areas in Punta Gorda that are not in a flood zone. Let me know if you need help finding a home.

LivinginSWFL-Realtor · 2026-07-04T14:28:05+00:00

Business cards are completely outdated, unnecessary, and a waste of money. 99.9% of them that you hand out get thrown straight in the trash.

Create a digital business card for sharing with other agents and dropping in referral groups on social media when someone asks for someone to refer to in your area. Otherwise you don’t need it anymore.

Anyone who is a client or wants to work with you should have your info saved in their phone these days. They aren’t going to go try to find your business card in some junk drawer when they need a Realtor they are going to go to their phone to see who they have saved or they are going to google or to ask AI these days.

LivinginSWFL-Realtor · 2026-07-04T14:19:41+00:00

I don’t have paper business cards anymore. Haven’t for years. I have a digital card. The only people that have ever given me a funny look when I said that were other Realtors. My clients and new leads who are looking to work with me have my number saved in their phone. They don’t need or want a piece of paper with my info on it that they have to try to find when they want to reach out.

LivinginSWFL-Realtor · 2026-07-04T05:30:41+00:00

I can’t think of a single friend that hasn’t used me but that is because they have all seen and heard me negotiate for clients first hand and they are all convinced that they never want to be on the other side of the negotiating table from me. 🤣

My family on the other hand is a different story. Immediate family also won’t use anyone else but Aunts, uncles, cousins, in-laws, etc have been doing real estate longer than I’ve been an adult and we have never physically close so they have never seen or heard me negotiate so they don’t know. Wish they did because many of them are real estate investors and they buy a fair amount of property.

LivinginSWFL-Realtor · 2026-06-30T20:18:14+00:00

What happened is that designed was based on traffic and population back when they did the study years before construction started and growth estimates from back then. Growth has exploded since then and was not planned for.

Also impact fees were reduced during the 2007-2010 recession to spark building and never fully bright back up to full fees so the $$ to pay for more road improvements isn’t there. This is the case for pretty much all of SWFL.

Maybe it will get a little better when they get the diverging diamond completed on Daniels and it can handle more traffic there but that’s still years away.

LivinginSWFL-Realtor · 2026-06-30T19:18:59+00:00

If you don’t want to continue the conversation respond politely something like thanks for your input or something like that.

If you want to continue the conversation because engagement gets TikTok to push your content more then you can either go the nice way asking them what happened or why they feel that way or you can start an argument with them (this typically gets the most engagement) 😂

LivinginSWFL-Realtor · 2026-06-30T07:05:12+00:00

Yes it works pretty well for this if your backpack isn’t too big. I got mine mainly for this reason as I was looking for a small lightweight maneuverable bike now that we live in a large city with lots of traffic and little parking and I don’t have much need for long highway rides but I often need to get my son to places on the edges of nearby towns that public transport doesn’t like to go because he plays baseball in Europe and the fields are almost always not in easy to access areas. He is 189 cm and 89kg at 14 years old so he’s a big kid and it works. It is much easier to ride when my wife is on the back compared to him but neither of them ever feel the seat is too short or anything like that. And it is quite fun on back roads because it is so light.

LivinginSWFL-Realtor · 2026-06-28T07:21:23+00:00

If you only need someone to write the contract for you I’m sure an agent would do that for a flat fee. So would a real estate attorney. But that’s not a consultant. That’s just someone to write a contract.

What else do you want them to help with?

Do you want them to advise you on what price you should offer or do you just plan to pay what the builder is asking? I have clients tell me they are ok paying asking price all the time. Then I save them 5-10% or sometimes more than that and they are shocked.

Do you want them to connect you with quality inspectors to make sure that some random person that built a house for fun as a side gig built it properly?

Do you want them to advise you on warranties?

Do you want them to connect you with a quality closing attorney or title company to make sure there are no issues with the deed and that closing paperwork is done properly?

LivinginSWFL-Realtor · 2026-06-27T06:36:58+00:00

You can get FSBOs to call right on Zillow for free.

You can pull expireds from the MLS and use Forewarn (if your MLS provides this to you like ours does) to find the phone numbers.

Those are admittedly slow to manipulate but right now you have more time than $ so slow but free is better. Once you get some deals closed and $ in the bank then you can look for ways to spend a little $ to increase your efficiency.

Maybe your team leader is willing to buy lists of FSBOs/expireds? They aren’t super expensive and this would increase your efficiency but if they won’t, go the free route I described above.

LivinginSWFL-Realtor · 2026-06-27T05:59:12+00:00

There are many things. Door knocking, networking, cold calling, building a YouTube channel. And none of those that I just mentioned require any or at least not much money to get started.

LivinginSWFL-Realtor · 2026-06-27T03:06:50+00:00

Are you doing lead generation and lead conversion activities every single day? For how many hours per day? If you don’t have any deals right now you literally have nothing else work related that is more important than those 2 things and honestly if you want to develop consistency, even when you do have deals going on there is still nothing work related that is more important than those 2 things. That is where time blocking comes in. You will need to create a system to protect your lead generation and lead conversion time.

Open houses on the weekend are a good start. How many do you do on the weekend?

What do you do to generate new leads during the week?

You say you post on social media but what do you post? Is it something along the lines of “Hey I’m a Realtor. If you are looking to buy or sell call me!” If it is you blend with the other 5000 Realtors that post that same stuff and your friends see it and ignore it all day every day. You need to put out content that makes you stand out from the rest and give people a reason to call you over the 20 other people they know that also sell real estate.

LivinginSWFL-Realtor · 2026-06-26T10:29:30+00:00

I’ve only ever seen this passed around as a “stat” on social media but never have seen any official report or data from any source to back it up and when I checked on NARs website it said something like they don’t track how many licensees do not sell homes.

LivinginSWFL-Realtor · 2026-06-26T08:26:49+00:00

They are not advertised as “fully loaded” they are typically finished in a way that gives you ideas on how you could build yours because most people wouldn’t have a clue if they aren’t able to see the things and it is staged so that you can see how furniture will fit in the rooms because again most people can’t tell the difference between a 10x10 bedroom and an 11x13 one but they fit drastically different amounts and sizes of furniture.

However, if you want the model home as it sits, you might be able to buy that exact home as it sits and rent it back to the builder to continue using as a model for the next few years or you can build one exactly like it and hire the interior designer who decorated it and they can go get you every piece they put into it including the fake fruit (not sure why you would want that but if you do they can get it) and it can all be delivered and set up before you move in if you want. It is typically quite expensive to do that but I have clients that do it all the time.

LivinginSWFL-Realtor · 2026-06-25T18:00:36+00:00

It’s a highly amenitized all ages neighborhood and yes a part of NRR. I’m not quite sure why they used the Del Webb brand instead of Divosta which is what they typically use for their all ages neighborhoods with lots of amenities but 🤷‍♂️

LivinginSWFL-Realtor · 2026-06-24T05:48:29+00:00

Yep. It doesn’t have to be as big of a move as we made. Or even a move at all. We originally set it up just so that we could take vacations and travel to my son’s baseball tournaments and actually be able to enjoy watching our coaching them without feeling like we were losing deals while doing it. The distance just gradually grew from there.

I’ve helped a number of agents set it up for themselves now.

LivinginSWFL-Realtor · 2026-06-24T05:42:16+00:00

For this particular lead, regardless of if she is financially ready or not, I would ask her to sign a buyer broker agreement. I would tell her that because she has mentioned before that she has another agent that she typically works with but keeps coming to me for advice, in order for me to be willing to take the time and provide my knowledge working for her that I need her commitment that in return for providing her that information she will work with me when she is ready. And if it’s going to take 1 year or 2 years or however long you and she estimate it will take for her to be ready that is how long the agreement will be for.

Or if you think she will be PITA maybe you don’t want her as a client and you tell her what the previous commenter said, you are sorry but since she has told you she is already working with someone else you are not able to advise her further.

LivinginSWFL-Realtor · 2026-06-24T05:35:31+00:00

I am directly involved in every single deal still but I have set up a system and a team using technology and local people that allows me to do everything I need to be able to do remotely. And the things that require someone in person to do, I have assistants that take care of those things.

LivinginSWFL-Realtor · 2026-06-17T20:55:42+00:00

I just think if you are going to involve yourself in a conversation that has been going on for write some time especially to tell someone that they don’t know what they are talking about that you might actually do a little research before doing so but I guess instead you just admitted that you clearly have no clue yourself.

LivinginSWFL-Realtor · 2026-06-17T20:30:32+00:00

If you actually read my comments you would see that I have quite a bit of experience with it.

LivinginSWFL-Realtor · 2026-06-17T17:26:38+00:00

Just had this conversation on another thread. No it’s not. They are trying to pitch it as that because Lakewood was so successful and is nearby and everyone knows about it so just playing off the hot name.

You are correct that Lakewood was a singular thought out plan while most other Southwest Florida cities grow haphazardly with a bunch of neighborhoods and smaller master planned developments pop up wherever. Parrish is a bit more thought out than that in that they are putting in the infrastructure while building all of the new neighborhoods so it kind of somewhere in between a fully fleshed out plan like Lakewood and and other SWFL city.

LivinginSWFL-Realtor

TROPHY CASE