What other reasons do you need to go to Destin? As it’s one of the top vacation spots in the South, many come to the city for its beaches. But most shore towns don’t survive on the beach alone – think of the Jersey shore and the Boardwalk – and Destin has its share of activities to attract vacationers to rent a house or condo for up to a week at a time. While, yes, the beach is the true reason many come to Destin to vacation for a week, other activities involve the other natural resources and the arts in and around Destin. Destin.com recently compiled a list of various activities to do in Destin in honor of the city’s quarter-century birthday. The article gives a more detailed run-down of things to do in Destin and surrounding Emerald Coast towns, but here are some highlights:

*The beach. Aside from standard activities on the beach, Destin’s beaches are known for being places to watch marine life and go fishing.
* The arts. Although Destin is still an up-and-coming city, the area still has a strong arts presence, including both visual and performing arts. Art and performing festivals do come to Destin and, as they vary with seasons, check online to see what is available.
*State parks. Various state parks are around Destin and the 30A area. Activities like hiking and yoloing (stand-up paddle boarding) are often done in these various parks, some of which include secluded beaches and dune lakes.
*Golf clubs. Regardless of whether you stay at a resort or at a rental property, the area in and around Destin has many golf clubs.
*The Destin History and Fishing Museum. Destin may be a younger city, but the area has a history as a fishing town.
*Exploring route 30A. Whether you choose to drive or bike it, 30A has various smaller shore towns with their own attractions.
*Shopping. From the latest retail to antiques, Destin has various shopping centers and malls, including the Silver Sand Outlet Mall, that attract many vacationers and locals.

Destin is known for its white sand beaches with emerald green waters, but, aside from the beaches and shopping, the area has many outdoor activities. An article about outdoor activities in Destin lists several activities in the area. As Destin is becoming more of a vacation destination year by year, the area has expanded its activity offerings, but these activities in nature have been an attraction for years. In the case of this article, the writer drove from Dallas to Destin for a vacation. With the rental – and even housing – industry booming in the area, finding things to do isn’t difficult. But, when the beach and shopping gets dull, Destin and the towns along 30A have several options involving their natural resources.

As mentioned in this article, one activity to do along the lakes in the Destin area is yoloing. Yoloing, or stand-up paddle boarding, is offered in classes in Destin. Aside from its ocean coast, Destin has various dune lakes and at these inland lakes is where yoloing is a common activity for vacationers. Similarly, tubing, canoeing, and kayaking activities are available in the area at Blackwater River State Park. Blackwater River, best known for a river with a sand bottom, is an hour drive north of Destin and the river is often open for all of the mentioned activities.

Hiking is another common activity in the area as, in addition to Blackwater River State Park, Destin has other parks, including Topsail Hill Preserve Park. This particular park is known for having secluded white sand beaches and various trails.

As Destin’s vacation industry has been in the rise in recent years, the area keeps on having more entertainment and activity options. While the beach will remain Destin’s main spot for vacationers, the area boasts other activities in nature. If you plan on renting a house or condo for a few days to a week in Destin, these activities are offered throughout Destin and other areas of the Emerald Coast with state parks.

An article published recently in The Walton Sun states that sales on homes along the Emerald Coast has jumped since the start of 2009. More specifically, sales went up 51 units in June 2009, with Destin seeing 13 more units than in May. According to the article, most of the homes sold in Destin in June were single family homes. While Destin saw an increase in the amount of units sold, other towns along the Emerald Coast, such as South Walton, saw fewer units sold overall during the month, according to the article.

The article mentions some key factors as to why June saw more homes along the Emerald Coast than in previous months. One such factor is that, as a result of foreclosures over the past few years, more homes and condos are affordable and significantly less than from 2005 to 2007. This is the result of foreclosures and short sales being averaged in with the average prices of standard homes. In addition, Destin has been touted as a vacation destination over the past few years, as well as neighboring towns in the 30A area, and more people are interested in moving to the area to live by the beach or to own a vacation home at an affordable price.

Another factor has been the $8,000 tax incentive for first-time home buyers. In Florida, the tax credit on homes of at least $80,000 has been applied immediately in many cases. Florida, unlike other states, has set aside $3.1 million for first time home buyers to give them an immediate application of the $8,000 home buyers. To receive the tax credit, the first time home buyer needs to make no more than $95,000 per year, or $170,000 for a family, and the property being purchased needs to be $80,000 or more, as the tax cut is ten percent, at most, of the home’s cost.

As mentioned in a previous post about real estate growing, building, and recession trends in Destin over the past 35 years, many condos were built in the city during the early and mid-‘80s, as many were buying properties then. As a result, the area, like many beach communities in Florida, continues to have many condos, some of which go for the same price as a single-family home but are closer to the ocean. In addition, current real estate trends see that Destin has seen an increase in home sales as the result of foreclosures lowering prices on homes and condos. Those wanting to live in an up-and-coming beach town or own a vacation home can now do so.

In terms of the foreclosure and short sale properties sold through Josh McLean Homes, condos in prices ranging from $100,000 to over $1 million are being sold in various areas around the Emerald Coast, including places like Destin, Miramar Beach, Santa Rosa, and other towns along route 30A. The homes available include short sale and foreclosure homes which come in as is and REO conditions.

Condos sold as short sale or foreclosure come in the same state as a similar house, and the condos are part of many housing complexes in Destin and the other towns of the Emerald Coast. One such building for higher-priced condos is Silver Beach Towers East but the properties come from many other condo complexes and are in various states. If you’re looking for a condo instead of a home, the locations for these foreclosed and short sale condos range from ocean side properties to in the center of town to areas ideal for fishing. Price wise, condos in complexes closer to the beach are going to cost more than those farther inland.

The last time this blog posted and analyzed statistics for homes sold results were displayed for May of 2009. The latest results can be read on the blog for Josh McLean Homes, which has the statistics for the homes sold in July 2009.

In looking at these graphs, the average price for a home sold on the Emerald Coast (the 30A area and surrounding Emerald Coast towns in this case), has stayed relatively the same from January until July. Although, according to the graphs, the average home price has dipped slightly, the gap between home prices is significantly smaller than a few years ago, with results from 2005 through 2007 showing a large disparity in the prices offered on homes on the Emerald Coast.

But what about the amount of homes sold? Recent statistics overall for the Emerald Coast area actually indicate that homes sold have gone up 51 units since the start of 2009. Although properties like foreclosures and short sales are factored into this (and this is also why the overall prices are lower than from three years ago), recent months show an increase in the amount of properties being sold through Josh McLean homes. In fact, by looking at the lowest graph, 2009 has experienced the largest amount of homes sold in comparison to the past two years when the foreclosure crisis became evident.

In the same direction as the previous post, is the real estate market in Destin preparing for an upswing? With the amount of properties sold and the prices, a steady increase through the rest of the year should be inevitable. In addition, another recent article published about Destin real estate indicates that many are moving to the area as Destin and other Emerald Coast towns are desirable and the prices are now more affordable for a single-family home.

In a column published recently by writer Jack Simpson in the Destin Log, Simpson goes through real estate trends from the past twenty-five years for Destin for a prediction of the current market. In the column, Simpson starts with talking about a Destin property that he purchased in 1974 and the ups and downs of Destin real estate since then and how the market has changed – building condos and being hit by hurricanes, for example. At the time when Simpson purchased his property, Destin was “depressed,” as he describes it, as a result of over building in the area. Destin, at the time, was not a city – it’s only been a city for the past 30 years – and the area was thought more of as a fishing town than a vacationing and resort town.

Instead of reading the entire article, some of the highlights Simpson mentions are the Economy Recovery Tax Act, passed between 1981 and ’86, which stimulated the economy – much like the current stimulus package in our current economy – and people started buying Destin condos for tax benefits, leading to the construction of more condos in the city. 1986 brought the Tax Reform Act which, to counter act all of the properties nationwide being bought reduced to eliminated the tax breaks from owning a property, caused a mild recession, which didn’t affect Destin significantly through the ‘90s. 1995, however, brought Hurricane Opal, which destroyed many of the older properties in Destin. Destin rebuilt itself and, as with real estate across the nation, saw steady increases in property purchases up until 2003, when more properties were being purchased and prices rose. 2006 to the present, like the rest of the nation’s real estate markets, also saw foreclosures and decreases in property values.

Simpson predicts that, by comparing the real estate trends from over the past 35 years, that we’ll soon be seeing an upswing. 2009 has seen some recovery in the market, although, as seen in previous weeks, other real estate writers see this as just the bottom. And, if this is indeed the bottom, as the saying goes, once you’ve reached the bottom, you don’t have any place to go but up.

Have you ever wondered what goes into foreclosure? Or why certain people sell their homes as a short sale and what REO means? As many properties sold on the market are foreclosures, knowing the steps of foreclosure are important if you’re considering purchasing a foreclosed or short sale property.

One term is pre-foreclosure. Most homes sold as a short sale are pre-foreclosure homes, as the owner is willing to settle for selling the property at a lesser value than what the home is worth to avoid foreclosure. A pre-foreclosure, out of the three options, can forestall damage to an owner’s credit, which results with a foreclosure, and before a lender gets involved, consultation on the lesser price of the home can be done with attorneys, accountants, and real estate agents.

Foreclosure is more of a common term used and pertains to any steps leading to an auction on a property. For those interested in auctions for a foreclosed home, often county clerk offices have listings – some of which can be found on email lists and notifications – of when foreclosed homes are going up for auction and the dates for viewing them. Although the procedure varies with states, foreclosure comes in two types, judicial and non-judicial. Judicial foreclosures involve mortgages instead of deeds of trusts and the process for a home to go up for auction takes longer. A non-judicial foreclosure, however, involves a trustee, or third party, who handles the process of foreclosure two to four months after the owner has defaulted on the home’s payments. A home will reach the auction block much quicker with a non-judicial foreclosure.

The third type of foreclosed home is a post-foreclosure. A post-foreclosure can simply be the new owner assuming the property or, if not sold at the auction, can be a property still in control of the lender, or an REO. An REO, although the property is still held by the lender, indicates that the property is the result of a poor lending decision that lead to overhead and losses. However, once the property is an REO, the lender must continue to maintain it and not leave it “as is.”

Any listing on a website or through a county clerk office can tell you what kinds of homes are up for foreclosure in an area. But what about short sales? As mentioned in a previous post, a short sale is basically when a home owner settles on a lower price on a home to sell instead of going all the way with foreclosure. For the former home owner, both a short sale and a foreclosure can become blemishes on a credit report but, for a person looking for a home, a foreclosed home can be acquired at a lower price. In the Emerald Coast area, including towns like Destin, Santa Rosa, and South Walton, many homes are up for foreclosure and short sale at reasonable prices. If you’re thinking of purchasing a home or land around the Emerald Coast, a short sale property is one option for a lower price to pay on a high-quality piece of real estate.

The most common types of short sale properties on the Emerald Coast are, of course, homes. Through a website like JoshMcLeanHomes.com, this includes single homes, townhouses, and condos in locations like Destin, Miramar Beach, and Santa Rosa. As the towns along the Emerald Coast are essentially beach towns, proximity to the beach is important and, often, the properties closer to the beach are sold at higher prices than those not within walking distance of the ocean. For all types of properties, the prices range from $400,000 to over $1 million.

Another type of short sale property is land. Particularly if you’re a developer looking for land to build homes or condos, purchasing land at short sale prices is at a value. Most of the land available is residential in units of one or more acres. For certain properties, the types of land available include gulf front or beach properties and bayou land. Both of these can include inland beach lakes.