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Cocoa Beach Homebuyers Quandry


When you find the home you want to buy you may make an offer contingent upon the sale of your existing Cocoa Beach. In a Seller’s Market, offers with such contingencies are not well received because the seller must remove his home from the market while you sell yours. However there are times when this kind of offer is successful, even in the Cocoa Beach market. A backup strategy might be to put in your offer with a very long escrow giving yourself time to sell your home. Very few sellers will accept these kinds of contingencies or long escrows if your house is not already on the market.


Bitten by the Cocoa Beach Home Improvement Bug?


Money isn’t everything however so that if the most important consideration for remaining in your Cocoa Beach home happens to be the school where your children attend or the proximity to your work or to a particularly attractive recreational opportunity then remodeling may be the best option. On the other hand, if the idea of having your Cocoa Beach house torn up for weeks at a time makes your blood run cold, it really doesn’t matter how much money you might make turning a fixer-upper into a model home. You will be far better off selling the home you have and moving to a home that better fits your needs.

Building Cocoa Beach Home Equity


A popular question from prospective Cocoa Beach homebuyers relates to building home equity. Buyers like to estimate how much a home may increase in value based upon past appreciation. One of the many advantages of home ownership is that appreciation is based on the home’s market value rather than on the actual dollar amount invested or the down payment so that a $100,000.00 home that appreciates 5% is now worth $105,000.00, especially in Cocoa Beach.

With a typical 30-year loan, most of your monthly payment goes toward interest payments with only small amounts going to the principle in the early years. Only half the principle is repaid in the first 23 years of the loan. You can build Cocoa Beach home equity faster by choosing a 15-year loan instead of a 30-year loan.

Green Remodeling Your Cocoa Beach


Energy conservation. The average Cocoa Beach today uses systems for heating, ventilation and air conditioning, and most homes are not built as efficiently as they could be, resulting in high energy consumption. The U.S. Department of Energy believes if current buildings were green-improved, they would use $20 billion less in energy per year. Cocoa Beach green remodeling puts a strong emphasis on making homes as efficient as possible with modifications such as energy-efficient appliances and thermostats that can be programmed at different temperatures for different times of the day.

Rent or Buy Cocoa Beach


In the early years of your Cocoa Beach mortgage, nearly all of every monthly payment is interest. This means you are only paying off a tiny bit of the loan principal, but it is good news in terms of tax savings.

The monthly payment for a $100,000, 30-year, 8% mortgage on your Cocoa Beach would be about $734. In the first year of your mortgage, $7,970 of your $8,805 payment or 91% would be deductible as mortgage interest. Even in the tenth year, almost 81% of your payments would be deductible. What this is worth to you depends on your tax bracket but this tax savings built into the home-buying equation is why you can afford to make higher mortgage payments than your current rent payments without squeezing your budget. There is no similar tax subsidy for renters.


The Benefits of Selling Cocoa Beach


In order to sell Cocoa Beach as your personal residence, you must have lived in it for two out of the five-year period ending on the date of the sale of the property. This means that you can buy a second home and live in it as your personal residence while renting out your first home. If, in a couple years you decide to sell your first Cocoa Beach personal residence you can sell it and still benefit from the $250,000 to $500,000 Capital Gain tax exclusion. The law says that the home must be your personal residence for at least two out of the past five years.



Robin Taylor Ritchie
Broker Associate
GRI, ABR, e-Pro

Licensed Real Estate Broker in the State of Florida

Titusville, FL 32780
321-698-8731