Panama City Beach Condo Market Analysis After The Palazzo Auction

The Palazzo condo building had a successful auction Saturday, August 2, 2008, with around 50 units selling. Some have heralded the event as an indication that the bottom of the condo real estate market is finally here. However, a closer analysis may have a much more sinister conclusion.

Let’s analyze the current market value of the Palazzo 2BR/2Ba units the day before the auction. The current market value defined as the highest price that would attract a buyer, given a defined marketing period.

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Quarter 2 Sales Comparison 2002 to 2008

The real estate market is in the toilet, right? Not so much. I mean, compared to 2005 and 2006, prices are low, but compare today’s numbers with numbers from 2002, 2003, or even 2004, and we’re not doing so bad. Sure, the average days on market is way up, but the prices today compared to prices of yester-years are not too bad.

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TDC Meeting on Tuesday August 12th – Agenda

Tuesday should be an exciting day of reporting and presentation. We should see some final numbers on the success of the Summer White Sale campiagn, reported in the News Herald this morning as a success, and we should hear about the fall marketing plan.

Seeing over $500,000 in “free national media attention”, it was reported that the Summer White Sale campaign was a success. With over 60,000 visits and almost 20,000 coupon downloads, the campaign is still producing consumers with coupons at local resorts and attractions. Bed tax collections are up 2% from the same period last year.

The agenda is after the break.

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Pictures of Pier Park, Post 2 of 2

Yesterday was hot, very hot. The humidity kept me moving quickly in anticipation of getting back to cooler temperatures. Pier Park was bustling for a relatively slow tourism week. One of the goals that I had with pcbdaily early on is for it to document our area so we can look back on it in times to come and see where we’ve been. Like I said the other day, I actually had no final shots of all of Pier Park. So, enjoy!

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Construction Update – City Pier at Pier Park

Moving along as scheduled, the city pier at Pier Park is still set to open spring 2009. With the main platform going on now and pilings being driven as they move out into the water, the pier is definitely beginning to take shape.

Quoted from my previous post:

Construction is “top-down” construction, meaning there will be no barge with a crane in the water driving piles. The crane will “crawl” across the top of the piles that it puts in in order to put the next series of piles. I thought this was pretty cool, as it allows them to continue work even if they have rough seas. Delays will be less likely.

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Pictures of Pier Park, Post 1 of 2

I was thumbing through pcbdaily the other day looking for good pictures of Pier Park and realized that I’ve never gone through and taken pictures of completely areas. I have broken up posts with pictures of some, but not all. So, this begins a two part picture story of Pier Park – completed!

Enjoy the north part of north part of Pier Park!

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Pier Park Introduces More Specialty Shops to Panama City Beach in August!

Lifestyle Center Continues to Strengthen its Status and Drawing Power in Florida’s Panhandle

PANAMA CITY BEACH, Fla. (August 6, 2008) – Simon Property Group, Inc. (NYSE:SPG), the country’s largest owner, developer and manager of high-quality retail real estate, officially announces the addition of more shopping options at Pier Park, the 900,000-square-foot retail and entertainment lifestyle center located on 93 acres that covers land from Front Beach Road (at the City Pier) to the heavily traveled Highway 98 (Back Beach Road).

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The Fed Leaves Key Interest Rate Unchanged

Yesterday, at the Federal Reserve’s regularly scheduled meeting, it was decided to leave the key interest rate at 2%. Economists had predicted a likelihood of the Fed raising the rate to help ward off inflation and slow economic growth.

This was the second scheduled meeting that the Fed chose to leave the key interest rate the same. Over the last 11 months, the Fed has lowered the key rate seven times. Given the economies fragile state with the weak labor and financial markets, it would seem that no move was the best move at this point.

In anticipation of the meeting yesterday, the markets rallied, up around 225 points before the Fed’s announcement. With the services sector falling less than expected and oil futures dropping to around $118 a barrel, the Dow had gained 330 points by the end of the day yesterday.

The S&P 500 rose just over 2.87% or 35.87 points and NASDAQ rose 64.27 points or 2.81%.

To Swim or Not to Swim? – That is the question.

I can see the justification now – “I’ve come 5 hours to see this beach, and I’m gonna swim whether some flag says I can or not. I paid for this trip, I should be able to swim.” The problem here, you see, is not that the “evil” police or safety patrol wants to spoil your fun, its that THE WATER IS NOT SAFE. This is nobody’s fault. This should be taken with a grain of salt. Whining and complaining about it is just as useful and crying when a baseball game gets rained out.

“The locals all know about the flags and how they work, and many of them swim. Then when the tourists come in, that know little about how it works, they see the locals swimming and figure its ok to get in.” One beach resident and business owner said today.

Do the tourists not know about it, or are they just choosing to ignore it?

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Half Marathon at Pier Park on Panama City Beach

Okay what is the goofy picture about? According to Karen all you need to do a half marathon is your cute little shoes and your nano and it helps to have a running partner. I guess you could do it without the nano with all your fun music but I would not try it.

I am so excited to let all my buds know that there is going to be a 1/2 marathon in Pier Park. Now all of us runners and wanna be runners (ie me) will not have to wait until the Seaside 1/2.

I spoke to Tricia Mayo at Girls inc and she gave me the low down

You must register at active.com which I supplied to you in the previous blog and your contact to be a volunteer is Tricia at 769-6703. The event is going to benefit Girls Inc and how exciting that we are bringing something so wonderful to our community of runners.

I would really love to hear from you and your running adventures. As for Kriss and I we are doing the Jeff Galloway run walk method which I have used in for sometime now. What is amazing about this method is how fast you can run a race ( now that would not be me… but other people run fast) It is also a great way to exercise without hurting yourself.