Search Tips

1. Searches for condo units that are similar in size, rooms, quality, and age will give you the most accurate market trend line. If you are looking for the market trend for units similar to yours, use the following procedure.

- Click on your building
- Enter the sale date range for your search. Typically you would search from 1/1/2004 to the current date. This usually gives enough data to establish a good trend line.
- Leave the price blank.
- Enter the size in square feet. You get the best results if you enter 100 SF below and above the size of your unit. As an example, if your unit has 1,200 square feet enter 1100 to 1300.
- Enter the number of bedrooms and baths.
- If you have entered particular buildings to search, you do not have to enter anything in the “date of construction” range.
- Click the search button.

2. If your search did not produce many recent sales, you can use the same search criteria but add multiple buildings. Hold down the “control key” and click buildings that are similar in quality and age to your building in addition to your building. For example, if your search in the Majestic Beach Tower did not produce many recent sales, add the Celadon building or additional similar buildings.

3. If your search produces a chart with one or two sales that sold for much higher or lower than the majority of the sales, check that sale in the tabular details. That sale may be larger or have more or less baths or bedrooms. You can then narrow your search to exclude that sale. There are always some sales that do not seem reasonable for one reason or another with no apparent explanation.

4. If your are searching sales in a particular building but don’t know the square footage or typical bedroom or bath count, start your search using broad criteria and become more specific from there. Just click on the building and search all of the sales. You can browse the tabular details and get an idea of the different types of units in that building and then refine your search to meet your criteria.

5. If you do not choose a search range for particular criteria, the search will return all the sales without regard to those criteria. For example, if you were searching the Long Beach Tower buildings 2-BR 2-Bath units and did not enter a square foot range for size, the search would return all sales of 2-BR 2-Bath units regardless of size.

6. A building or address must be entered before the search will return any sales. All other search criteria are optional.

7. You can save individual search criteria for easy retrieval for future searches. For example, say you have a 1,350 SF, 2-BR, 2-Ba unit in one of the Long Beach Towers buildings and your recurring search criteria are the four Long Beach Tower buildings, SF range from 1,300 SF to 1,400 SF, 2-BR, and 2-Bath. After you have entered your search criteria into the search engine, click the “save” button at the bottom of the page and name your search. In the future when you want to search using the saved criteria, use the drop-down menu at the top of the search page and click the name of your saved search. You don’t have to reenter the criteria every time you want to do a search. You can save multiple searches.

Why do you need to know the market trend?

Two or three recent closed sales of similar units in one particular building will give you an indication of the current market value of a similar unit in that particular building. These sales do not give an investor or owner any indication of the rate of current market appreciation or depreciation. The condosaletrends.com sale/trend chart clearly illustrates the sale price trend over a specified time period for each search based on your input criteria. Condosaletrends.com can also clearly illustrate the most recent sale price range of units similar to yours. This is real factual information that you can use to manage your investments.

What are the most recent sale prices for units like mine?

The tabular detail information located below the trend chart for each search illustrates the address, building name, date of construction, sale date, sale price, square footage, number of bedrooms, and number of baths of each sale meeting your search criteria. The sales are listed in chronological order from the oldest sale to the most recent sale.

When are the sales data updated?

The sales data are updated every two weeks usually on the 2nd and 16th of each month.

Why are preconstruction sales not included in the database?

Preconstruction sale prices are generally negotiated before construction is started. At the time the preconstruction contracts are signed, the negotiated prices are typically lower than the market value of similar, completed units. Waiting two or three years for the use of the unit has some negative buyer appeal. There is always the risk that the developer my default and the buyer looses his deposit. The market value of the completed unit is unknown at the time of contract signing. The developer compensates these typical buyers (not necessarily investors) for the negative appeal of a preconstruction contract by offering lower than market prices. During periods of significant market appreciation, the closing sale price of a completed unit that was negotiated during the preconstruction phase may be well under the current market value. The short answer is that preconstruction sale prices seldom reflect the market at the time of closing. We do not include sales that don’t reflect the current market at the time of the sale.