Florida Real Estate is a Popular Choice among Canadian Investors

For the seventh year in a row, Canadian buyers have dominated Florida real estate’s pool of foreign buyers, data from the National Association of Realtors revealed.

According to NAR’s Profile of International Home Buyers in Florida 2014 Report, 25 percent of foreign buyers in the U.S. property market bought homes in Florida during the past year.  Some 32 percent of these buyers were Canadian.

Most of the Canadian investors purchased properties in Tampa-St.Petersburg-Clearwater (12 percent), Naples-Marco Island (11 percent), Fort Lauderdale (10 percent), Cape Coral-Fort Nyers (10 percent) and Bradenton-Saratosa-Venice. 40 percent of the buyers bought a home in a report town, while 33 percent bought a property in a suburban area.

Half of the properties bought by Canadians were vacation homes in the metropolitan statistical areas. The NAR stated that some 61 percent of the Canadian buyers said they planned to use their homes between three to six months annually. 13 percent said they aim to occupy the property from one to two months yearly, while 11 percent said they intend to stay in their property for less than a month.  

Among the properties bought, condos and apartments were the most popular, accounting for 49 percent of the purchases. Next were single family-detached homes, accounting for 38 percent of the purchases, and townhouses and row houses, accounting for 6 percent of the purchases. Contrary to what has appeared in the news lately, Canadians aren’t investing much in commercial properties, buying only less than 1 percent of the asset. 

The properties Canadian bought cost a mean average price of $260,800. Yet 50 percent of the buyers were reported to have bought properties below $200,000.    

Around 89 percent of Canadian buyers paid cash while 8 percent used mortgage-financing from the United States.

As Canadian buyers continue to flock into the Florida real estate market, real estate agents in the area can use disruptive video marketing technologies to actively promote their listings to them. Realbiz Media Group, Inc. RBIZ is a Florida-based digital media company that develops proprietary video marketing software that agents and their brokers can use to promote their virtual tour listings online. The company offers a Virtual Tour Program that allows real estate sellers to create virtual tours and presentations that are optimized for mobile viewing and could be syndicated through social media for only $29.95 a month.

The program is equipped with a video search engine optimization (VSEO) tool that automatically generate meta tags and descriptions for virtual tours and listings agents have uploaded to the platform so that they would be found easily by consumers online.

The program also has tools for creating QR codes, e-flyers, and seller reports as bonus features.

For agents on the go, the company has also recently launched a mobile app called EzFlix, which makes creating listings and virtual tours on mobile phones easier. The app also utilizes Realbiz Media’s patented technology which allows agents to create local community content, realtime videos, and add personalized messages to these items.  

To learn more about Realbiz Media and its products, contact sales@realbizmediagroup.com or call 1.888.REAL.BIZ (888.732.5249).