A Jacksonville Today reader says he’s received hundreds of unsolicited offers for his apartment near Ponte Vedra Beach, which has left him frustrated and overwhelmed.
Scott Ronchetti bought his Jacksonville home for about $78,000 in June 2013. He now lives there for about three months every year. The rest of the year, Ronchetti stays in Illinois to help take care of his elderly mother, but he plans to eventually live in Jacksonville full time.
Ronchetti says units in his neighborhood are now selling for about $300,000. He estimates he’s received about 200 offers for his home, many of them around that price point, but he has no desire to sell.
“They call me in Illinois; they call the home phone; they call my cellphone,” he said. “It's to the point now where I put my phone on ‘silence unknown calls.’”
The rate at which home prices are rising in Northeast Florida has slowed recently, but as of February the median price for a single-family home sits at a whopping $351,495 — 24.6% higher than the same time last year but only 2.7% higher than the previous month, according to the Northeast Florida Association of Realtors. Rent is skyrocketing in Jacksonville as well.
Related: The housing market is cooling, but buyers will face a tough time for a while
Rising prices are largely being driven by investors buying homes to rent or to flip and sell for higher prices, which makes it harder for average people to buy homes. Investors bought 29.8% of the homes sold in Jacksonville in the fourth quarter of 2021, according to the online real estate service Redfin, and no city saw a greater increase in investor purchases than the River City with a 157% jump over the previous year.
Ronchetti believes many of the offers he has received for his home come from investors or large companies. He worries that if this trend continues, many residents will be driven to homelessness as they can no longer afford rent or a home mortgage.
A recent episode of60 Minutes from CBS News even highlighted Jacksonville’s ongoing housing crisis, pointing to a young couple that moved here hoping to buy their first home. It’s been 18 months since they moved here, but they feel trapped in their apartment and are facing a 30% increase in their rent.
