In Reunion Resort, where luxury vacation homes keep getting bigger and more opulent, investors are paying top dollar for the megamansions. In the past five months, three gigantic vacation homes have sold for well over $5 million, according to a report in GrowthSpotter.
The first took place in May, when a Pennsylvania couple paid a record $5.25 million for a nine-bedroom vacation home on Golden Bear Drive overlooking the resort’s Nicklaus golf course. It was followed in August by the $5.35 million sale of the 13-bedroom estate at 736 Desert Mountain Court, only to be eclipsed in late September by 501 Muirfield Loop for $5.9 million.
A couple of years ago, a $3.5 million sale was newsworthy. Now at least seven sales have topped that number this year and there have been at least a dozen sales above the $2 million mark in the past six months.
The homes in the Osceola County resort are attractive investments because they come in turnkey condition, professionally decorated and often with a lucrative history of rental income, or in the case of new construction, the potential for rental income. The house on Golden Bear Drive sold with $300,000 in future bookings already scheduled for 2021.
“Right now, lead times are insane and construction is taking longer and is more expensive than ever,” said Ryan McNally, Vice President of McNally Construction Group and McNally Real Estate Group, which built the house and also represented the seller. “A lot of people want a finished product. They don’t want to go through the construction process, and inventory is low so we’re seeing people come in and say, ‘hey I’ll take what you got.'”
The seller of the Muirfield Loop home planned to use it as a vacation rental but decided instead to take advantage of the hot market. He listed it first for $5 million before the house even had a certificate of occupancy, then decided in May to bump the price up to $5.9 million and got the full asking price.
“This has been going on for a while and you’re seeing that everything across the board, no matter what the neighborhood, have inched up and they are selling,” Tansey Soderstrom, president-elect of the Orlando Regional Realtor Association told GrowthSpotter. “Why people love Reunion is because of the amenities. You have the waterpark, you have 12 pools, you have three golf courses, you have restaurants, you have tennis.”
But there’s something else that sets the area apart from other high-end and amenity-laden areas in the Orlando metro area. Reunion allows short-term rentals where other luxury golf communities, like Golden Oak and Windermere, do not. That opens up the pool of buyers.
“You’ve got investors, you’ve got people looking for high-end secondary homes, and you’ve got primary residences, so three kinds of groups that are looking to buy,” McNally said.
The people looking for primary residences or secondary homes have many choices about where to build in the area. Investors don’t. And the potential for rental income has increased the buyer pool beyond high-net-worth individuals.
“It gives more options to someone who might not be able to necessarily have a home they can use one week a year and carry the cost of it. If they can rent these homes out, it gives them that added incentive where they can have a luxury vacation home in Orlando where it not only carries the cost but gets them some money back as well,” McNally said.
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