Case Studies

Kendall Hood is a broker associate and the principal of The Kendall Hood Collection, a luxury real estate team with Compass on Florida's 30A. We represent buyers and sellers from Destin through Watersound. A large share of our business comes from referrals and from clients who have bought and sold with us more than once.

We work the 30A corridor and the surrounding Emerald Coast: Destin, Miramar Beach, Sandestin, Santa Rosa Beach, Old Seagrove, Seacrest Beach, Rosemary Beach, Inlet Beach, and Watersound. Several of those are neighborhood names rather than postal cities. Rosemary Beach and Seacrest Beach both carry Inlet Beach mailing addresses, which trips up plenty of out-of-state searches.

A Compass Private Exclusive is a listing marketed inside the Compass agent network before it is public anywhere. Compass Coming Soon is the next step, a public pre-market phase on compass.com before the home reaches the MLS.

The point of pre-marketing is not secrecy. It is finding the right buyer before the clock starts.

It depends on price, position, and preparation, and preparation is the part most sellers skip. On a Seacrest Beach listing we started months ahead, across several pre-listing consultations covering finishes, light fixtures, furnishings, and the updates worth making before a buyer ever walks in. That home went under contract four days into Coming Soon, before it reached the MLS.

Often, and the math should come first. We have represented buyers who evaluated a Rosemary Beach property as an investment first and a home second, and investors who wanted rental performance and depreciation modeled before they made an offer. We can introduce you to CPAs who specialize in cost segregation, and our guide to buying a 30A investment property walks the rest of it.

We are not tax advisors, and nothing here is tax advice. Talk to your own CPA before you buy.

A kick-out clause lets a seller keep marketing a home after accepting an offer that depends on the buyer selling their own property first. If a stronger offer arrives, the first buyer has a set window to remove the contingency or step aside. We negotiated one at Seacrest Beach. The backup offer that followed was all cash and $100,000 above the original contract.

Start before you start searching. One family spent months on the public search sites with nothing to show for it, because the home they wanted was never on them. We found it through local relationships inside Watersound Camp Creek and had them under contract within a week of working together. Our 30A relocation checklist is the place to start. Call first, search second.