Watching Fox News yesterday, a very depressing story came on the air about "home sales taking a dramatic plunge in December." It caught my attention because I knew Florida's existing home sales had grown in December.
As a matter of fact, home sales in Florida grew "33 percent last month with a total of 14,630 homes sold statewide compared to 11,013 homes sold in December 2008, according to Florida Realtors. Statewide existing home sales last month increased 4.3 percent over statewide sales activity in November.
The National Association of Realtors says sales nation-wide dropped 16.7 percent to a total of 5.45 million in December, down from 6.54 million in November. Experts had predicted a decrease of 7-10 percent. This news came out at the same time as the Obama administration announced plans to withdraw mortgage support that kept interest rates low! Tomorrow's blog will concentrate on the impact of that wind down of federal lender support.
We have said all along that real estate and the recovery would be localized. Here in Florida, and specifically the Tampa Bay area, we are poised to bounce back much faster than other parts of the country. Forbes Magazine predicted that over a year ago. December marked Florida's 16th month of sales activity increases over prior year! As the snow birds come here throughout the season, the appeal to some of these great prices is a huge draw.
Tampa Bay Realtors sold 5,000 more homes in 2009 than they did in 2008, a healing trend that helped real estate prices find some footing last year. Single-family home sales totaled 28,617 in 2009, up 21 percent from the 23,615 homes that changed hands in 2008, Florida Realtors said.
Tampa Bay's median home price ended the year at $140,000, pretty much the level at which it was in the spring of 2009, defying the depressing effects of cheap foreclosure homes.
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