Signs of housing hope in Florida
During the real estate boom of the early 2000s, housing prices throughout much of Florida skyrocketed. Housing values inflated way too high, way too quickly.
During the resulting housing crash — the one we’re all suffering through now — that changed. Today, home values in Florida have plummeted. In fact, the state — along with places like Las Vegas and much of California — has been one of the hardest hit by the housing slump.
You always see Florida mentioned when newspapers write about how terrible the housing market is today.
That’s why it was such a surprise to find a story on the Web home of MSNBC listing some actual positives about at least one section of the Florida housnig market. According to the story, real estate agents in and around Fort Myers, Fla., are reporting higher home sales during the weeks leading up to Christmas. This is good news because the time between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day is often a dead zone as far as housing sales go.
The story cites Cape Coral., Fla., as an example. During November last year, 164 homes were sold in Cape Coral. This year, that number rose to 401, according to the story. That’s an increase of 145 percent.
In the nearby community of Lehigh Acres, 51 homes sold in November of last year, while 185 sold during the same month this year. That represents an increase of 262 percent. In Lee County as a whole, buyers purchased 495 homes in November of 2007. This November, buyers in the county bought 901 homes. That’s an increase of 82 percent.
Those are pretty solid numbers for a time of year that is traditionally slow. The question, though, is whether it’s a fluke. Housing sales across the nation as a whole dipped dramatically in November of this year. Florida’s Lee County appears to have bucked this trend.
Fluke or not, the strong sales around Cape Coral, Fla., have given hope to real estate agents there. One agent quoted in the story mentions that sales in the area are up 150 percent this year from last. The same agent even predicts that next year will no longer be as strong a buyer’’s market as we’ve seen this year and last. The agent instead says that she believes next year’s real estate market will not be either a seller’s or a buyer’s market. She says it will be an “even” market, and that homes will once again appreciate at a more normal 5 percent a year.
Is the agent right? I sure hope so. Most experts are predicting that most of 2009 will be another rough year both for the economy and for the housing market. But if the slump ends earlier than the end of 2009 or beginning of 2010, I’d be thrilled. So would a lot of home sellers.
