Tag: housing prices

Posted on

Florida’s Economic Recovery Ranked #6 In Nation

Business Insider ranked the 50 states based upon various—arguably arbitrary—factors and placed Florida in the number 6 position.

Notably, the report cited an 8.9% increase in statewide housing prices (measured from Q1 2013 to Q1 2014), a 3.1% bump in payroll jobs (June 2014 vs. June 2013) and a higher-than average growth in the state’s working-age population.

Ahead of Florida in Business Insider’s rankings: Colorado, California, Texas, Arizona, and Utah.

The team responsible for the report, which was published August 4, 2014, posted separately about their methodologies.

Posted on

Sarasota Real Estate Outlook

The Sarasota real estate market continues to be something I’m paying close attention to.  Why?  Very simply: our local economy is inextricably tied to what this market is doing.  When the housing market started to tank locally, it was the first domino in a long line.  As inventory levels (representing the number of single family homes and condominiums listed as “for sale”) have climbed, construction and other business sectors related to housing have all dived.

So, a couple of recent tidbits from Perry Corneau represent good news.  First, inventory levels are at their lowest in two and a half years.  This is great news, and I can anecdotally attest that I’m seeing fewer for sale signs.  What’s unclear to me is exactly what this represents…

  • Is sales volume actually up?
  • Are more banks in possession of properties now? If so, it seems to me that they’ve not been good at marketing the properties they own.  And when foreclosure occurs (as opposed to short sales), these properties wouldn’t appear in the MLS anyway.
  • Have sellers given up on moving properties as prices have declined?

Another piece of good news: prices are still higher than they were 5 years ago.  In 2003, the market was still on a major upswing, but of course the highest prices were 2-3 years later.

Based upon numerous conversations with those keeping their eye on the market, here are my predictions: prices will continue to drop and volume will begin to surge.  For how long?  I’m not sure, but it seems to me that the “bottom” of this market hasn’t quite yet been reached — at least in terms of pricing.  There are a few investors who are starting to dip their toes into the water, but the buying frenzy that I expect isn’t here yet.

The best thing that can happen for this market is for transaction volume to increase.  This will help prices bottom out sooner rather than later.

And… in the interest of full disclosure… I currently do not have any property on the market.  😉

Posted on

Sarasota Real Estate Market: Rebounding or Not?

Ever the optimists, Real Estate brokers always manage to locate a silver lining… no matter how far and how hard they have to look.  And, with a number of friends and business associates connected to the real estate business, I certainly am personally hopeful that their optimism has its roots firmly cemented in reality.

But alas, this is not always the case.

Take, for example, the blog published by Michael Saunders & Company.  Here’s a great example of a company reaching as deeply as it can for data — any data — to support the notion that somehow the market is on its way back to normal.  Is their data pulled from the number of transactions in the MLS, you ask?  Perhaps it’s based upon some newfound trend in the tax rolls?

Nope.

In fact, it’s taken from their Google Analytics account.  Yes, that’s right folks.  Now we’re basing the real estate outlook for Sarasota on the performance of Michael Saunders’ website according to the ever-so-reliable folks at Google.

Now… don’t get me wrong.  I’m a big fan of Google.  Chances are you’re here thanks to one of the many Google searches that we rank well on.  But… as we know, their analytics package — feature-rich though it may be — is fraught with inaccuracies.  And… even if it were 100% accurate, the Michael Saunders blog post smacks of a self-congratulatory webmaster more than it does market realities in the real estate business.  After all, our traffic is way the heck up, too!  Doesn’t say anything about the consulting business, though…

But… I digress.  (By the way, business is better than ever!  Not a touch of whining here!)

What Michael and gang aren’t really interested in pointing out is the simple fact that, by every measure, the housing crisis is only deepening.  Even if transactions are up, prices are down.  And this is based on real data from none other than Standard & Poor. Granted, the data are not local to Florida.  But then, we the unwashed don’t have ready access to the data for our market.  This is part of the classic information asymmetry associated with buying and selling real estate.  Your broker knows more than you do.  Perhaps someone with readily-analyzed data would be willing to step forward and comment.

In the meantime, I’m going back to my web analytics to look for more optimism…