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May 17, 2010 (back to top)

Orlando home sales prices up for 3rd month.

By Mary Shanklin, Orlando Sentinel

April was a good month for Orlando real estate. Existing-home sales prices were up for a third straight month, and foreclosure activity was down by one-fourth from a month earlier, according to separate reports released Wednesday.

Signs of recovery emerged for one of the nation's hardest-hit real-estate markets, though questions remain about whether the activity can be sustained now that the April30 deadline has passed for homebuyers to have a sales contract to qualify for a federal tax credit.

Orlando's median house price increased to $115,000, a gain of 5 percent from March, according to the Orlando Regional Realtor Association's monthly report. Compared with April 2009, that median was down 12 percent -- the smallest year-over-year decline in two years.

The influence of the tax-credit deadline was particularly evident in what appeared to be a record number of new contracts filed: 5,221, or a 53 percent increase from a year earlier. And the number of properties sold last month in the core Orlando market -- 2,461 -- was up by one-third from a year ago.

As a result, houses took less time to sell on average: Those that sold in April had been on the market 81 days, the shortest waiting period since December 2006.

"As predicted, the homebuyer tax credit helped stabilize the market by creating a surge of home sales during the spring buying season," said Orlando Regional Realtor Association Chairman Kathleen Gallagher McIver, of Re/Max Town and Country Realty.

Meanwhile, the number of foreclosure filings in the four-county metro area was down sharply from both the previous month and a year ago, according to a monthly report to be released today by RealtyTrac, a California-based research company.

Orlando remained high in the national rankings, placing 11th among all metro areas for the number of foreclosure filings recorded in April. The area recorded 6,480 court filings for various stages of new and existing foreclosures. Orange, Seminole, Lake and Osceola counties all experienced a reduction in foreclosure activity compared with a year earlier.

Orlando and the nation also recorded a particular drop in the number of homes in the initial stages of foreclosure, said Daren Blomquist, a RealtyTrac spokesman.

"There was a ramped-up demand in April because of the homebuyer tax credit, and that probably had a factor in driving sales and preventing foreclosures," Blomquist said. Nationally, he noted, the April 2010-versus-April 2009 decrease in foreclosure activity was the first such drop in years.

For the next two months, home closings will likely be at record levels as buyers work to complete purchases to meet the June30 deadline for the federal tax credit. After that, several factors will come into play, including the competitive nature of the summer buying season and what appears to be a large inventory of houses sitting on the sidelines because they are owned by banks or homeowners waiting for the market to pick up.

In April, distress sales made up two-thirds of all existing-home sales in the Orlando Realtors' core market (mainly Orange and Seminole counties). Bank-owned houses accounted for 46 percent of all sales, while the remainder of the distress deals in the overall total were "short sales" in which an owner attempts to sell a house for less than what's owed on the mortgage.

"Bank-owned homes, which encompass those in all stages of foreclosure, have been feeding into the inventory pipeline at a fairly steady pace and are being absorbed manageably," McIver said. "In fact, foreclosures are selling quickly, especially in the lower price ranges that are attractive to first-time homebuyers."

The midpoint price in April for "normal" home sales was $160,000; for short sales, $115,000; and for bank-owned sales, $72,900 -- all up from their counterparts the month before.

Condominium units -- the most distressed property type in Orlando -- experienced a 61 percent increase in sales last month. A total of 546 condos changed hands in April, compared with 339 in April 2009 and 612 in March of this year. The Orlando Realtors group doesn't break out median prices for condo sales in its report.

April 14, 2010 (back to top)

UF survey: Florida land values continued fall in 2009.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – April 6, 2010 – The steep decline in the state’s rural land values continued in 2009, but may level off later this year, according to the annual Florida Land Value Survey from the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.

After years of price growth spurred by a population boom between 2002 and 2006, some areas of Florida lost as much as half their value in 2008.

The survey, which does not evaluate urban land values, sought to determine average rural land values as of May 2009. Results show that farmland in North Florida dropped between 3 and 17 percent in value from 2008, while areas in South Florida dropped between 10 and 31 percent.

The exception to this drop in value is wooded farmland, which experienced a marginal increase of just over 1 percent, although it’s not clear what contributed to this rise.

The value of pasture lands rose 22 percent, but this was interpreted as a market correction to a disproportional devaluation in 2008, says Rodney Clouser, the UF professor of food and resource economics who coordinated the survey.

The value of some transitional land – rural areas outside of cities that may be converted to housing or other nonagricultural use – actually rose more than 4 percent in North Florida in 2009. However, transitional land in South Florida fell by nearly 46 percent.

These findings fall within the range predicted by the 2009 survey, Clouser says, which may bode well for next year. Survey responses from individuals involved in the Florida real estate market predict that, although land values will continue to drop in 2010, the decline will be much less severe than that of 2008 and 2009, likely around only 6 or 7 percent.

“The steepest decline is likely over, but it will most likely be a few more years before we see an overall increase in values,” Clouser says. “Even after the bigger economic picture improves, there will be a surplus of land in Florida that will need to be sold before the values begin to go up again.”

The report can be viewed at http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/FE833.