Orlando Home prices fall, sales rise: is it a rebound?
Foreclosures helped drive down home-resale prices last month in the Orlando
area to their lowest level since the housing boom was nearing its height in
early 2005.
Osceola County, a local hotbed of mortgage delinquencies and foreclosure
auctions, was the only county in the Orlando Regional Realtor Association's
August report to post a year-over-year gain in existing-home sales.
The number of resales in the Orlando Realtors' core market -- mainly Orange
and Seminole counties -- totaled a preliminary 1,225, down 16.5 percent from
both the previous month and August 2007, the association said.
With the end of the busy summer season, sales through the first eight months
lagged last year's pace by 23 percent -- but the Realtors noted that pending
sales, a sign of future strength, rose for a fifth straight month in August,
and they predicted the sales gap would shrink by the end of 2008.
It's not clear what percentage of the homes and condos sold in Central
Florida these days are either REOs or bank-approved "short sales" designed
to avoid foreclosure, said Mike Blinn, statistician for the Orlando Regional
Realtor Association.
But Realtors generally agree that the percentage is significant -- more than
10 percent -- and rising.
Resales in Florida's bigger markets, including Miami, Fort Lauderdale and
Jacksonville, have been far weaker than Orlando's since the start of the
year, despite growing numbers of foreclosures in those markets as well.
Posted: 11 September 2008
Source: Orlando Sentinel
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