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Strategies & Market Trends : The Epic American Credit and Bond Bubble Laboratory -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: CalculatedRisk who wrote (56727)	3/24/2006 10:29:15 AM
From: shades	Respond to of 110194

sptimes.com Housing market is catching a chill Monthly sales from a year ago show the boom is fading, but Realtors don't see By JAMES THORNER, Times Staff Writer Published March 24, 2006 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- any reason to worry about the numbers. Reinforcing fears of a real estate slowdown, sales of existing homes in the Tampa Bay area plunged 29 percent from February 2005 to February 2006. Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater reported 2,679 home sales last month, down from 3,771 sales a year earlier. "Our January and February sales this year pretty much paralleled sales in 2003," said Jackson Bowman, partner in Keller Williams Gulf Coast Realty, Pinellas County's biggest. "We're going to have to work harder and work smarter." Florida didn't fare much better: Year-to-year home sales dropped 20 percent, from 16,916 to 13,539. Time to worry? Not so fast, said Florida Association of Realtors spokeswoman Marla Martin. More than a 1,000 people move to Florida each day. They have to live somewhere. "It's just a market adjustment with the pace we've had the past five years," Martin said Thursday after releasing the latest figures. "They're still predicting a strong year this year, maybe the third highest, but a lot will depend on what will happen with the rates, how high they will go." And you can put some more gold trim on the funeral bunting: Housing appreciation remained strong regionally, though gains last year occurred mostly at the top of the market. In the Tampa Bay area, the median sales price rose 27 percent, from $175,200 to $222,200. Among Florida's largest cities, Tampa's price gain was second only to Orlando's 36 percent. Nationally, home sales perked up 5.2 percent last month, the first rise since August. Experts suggested the warm winter up North brought out unusual numbers of house hunters. "Weather probably played a role in this increase, which doesn't represent a new trend for housing," said Michael Moran, economist at New York's Daiwa Securities America Inc. "It shows there is still solid underlying demand for housing." Florida showed less solidity last month, though the Tampa Bay area didn't take the worst pounding. That honor belongs to Naples and Sarasota, the two most expensive communities on Florida's west coast. Sarasota-Bradenton saw sales plummet 42 percent, second only to Naples' 47 percent. A national study in January flagged Naples housing as 84 percent overpriced, highest in the U.S. In the past year, Naples was the only Florida region to report falling home prices. Nevertheless, the 1 percent decline left the millionaire-rich community with a still-healthy median of $492,300. An examination of condominium sales statewide showed similar trends, but condo sales in the Tampa Bay area didn't fall as steeply as sales for single-family homes. Real estate agents reported 535 condo sales in February, 10 percent fewer than the 621 sold in February 2005. Condos can be a cheaper option for buyers priced out of the single-family home market. But real estate agents like Bowman sense a softening in the condo market. The listings are thick with unsold condos, with one recent report putting the inventory in Hillsborough County at 10,000. It's not much better for million-dollar homes, sales of which are dragging, particularly in Pinellas. "There's not that many people out there chasing them," Bowman said. The latest housing statistics are limited to estate agent sales. New homes and "by-owner" sales aren't included. Accounting for about a third of sales in the area, new homes have also trended downward after last year's peak.