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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jim McMannis who wrote (247491)	5/12/2010 12:15:45 AM
From: John Vosilla	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 306849

'Sales tax receipts in Lee County take dive Even as they slashed spending, Lee County residents still found money to go to the hair salon and treat their families to the occasional ice cream cone. But they cut back on spending for drinks at the bar. And on smokes from the cigar shop. Some even saved money as they chose a final resting place for a loved one. Despite a surprise or two, a review of more than five years of sales tax receipts from the Florida Department of Revenue makes one thing painfully clear: Lee County businesses face a process of digging themselves out of a cavernous financial hole. The state collected $540.4 million in sales tax in Lee in 2009, down a 32 percent from the $794.9 million collected in 2006, the recent peak. “You look at these numbers and the magnitude of the recession is pretty astounding,” said Gary Jackson, economist and director of the Regional Economic Research Institute at FGCU. Put another way, April was the top month for sales tax receipts in 2009, with $55.4 million collected. That was still less than the slowest month of 2006, when $57.6 million was collected. “Consumer confidence is improving, but it is nowhere close to normal levels of just a few years ago,” Jackson said. For January and February this year, the state collected $99.8 million, still down slightly from $101.3 million for the same two months in 2009. January receipts were up, but were undercut by weaker February receipts this year. The state tracks sales tax receipts in almost 100 categories. Some of the data is surprising. Conventional wisdom holds cigarettes and liquor are vices that resist recessions, but that hasn’t spared specialty tobacco stores (down 26 percent in January compared with January 2006) or bars, down 31 percent in the same period. Yet, some of the data shows precisely what you might expect in Lee, ground zero for a housing boom that went bust.' news-press.com 'More than half of U.S. cities saw home prices rise in the first quarter. WASHINGTON (AP) — Home prices rose in nearly 60 percent of U.S. cities in the first quarter of this year, as the housing market started to stabilize thanks to billions of dollars in federal spending. The National Association of Realtors says the median sales price for previously occupied homes rose in 91 out of 152 metropolitan areas tracked in the January-March quarter versus a year ago. There were double-digit price increases in 29 cities. That's a sharp improvement from the fourth quarter of last year, when prices rose in about 40 percent of cities. The national median price was $166,100, or 0.7 percent below the first quarter of last year. The median is the price at which half the homes sell for more and half for less. Sales of foreclosures and other distressed properties made up 36 percent of all sales in the first quarter. In Cape Coral-Fort Myers, the median home price fell 1 percent to $86,400 in the quarter.' naplesnews.com