Fort Myers Real Estate prices are up. The median price of a single-family home in Lee County sold with the assistance of a Realtor was $124,000 in March, up from $120,000 in February, according to statistics released by Florida Realtors.

There were 1,278 single-family homes sold in the month, up from 988 in February.

The National Association of Realtors said Thursday that home sales fell 2.6 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.48 million. That followed a revised 4.6 million sold in February.

Local statistics comparing year-over-year sales and median prices weren’t available because Florida Realtors since January has been using a different methodology to calculate those numbers.

In March 2011, Florida Realtors reported the median price was $101,900 and the number of sales was 1,641. Those numbers were compiled using a different methodology, however.

Brett Ellis of Remax Realty Group said March was a good month for residential real estate.

“We’ve had strong demand and the inventory is not great,” he said. “It feels like this market’s been cherry picked. We’ve had strong demand in the season, with some properties coming onto the market but not as many as are leaving the market.”

Nationally, Americans bought fewer previously owned homes in March, a reminder that the housing market remains weak.

A mild winter may have encouraged more people to buy earlier, essentially stealing sales from March.

More purchases in January and February made this the best winter for sales in five years. The increase offered some encouragement ahead of the spring buying season.

Even with the gains, sales remain far below the 6 million per year that economists equate with healthy markets. And the weaker March figures suggest any momentum from the winter has stalled, said Dan Greenhaus, chief global strategist at BTIG in New York.

“We are most certainly not set to declare that the housing recovery is over but a strong start to the spring selling season is simply not in the data,” said Greenhaus.

There were some signs of modest improvement.

First-time buyers, who are critical to a housing recovery, rose to 33 percent of all purchases last month. In healthy markets, they make up at least 40 percent.

The supply of homes on the market fell 1.3 percent last month to 2.37 million. A decline in the supply typically encourages more people to put homes up for sale. That generally improves the overall quality of the homes on the market, which drives prices higher.

And the number of homes at risk of foreclosures declined, making up 29 percent of sales. That’s down from 34 percent in February but still high. In healthier markets, foreclosures typically make up less than 10 percent of sales.

Nationwide, the median sales price of homes rose for the second straight month in March to $163,800.

— The Associated Press  and Fort Myers News-Press also contributed to this report.
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Lee County Home prices up and Sales down

Article Courtesy of the Fort Myers News Press.
Prices for single-family homes popped up in Lee County in February as the number of sales fell, according to two real estate agents who crunched the numbers.
The National Association of Realtors said Wednesday that U.S. home sales fell 0.9 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.59 million. That’s down from a revised 4.63 million sold in January — the highest level since May 2010.
But the official local numbers that Florida Realtors has provided since 1994 were nowhere to be found.
Starting in January, Florida Realtors changed its method of processing the information and started providing only its statewide numbers publicly.
Local real estate boards were free to release all or some of the information if they wanted to.
On Wednesday, Florida Realtors’ metro area statistics normally would have been released an hour after the National Association of Realtors’ national numbers.
By Wednesday evening, no local reports were forthcoming.
But Brett Ellis of Remax Realty Group and Michael Polly of Royal Shell Real Estate both provided their own statistics.
Ellis said there were 1,108 sales in February compared to 950 in January and 1,297 last February.
Polly said there were 941 sales in February, 828 in January and 1,106 in February 2011. He gave the median sales price as $120,000 in February, $105,000 in January and $91,525 in February 2011.
The rising prices resulted from a slowdown in the number of inexpensive foreclosed homes coming back on the market, Polly said.
Ellis said foreclosures may pick up again after being cut back by legal problems with paperwork and ownership of the note over the past two years. “I’m talking to lenders who tell me there are more foreclosures coming.”
Polly said the median price likely will keep going up as buyers put more pressure on mid-priced homes now that the under-$100,000 inventory is largely gone. “If you can get in south Fort Myers for $165,000 that’s great. But even that’s dwindling.”
Statewide, the median sales price for a single-family home was $134,000, up 7.2 percent from February 2011. There were 14,270 homes sold in February, down 4.8 percent from a year earlier, Florida Realtors reported Wednesday.
Nationally, home sales fell 0.9 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.59 million. That’s down from a revised 4.63 million sold in January — the highest level since May 2010, the national association reported.
The last three months have been the best for winter sales in five years. A mild winter and a stronger job market have helped boost sales ahead of the all-important spring buying season.
Even with the gains, sales remain below the 6 million that economists equate with healthy markets. And the makeup of those sales still signals a troubled market.
— The Associated Press contributed to this report - Search Greater Fort Myers Real Estate

Fort Myers area Real estate market is improving

Fort Myers Area Real Estate

Article courtesy of Fort Myers News-Press.
We’ve all got the bruises and the scars,” commercial real estate broker Randy Thibaut told the audience Thursday night at The News-Press Market Watch real estate symposium. “But I’m here to tell you, it’s time to start smiling again.”
That was the theme of the night at the annual event at Harborside Event Center in downtown Fort Myers, where real estate authorities take a look at the previous year’s trends and make predictions for the year ahead.
Thibaut — owner and founder of Land Solutions, which handles the sales and development of large parcels of land — was talking about a steady recovery in the new-home construction industry over the past year and a half.
“The gap between new home construction and resales is shrinking,” he said: $100-130 per square foot for a new home vs. $80-90 for an existing home.
It was the cheeriest Market Watch since the real estate market imploded at the beginning of 2006 at the height of a wave of speculation that drove the median price of a single-family resale to a record $322,300 in December 2005.
The median was $115,000 in January, according to Florida Realtors statistics — although the group debuted a new industry data.
“Greed, that was what drove our market” at the height of the boom, said Denny Grimes of Denny Grimes & Company at Royal Shell Real Estate.
Now, he said, the market is driven by confidence: prices are rising and 20,175 residences were sold in 2011: third best of all time next to 2009 and 2010.
The supply of unsold homes on the market shrank sharply, especially for the low end, Grimes said, noting that there are now only 683 single-family listings on the market compared to 4,220 two years ago.
Six years ago, as the boom was cresting, there were only 12.
Grimes drew applause when he said a tight market for homes would reignite the home-building industry.
“That’s good news, that’s going to put builders back to work again,” he said. “Our inventory is what it was a month before the peak.”
The only fly in the ointment is the difficulty buyers have getting financing, Grimes said. “If the appraisers don’t get you, the underwriter will.”
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Fort Myers Area Home Prices Skyrocketing!

Fort Myers area home prices ended 2011 with a boom as the median price of an existing home shot up 36 percent in December to $123,400 from a year earlier.

The median price for the year was $107,100 — up 15 percent from $93,400 in 2010, according to statistics released Friday by Florida Realtors.

Meanwhile, the number of sales declined 3 percent from 1,298 to 977 in the same time period, said the report, which tracks homes sold with the assistance of a Realtor.

A separate report released Friday by the National Association of Realtors said home sales nationally rose in December to the highest pace in nearly a year.

Comparable figures were not available for Collier County.

Lee County’s sharp increase in home prices likely was due in part to an increasing number of more-expensive foreclosed homes coming on the market while the inventory dwindled for the low end — mainly short sales or homes taken back by lenders in foreclosure, said Brett Ellis, head of The Ellis Team with Re/Max Realty Group in Fort Myers.

Also, he said, demand in recent months has been strong. “We started seeing snowbirds come down as early as October.”

One prospective homeowner said the competition is brisk if you’re looking to buy.

“The biggest frustration for me has been how long these short sales take to go through,” said David Sandridge, 45, who’s renting now but wants to buy a house for himself and his two sons.

Another obstacle, he said, is the large number of investors who make cash offers that are hard to compete with for someone who needs a mortgage.

Brad Hunter, chief economist for Metrostudy, which tracks subdivision sales in Southwest Florida and other areas, said new homes are seeing a slight resurgence as well.

He noted that a few builders are actually raising prices a little — including Pulte Homes in its Verona Walk community in Naples.

Nationally, sales increased 5 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.61 million, the best level since January 2011 and the third straight monthly increase, according to the national association’s report. Courtesy of the Fort Myers News Press.
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Resale of Foreclosed homes Slowing

The number of foreclosed homes coming back on the market for resale by lenders in Lee County was down sharply as 2011 closed while housing prices rose — good news for builders hoping to be competitive in price with existing homes.
A glut of foreclosed homes following the implosion of the real estate market in 2006 pushed prices down sharply for existing homes. Builders found themselves unable to compete with the low prices and the number of houses being built went from more than a thousand in 2005 to about 100 at present.
In December, 23 permits were issued in Cape Coral, six in the unincorporated county, three in Sanibel and 10 in Bonita Springs. Numbers weren’t available Tuesday from Fort Myers and Fort Myers Beach.
Meanwhile, the median price of an existing home in the county with the assistance of a Realtor was up as the year ended: $106,300 in November, up 20 percent from $88,500 a year earlier.
From modest homes to mansions, prices inched up enough to make the price of new construction roughly equal to that of an existing home, said Jeff Tumbarello, director of the Southwest Florida Real Estate Investment Association, which issued a report Tuesday on the 2011 foreclosure and real estate market.
“Go try to buy a million-dollar house and see what it costs to buy a lot and put the same house on it,” he said. “It’s almost the same.”
The number of foreclosure lawsuits filed actually bumped up in 2011: there were 586 filed in December compared to 423 a year earlier.
But fewer foreclosures were resulting in actual judgments followed by public auction sales: there were only 293 in December compared to 582 a year earlier.
That was a result of a slowdown in the judicial system’s handling of foreclosures as the so-called “Rocket Docket” — a speeded-up procedure for pushing those cases through the courts — came to an end mid-year, Tumbarello said. Article courtesy of Fort Myers News Press. Search Fort Myers Area Real Estate.

The median price of a home in the Fort Myers area leaped 20% in November a year ago. Existing home sales fell 13 % during the same period.

A main reason for both results is there are fewer foreclosures and other distressed sales coming on the market, and fewer fire sales, say real estate experts in Southwest Florida.
“Inventory is declining as we’re chewing up these short sales and foreclosures,” said Steve Koffman, a broker associate with Century 21 Sunbelt in Cape Coral. “The driving force for our buyers was the fact that it was bargain pricing. Everything under 100,000 is basically getting fought over, and as you get to the higher price level, a little of the steam is being let off the market.”
Median home prices rose to $106,300 in November compared with $88,500 a year ago, according to figures released Wednesday by Florida Realtors. And that followed a strong October: The median sales price was $102,100, a 15 percent rise over $89,100 in October 2010. There are no similar numbers available for Collier County.
The number of sales dropped in November to 868 versus 1,003 in November 2010.
But Brett Ellis, a partner with The Ellis Team at Remax Realty Group in Fort Myers, said that decline is nothing to be alarmed about and agreed with Koffman about the drop-off.
“It’s because we don’t have those bargain-basement prices, and with those going away that means less transactions,” he said. “I’d rather see a healthy market and more balanced market with prices and transactions.”
Ellis said there are fewer distressed sales, but also less of what he calls priced-right inventory.
Many homeowners who want to sell their homes are either pricing them too high or simply holding on, waiting for better times.
“A lot of people are upside down, and they don’t want to sell short, and they just don’t like today’s prices,” Ellis said. Short sales are when the lender allows the home to be sold for less than what’s owed on the property.
“I think we’re in for a pretty good season, because the buyers are here a little earlier this year,” said Ellis at Remax. “The question is do we have enough to sell and enough priced-right to sell.”
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Lee County Florida Prices Up Again

Lee County (Fort Myers Area) home prices  have been down so long, it looks like “up” to us now where housing prices are concerned.

Local housing numbers were the opposite of the state as a whole, and the long, painful housing slide here is to blame.

In October, the median price of an existing single-family home was up 15 percent from a year earlier, rising from $89,100 to $102,100, according to statistics released Monday by Florida Realtors. The number of sales fell 6 percent from 1,002 to 938.

Florida as a whole, however, saw a 4 percent fall in prices from $136,600 to $131,200 while the number of sales soared 13 percent from 12,145 to 13,7355.

Of 19 metropolitan areas in the state, Tallahassee was the only other place to see sales fall.

“Prices had dropped so far over there (Southwest Florida),” said Jack McCabe, a Deerfield Beach-based real estate consultant who tracks home markets on both coasts of Florida. “Prices overshot and then overcorrected, rising more than the other markets in Florida. It’s not surprising to see it come up some. You might say it was tremendously undervalued.”

Meanwhile, in a separate report also released Monday by the National Association of Realtors, home sales rose 1.4 percent nationally last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.97 million.

That's below the 6 million that economists say is consistent with a healthy housing market and slightly ahead of last year's sales — the worst in 13 years.

In most of Florida, distressed real estate sales are rising even as they’ve fallen steadily in Lee. There were 440 in October compared to 1,156 in October 2010, according to the Southwest Florida Real Estate Investment Association.

On the demand side, “What it feels like is that everybody locally who can afford a house has bought one,” said Steve Koffman, a broker associate with Century 21 Sunbelt in Cape Coral.

But, he said, “We’ve still got a lot of investors in the market” because they can buy a house for $80,000, rent it out for $850 a month and “hold it until it’s worth more.”

Brett Ellis, head of The Ellis Team with Re/Max Realty Group in Fort Myers, said it’s hard to read the numbers and predict what’s going to happen next.

“I can’t decide if it’s ‘Happy Thanksgiving’ or ‘trick or treat,’ ” he said, noting that the inventory of unsold single-family homes in the county has increased slightly recently and is now about 7,600.

One problem is that tough federal regulations make it hard for people to finance a home purchase, although investors are still going strong, Ellis said.

There won’t be a shortage of foreclosed homes coming back on the market next year, he said. “I’ve got too many banks telling me there’s more coming.”

The statewide results of Florida Realtors include the Naples Area Board of Realtors, but the board doesn’t allow those figures to be made public.

In a separate report, the board said it showed 507 sales in October 2011 compared to 471 a year earlier. Courtesy of the Fort Myers News Press.
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