Pensacola, FL Real Estate ~ blog

(Jan. 24) Existing-home sales declined in December following several months of stable activity, with total 2007 sales the fifth highest on record.

NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun sheds some light on what is keeping buyers from entering the housing market.

Today’s first-time home buyers are tomorrow’s repeat buyers. You can serve them better if you know who they are and what types of properties and services they want.

(Jan. 14) Beginning today, the National Association of Realtors® is reaching out to consumers with the facts about homeownership and the value of real estate as a long-term investment.

(Jan. 22) Lawrence Yun, chief economist of the National Association of Realtors®, issues a statement on today’s action by the Federal Reserve Board.

While homes may be selling slowly in Florida, the fact remains that homes in the Sunshine State are selling, and that’s good news. As Florida economist Stan Geberer recently said in various media reports: “If we had all this excess inventory and nobody wanted to move here, you wouldn’t be able to sell the homes at any price. The fact that we have underlying demand and new job growth suggests this underlying demand is sufficient to clear the excess inventory without a dramatic collapse in prices.”

This supports Realtors’ conviction that our housing market is continuing to adjust following the frenzy of the five-year record run-up in sales and prices that we experienced here in the Sunshine State, as did most of the nation.

And we’re not alone in our beliefs. Florida homeowners know that their homes remain good investments. A July survey from the University of Florida’s Bureau of Economic and Business Research found that Floridians are optimistic about housing prices, with only 5 percent of those polled saying they think their house values will fall during the next five years.

Eighty-two percent expected the value of their houses to rise, and 13 percent said they would remain the same. The median respondent expected a gain of 18 percent, or a little more than 3 percent a year. The chairman of UF’s economics department, Jonathan Hamilton, summed up the survey findings, noting that “Most of the problem in Florida right now is that we’ve had a huge amount of building and lots of speculative buying, and things are now catching up.”

For more info on the UF survey, go to:

http://news.ufl.edu/2007/08/08/housing-prices/

(Jan. 8) Over the next few months, existing-home sales are expected to hold fairly steady, then rise later in the year and continue to improve in 2009.