Well it seems as though existing home sales went down in December as reported by the Wall Street Journal. The reason is because a lot of the Federal Money in the form of tax credits helped the spike to begin with and December is a slow month as it is for real estate sales. The tax credit should help to keep homes sales steady until it expires in April so there will be some better numbers for the next few months. The tax credit is a good thing for people but it will be interesting to see what happens after they expire and if sales go down dramatically then we will know what the impact is.
According to the National Association of Realtors the price of homes did rise year over year for the first time for two years. That is good news. It is important to remember that the market is still struggling and here in Southwest Florida the homes will stay at the current level because inventory is still high compared to what the rest of the country is showing. Overall the inventory levels for the nation have shrank which indicates that homes are selling.
First time buyers should jump on this opportunity to purchase an affordable home.
Here are some stats from the local MLS about our area.
Members of the Association closed 1,340 single family home sales in December, bringing the total for 2009 to 16,789; this is a 91.4% increase vs. 2008 when 8,768 homes were sold. Of the December sales, 48.3% were bank-owned, 18.2% were short sales and the remaining traditional sales made up 33.4% . The median price was $89,929, which is 8.0% lower than the prior December; however, the median price continues to be influenced by the number of bank-owned and short sales, which continues to drive down the overall median price. During Quarter 4, the median price for traditional sales was $135,000 (a 3.5% decrease from the prior quarter), for bank-owned sales it was $69,900 (up 2.7%) and the median price for short sales was $94,950 (up 6.6% from last quarter).
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