That growing number of desperation sales, combined with the region’s free-falling condominium prices, drove down prices overall last year by more than one-third, to a median of $130,000, compared with a midpoint of $209,000 in 2008, the Orlando Regional Realtor Association said.
The good news for Central Florida homeowners: The year ended with a slight increase in the median sales price, which rose $2,000 in December to $125,000 from the month before. And though that December median was down 25 percent from December 2008, the number of December sales was up 52 percent from a year earlier. For the year, members of the Orlando association sold 23,705 homes, up 60 percent from 2008.
Also, pending sales grew steadily all year, so that by December the number of closings waiting in the wings was more than 150 percent larger than it was a year ago.
“This year is going to be a good year, if for no other reason than because people are getting used to this environment in which we’re living,” said Dan Duff, an agent with Watson Realty Maitland. “Last year was a shock. ...People are getting used to it now.”
Of course, much of the growth in pending sales reflects the protracted time it takes to close short sales – deals in which a property’s mortgage holder has given the financially pressed homeowner permission to ask less than the balance remaining on the loan.
And with so many houses in Central Florida sitting dark and vacant without even a for-sale sign out front yet, Duff said it may take quite some time to work through the “shadow market” inventory of properties in the foreclosure pipeline.
“Banks cannot bring them on the market right now, or the houses will dive in value,” he said. “So they’re holding off.”
Kathleen Gallagher McIver, chairman of the Orlando Realtors group and an associate with Re/Max Town & Country Realty, said she expects sales to increase further in coming months as homebuyers respond to the recently extended and expanded federal-income-tax credit.
Even with a boost in buyers, though, no one should expect an end to the huge number of distress sales, she said.
“I wouldn’t say we’re maxed out,” she said. “I think that’s going to be the reality of the market. That’s just going to be our inventory for a long time.”
Kevin Sandells, a downtown Orlando resident trying to sell his new, six-bedroom home on his own, said buyers and agents have a tendency to view the foreclosure problem as the same in all neighborhoods, when historic, downtown areas have not been hit as hard as subdivisions in outlying areas.
“People try to tarnish the area with the same brush,” said Sandells, who also complained of being besieged by inexperienced real-estate agents fresh out of short-sales courses who offer to list his property as a distress sale.
December’s $125,000 median price in the Realtors’ core Orlando market – mainly Orange and Seminole counties – encompasses all types of sales, including bargain-priced condos. The median price for “normal” sales last month was $179,950, up 1.5 percent from November. The median for bank-owned sales was $82,000, down 1.5 percent, while the median for short sales was $134,600, up 10.3 percent from a month earlier.
The core-markets inventory of homes for sale shrank 31 percent last year. December’s inventory of 15,549 properties represented a seven-month supply, a slightly larger backlog than in November.
“There are houses we’ve been trying to sell, but we can’t get the banks to sell them,” McIver said of the backup in foreclosures. “The longer it sits vacant, the more repairs it will need and the less it’s going to be worth in the long run.”
Copyright © 2010 The Orlando Sentinel, Fla., Mary Shanklin. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. Posted by Team Donovan on