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Our website has been a great tool for attracting clients to our real estate business. We have information and links to mortgage lenders, activities in St Petersburg, searches for properties, active and sold VZ Team Listings, and tons of other content for people interested in real estate or St Petersburg, in general. For our sellers, we have a monthly update of sold properties in different neighborhoods. We are adding a couple of new neighborhoods this week. The data is downloadable as an Excel spreadsheet and is already set up to print.
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Pinellas County Real Estate Statistics for August 2011
The housing market in Pinellas County for August has been relatively calm. It appears that the real estate market is looking for news of a recovery or a double recession. Listings across the board continue to fall, and prices are rising, albeit slowly. Distressed property (bank owned and short sales) listings have been steadily declining since January this year. Comparing to August 2010, they are down 43%.
Residential properties in the areas of $30k- $40k, $100k to $140k and $200k to $250k continue to be the strongest market price segments in the county. Sales on homes valued over $500k are continuing to struggle, with buyers looking for bargains rather than to move up.
Overall, residential market sales increased from 971 to 1203, or 23.9%, from August 2010 to August 2011. Median sales price for the same time period dropped 15.4% from $135,000 to $117,000, but is up $3,000 month over month. Active listings continued to slide by 22% from August 2010 to August 2011, for six straight months of listing decreases.
Condo sales from August 2010 to August 2011 are up nearly 26%. The median sales price for condo’s continues to remain relatively stagnate month over month. For August it is $94,200, a decrease of 18.1% from August 2010. Condo listings decreased from 5,546 to 4,222, or -23.9% for the same time period.
Single family listings are down from 6,670 to 4,270, or 37%. The median sales price is down from $135,000 to $126,080 from year over year. Single family sales climbed for a 22% increase for the same time period.
In the distressed market, pending sales of bank-owned properties and short sales ticked up about 7.3%. Median price and sales of distressed properties increased slightly.
With the decreasing number of listings, the absorption rate is steadily rising this year. For August 2011 the single family rate was 17.5%, the highest it’s been since December 2005.
Short Sale Update
Short Sales have increased from 10% to 12% of the national sales from second Quarter last year to second Quarter 2011. This is generally good news when compared with the discount of properties being sold as foreclosed properties. It’s also better for the loan holder or lender. They are saved the cost of the foreclosure proceeding. Generally, short sales sell at a 21% discount compared with a 40% discount for foreclosed properties. Short sales tend to be in better condition because the owners still live in the property. Foreclosed properties are generally abandoned. Bank of America will do over 100,000 short sales in 2011. That is double the transactions compared with 2009. The peak of the short sale volume was in 2009 when 16% of the homes sold were short sales.
Refinancing Homes with Government Backed Mortgages
The White House is considering a proposal that will allow many homeowners with government backed mortgages to refinance their properties. Many have been unable to take advantage of recent historically low interest rates. Most of these homeowners have not qualified for refinancing because their loan to value ratio was too low to meet existing requirements. This change would lower mortgage payments and theoretically increase spending by these consumers. This would create a non-deficit building stimulus for the fledgling economy.
Appraisals in Todays Market
Some experts are claiming that low ball appraisals are driving down pricing in the housing market more significantly than even the sluggish economy. Some real estate professionals claim that banking and lending institutions are influencing appraisers to keep their values low in an effort to protect purchasers of mortgages.
The National Association of Realtors surveyed real estate professionals and found that 16% of them had lost a deal due to low appraisals. An interesting fact, but what goes unsaid here is how agents keep deals together when the appraisal comes in low. Generally, the seller is forced to reduce the purchase price of the property. This happens after it is clear that the buyer and the seller have agreed upon a price and value for the property. In most economic markets, a sale takes place when a buyer and a seller agree upon a price or value. In today’s real estate market, the bank sends out an appraiser and the appraiser, or even the underwriting department of the bank determines the value of the property. If they decide it’s worth less than the buyer and seller believe, then the deal tanks or the seller takes less—thus pricing is further driven downward.