The Ellis Team SW Florida real estate Current Market Index improved for the 5th straight month.  The index moved down to 7.23 for the Fort Myers, Cape Coral area.  For the entire Lee County Florida area the Current Market Index fell to 9.21, down from 9.57 the previous month.

Single family listings in Lee County rose to 15,634, up from 15,340 the month prior, but Pending sales increased to 1,697, up from 1,603 in May.  We’ve already predicted May sales numbers should be about 57-60% higher over last year, while average prices should be down about 25% from last year.  We used the mean average and the official numbers use the median average, so there could be some slight variations when numbers are released.

We look at closed sale data in addition to using the Current Market Index to get a direction of where the market is headed.  This index has been so successful in its accuracy that the National Association of Realtors have adopted a similiar but more simple formula to predict the future market called the Pending Home Sales Index.

Next week we’ll report official numbers for May, but suffice it to say that not only will May numbers look stellar but June numbers should also look stellar once the month is completed.