The January 2009 Ellis Team SW Florida real estate current market index covering Fort Myers real estate, Cape Coral real estate, and Estero leveled off this past month and currently stands at 6.74, up slightly from 6.65 the previous month.  The index still shows signs of strong buying activity and overall market absorbtion.

Single family inventory for Lee County dropped below 14,000 this month to 13,740, while pendings remained relatively the same.  The Current Market Index for the entore county actually fell from 7.99 to 7.89, but we are reporting numbers in the graph for just Fort Myers and Cape Coral real estate single family homes.  Single family home inventory has been falling nicely as the market has been absorbing homes to the market all throughout 2008.  Other agents are just now starting to pick up on this trend and report it, instead of the gloom and doom some have been reporting all year.

Next month we’ll be releasing our annual SW Florida State of the Market Report, which will be much more comprehensive this year.  We’ve been hard at work analysing the data and identifying emerging trends.  As usual, there will be some surprises.  We’ve spent extra time eliminating duplicate entries in various MLS systems, so we feel quite confident this new set of numbers will be the Most realistic picture of what is actually happening in SW Florida real estate.

We’ll be drilling down much deeper so you can see what’s been happening in various neighborhoods.  Stay tuned for official announcement for the release date for this very special report.