Tag Archives: Fort Myers beach real estate

SW Florida Real Estate Sales Rose in June

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Unofficial numbers show SW Florida real estate sales rose in June. Official numbers will be reported July 20, so as we are writing this article early in the week we have to go with internal numbers that show sales rose in June even as inventory numbers fell once again.  We lost another 230 units of single family home inventory as many have been questioning where are the foreclosures banks said were coming.

From the beginning we questioned how many foreclosures would hit SW Florida as the distressed inventory directly impacts our market.  Nobody seems to have a firm answer other than to say more are coming, and we don’t doubt that.  The question is to what degree.

SW Florida Real Estate Sales
SW Florida Single Family Real Estate Sales

While sales rose in June, pending sales are down as we simply don’t have as much inventory to sell. Foreclosure sales in Fort Myers rose by 16 homes while Cape Coral foreclosures fell by 19 homes.  Lehigh Acres foreclosure sales rose by 7.

This past week we were assigned 3 more foreclosure listings, so perhaps this is the beginning of the banks being able to release inventory.  Banks have been hamstrung as legal proceedings have shown many of the banks didn’t follow proper legal procedures to foreclose on certain mortgages in certain states, and it’s caused banks to go back and start many foreclosures over and cancel hearings on others until they sort out where the mistakes were made and correct them.

In light of this legal situation, banks have increasingly been more diligent at handling and agreeing to short sales as it may take much longer for the bank/investor to be paid back partial principal if the home is tied up for months or years in foreclosure.  We feel there is no advantage to holding back inventory and the sooner we sell all distressed inventory the sooner our market can recover.  Others feel by holding back you can prop up prices.  We believe in an attempt to prop up prices you ultimately prolong the recovery and keep prices down for longer than if you just take the medicine and deal with it.

Listing Inventory in Cape Coral, Fort Myers Florida
SW Florida real Estate Single Family Home Inventory

Without naming names, we have seen some entities holding back, but this may also be that they can only show so many losses at a time on the balance sheet..  For the most part, most banks are bringing inventory to the market as quickly as they legally can.

As of today, foreclosure listing inventory is up over last month.  Fort Myers has 35 more units on the market, Cape Coral has 22 more units on the market, and Lehigh Acres has 15 more units.  This could be a sign that banks are releasing.  One month doesn’t make a trend, but it is a reversal in direction and July 2011 could be the beginning of that last wave to hit the market.

We’ve just added a new Cape Coral Real Estate Blog in German for our German readers. Be sure to check back for timely real estate information and videos in German. Sharyl Leifeld is a buyer specialist on the Ellis Team who speaks German and promotes education to German’s about the SW Florida real estate market.

 

 

2009 SW Florida Real Estate State of the Market Report Released Yesterday

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Yesterday Brett Ellis of the Ellis TEAM at RE/MAX delivered the SW Florida State of the Market Report to the public.  The report is 77 pages and includes data on Lee County Florida home sales, including Cape Coral real estate sales numbers, Fort Myers real estate sales numbers and pricing trends, Bonita Spring real estate updates, Estero, Lehigh Acres, Fort Myers Beach, Sanibel and Captiva, Pine Island, and all of Lee Couny.

The report shows single family home inventory in Lee County Florida declined 15.61%, and months supply of inventory in Lee County declined 42.66% due to decreasing inventory and increasing sales.

Cape Coral is the hot spot for sales activity, with 4,633 sales and less than a 1 yr supply of inventory.  Lee County overall inventory level stands at 17.53 months, down from 30.57 last year.  Median single family home sale prices were down 37.89%.  Two areas actually saw a rise in mean average sales prices in 2008; Bonita Spring-Estero and Central Fort Myers.

The report provides insightful data at the county level, and at the neighborhood level, as well as foreclosure data.  The sub-markets we analyzed were Cape Coral North, Cape Coral Central, Cape Coral South, North Fort Myers, Central Fort Myers, SE Fort Myers, SW Fort Myers, Lehigh Acres, East Fort Myers including Alva, Bonita-Estero, Pine Island, Fort Myers Beach, and Sanibel and Captiva Islands.  We provide data such as monthly pricing graphs for 2008, monthly sales charts, List price to sales price ratios, months supply of inventory levels, total list and sales volume,Minimum listing, maximum listing, lowest sold listing, highest sold listing, median price, average price, and total sales.

It is our most detailed report yet.  We scrutinized the data from multiple MLS boards and eliminated duplicates.  This one of a kind database is more thorough and accurate than services such as MLS Alliance because some boards pull their data out of the Alliance.  Additionally, we scrubbed the data for known errors.  We allowed duplicates when there were actually multiple sales on the same property for the same year.

73% of foreclosures in SW Florida were non-homestaeded property, meaning investors walked from their investments when the value fell below what they owed.  Most investors were planning to flip for a profit when they purchased.  SW Florida bank foreclosures were absorbed and sold, and inventory fell as the market heated up, even if prices have not.

We’ll add video of news stories from the report in coming days.