Value Microcaps Motherboard

[lentinman]

OTC: (RE)

The PEAK in housing was in August of last year. Everybody knows it (or should know it).

Here is one more Florida (Orlando) article (thanks to FA) that should help enlighten anybody still on the fence.

Len

Homes hit the market in record numbers
Jerry W. Jackson
Sentinel Staff Writer
Posted February 21 2006

When Taffie Prince placed her Apopka home on the market last fall, she figured it would be snapped up within weeks.

Four months later, she's still waiting. And the asking price has been lowered by $5,000 in the past 90 days to $154,900.

"I was told the quarter-acre of land would sell the house. But it's still for sale. I don't know what else to do," Prince, 32, said Monday.

Part of the problem: The inventory of Orlando-area homes for sale has ballooned again. Suddenly, for-sale signs are everywhere.

The Orlando Regional Realtor Association reported Monday that the record 12,015 existing homes for sale in January in the core Orlando market was nearly four times the number available a year earlier.

And most of those homes hit the market in January, when members entered 6,172 homes with the Mid-Florida Regional Multiple Listing Service, compared with 2,970 in January 2005.

"It's getting a little scary," said Franco Ferrari, co-owner of Ample Realty in Orlando, the agency listing Prince's three-bedroom home.

He said his sales staff of fewer than 10 agents is "lean," yet the slowdown has agents working harder and seeing fewer purchase offers per home.

If the growth rate in home sales continues to slow for much longer, he said, large agencies that added significantly to their staffs in recent years will begin to shrink.

Although the Orlando area's existing-home inventory jumped in January, the number of sales also rose and set a record for the month, and the median price rebounded from a December slump, the local Realtor association reported.

Sales of existing homes in Metro Orlando -- Orange, Lake, Seminole and Osceola -- totaled 2,318 last month, up 6.2 percent from a year ago, the association said.

The median price rose to $242,050, up 25.4 percent from a year earlier. But that was less than 1 percent higher than in December, extending a flattening of prices that began in mid-2005.

Beverly Pindling, president of the local Realtors group, said in a written statement that the surge in homes for sale is partly the result of sellers looking to take advantage of the recent rise in prices, and the fact that more sellers are turning to Realtors to list their homes.

As hot markets cool, the pool of for-sale-by-owner homes tends to shrink and the number of Realtor listings expands, said Kevin Fritz, an association spokesman.

"Last year was the hottest market ever," Fritz said, and while 68 percent of the homes that changed hands in metro Orlando were sold by Realtors, the 29 percent sold by owners was likely a record high for such independent sales.

"That was way above the national number," he said of the local for-sale-by owner category. Nationwide, 85 percent of home sales involved agents and 15 percent were handled by their owners.

January is a prime month for listings but not sales, Fritz said, as home buyers generally don't begin searching in earnest until spring.

Last month's inventory number, he said, is the highest since the association began tracking the category in 1995. But because the Orlando market has grown steadily through the years, the months of inventory that represents -- 6.56 months -- is only the highest since January 1999, when the 6,052 homes in inventory represented 6.73 months' worth of sales, Fritz said..

The numbers reported monthly by the association are based on Realtors' sales and listings, Fritz said. The sales figures are for Metro Orlando, while the inventory and median-price figures are for the association's core market.

The association's members are in Orange and Seminole counties, and that's where the bulk of their sales are made. The core numbers also include members' sales if they happen to list a home that sells in other metro Orlando counties, Fritz said, but not nonmember sales in those counties.

Jerry Smith, 58, a retiree in Lake County, has had his former home in north Apopka on the market for about five months and has cut the asking price from $400,000 to $320,000.

Smith, who built the 1,570-square-foot house in the 1970s, and has added a new kitchen, concedes "it's your average home." The competition for sales is heating up, he said, with two other homes on his road sporting for-sale signs.

"The signs are popping up everywhere," Smith said.

Michael Rodriguez, operations director for the agency listing Prince's home, said he is seeing "great value" in places such as south Apopka and parts of west Orlando where the ethnic and racial makeup is changing.

"There are challenges," Rodriguez said, "but I've seen this [transition] occur in other places, and it will happen here as more people move in."

Prince said the predominantly black neighborhood where she built her 992-square-foot home 10 years ago on Washington Avenue is "on the way up," with five newer homes within blocks and two more going up nearby.

She is expecting to sell her starter home any day -- she wants to move to something larger in east Orlando to be closer to friends -- and she notes that, with the big yard, "there's plenty of room to add on in the back."

Jerry W. Jackson can be reached at [e-mail] or 407-420-5721.


LINK: http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/florida/orl-homesales2106feb21,0,4953447.story?coll=sfla-news....