TAMPA DAILY MARKET SCAN 9-25-2010

Today’s Tampa Daily Market Scan turns up a great priced/low maintenance townhome in South Tampa (near MacDill) for only $72 a sq ft. This home is over 2,000 sq ft, 3bed/2.5bath, large porch and 3 car garage, all for an offer price of $146,000. Click to view property details. For more Tampa Real Estate visit DwellinTampa.com

TAMPA DAILY MARKET SCAN 9-24-2010

Today’s Tampa Daily Market Scan turns up an immaculate townhome on prestigious Harbour Island for only $170 a sqft (one of the lowest price per sq ft on the Island). This home is over 2,000 sq ft, 3bed/2.5bath, plus bonus room, 2 porches, garage and gated, all for an offer price of $359,900. Click to view property details. For more Tampa Real Estate visit DwellinTampa.com

FADAL’s DAILY MARKET SCAN 9-21-2010

Today’s Tampa Daily Market Scan turns up a home on Davis Islands for a nice price. This single-family home is 1,782 sq ft, 4bed/2bath, 2 car garage and a pool for a list price of $319,900. Click to view property details.  For more Tampa Real Estate visit DwellinTampa.com

FADAL’s DAILY MARKET SCAN 9-20-2010

Today’s Tampa Daily Market Scan turns up a Short Sale in South Tampa for a great price and nice square footage. This single-family home is 1,500 sq ft, 4bed/2bath, with an initial list price of $69,900. Click to view property details.  For more Tampa Real Estate go to DwellinTampa.com

FADAL’s TAMPA DAILY MARKET SCAN 9-07-2010

Today’s Tampa Daily Market Scan turns up a Davis Islands home for an affordable price and with great square footage. This single-family home is 2,280 sq ft, 5 bed/2.5bath, with an initial list price of $350,000. Click to view property details.  For more Tampa Real Estate go to DwellinTampa.com

FADAL’s DAILY MARKET SCAN 8-25-2010

Today’s Daily Market Scan turns up a Bayshore Condo with a nice water view. This condo is 838 sq ft, 2 bed/2bath, short sale with an initial list price of $75,000. Click to view property details

FADAL’s DAILY MARKET SCAN 8-20-2010

Today’s Daily Market Scan turned up an investment property in Historic Ybor City. This Duplex two – 2/1’s, with 1,484 total sq ft, Bank Owned/REO initial list price of $43,700. Click to view property details

Citizens Board approves Rate Hike

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – July 27, 2010 – Citizens Property Insurance’s board approved an average 8.4 percent statewide rate hike Monday. That includes an average increase of as much as 11.3 percent in parts of South Florida and a 9.3 percent statewide rate hike for policies that cover homes, condominium units, renters, mobile homes and vacation or rented property.

Some policyholders’ rates would decrease under the proposal, which still needs approval from the Office of Insurance Regulation.

A 3.8 percent average decrease is proposed for Miami Beach and a 10 percent decrease for coastal parts of Broward and Palm Beach counties. Individual policyholders’ premiums can vary from the average rate change in a neighborhood.

Four of Citizens’ eight board members approved the proposal. Two board members were absent and two others — Tom Lynch of Plastridge Insurance Agency in Delray Beach and Carol Everhart, vice president of BB&T in Tampa — recused themselves because they’re insurance agents and they said voting to increase rates could potentially benefit them personally.

Citizens officials said that their current overall rates aren’t high enough to offset costs, including claims payouts that have increased dramatically in recent years for damage from fires, sinkholes and other issues not related to hurricanes.

A report prepared by Citizens says insurance rates in some of parts of Broward, Palm Beach, Miami-Dade and Orange counties should be much higher than what is proposed — as much as 193 percent higher — but a 2009 state law caps the annual premium increases to 10 percent.

Some of the proposed rate hikes are slightly higher than 10 percent because an additional charge is allowed for costs related to reinsurance, or back-up coverage.

The Legislature froze Citizens’ rates from 2007 to 2009. Regulators allowed rates to rise this year, including an average increase of nearly 12 percent for homeowners in coastal Broward and Palm Beach counties.

State regulators will hold rate hearings Tuesday for Allstate Insurance Co.’s Florida subsidiaries and on Aug. 5 for Royal Palm Insurance. The Allstate Floridian Insurance companies, which changed their names to Castle Key last year, have about 250,000 policies, making them Florida’s third-largest private home insurer.

Nearly three-fourths of those policies are with Castle Key Insurance, which proposed raising rates by a statewide average of 33 percent, and the rest are with Castle Key Indemnity, which asked for an average 18 percent statewide rate hike.

Moore said the increases are needed to build the companies’ claims-paying reserves because premiums aren’t keeping pace with expenses, including backup coverage costs and claims for fires, theft and storms.

Regulators already approved a 10 percent average statewide rate hike for Gainesville-based Royal Palm Insurance Co.’s homeowners policies and the company, the tenth largest private residential insurer, is now requesting a 22 percent average rate hike for policies that covered rented properties or vacation homes.

Most of Royal Palm’s policies are former Allstate policies. In 2006, less than two months after Royal Palm started selling insurance, it announced that it was partnering with Allstate to take over about 120,000 of the Illinois-based insurance giant’s policies.

Copyright ©) 2010, Sun Sentinel, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Julie Patel. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

Tampa Existing Homes Sales June 10

Tampa Existing Home sales rose by 13% in June at a rate of 3,226 compared to last year’s number of 2,848.  While sales have improved sales price was basically flat year-over-year at $138,400. 

Florida Existing Home sales for the month of June were up 17%.  The numbers came in at 18,371 homes sold from 15,732  in June of 2009.  From a sales price perspective the median sales price was $141,00, which was basically flat from April’s number of 141,100.

National Sales of Existing Home (Single-Family & Condo) for the month of June.  The numbers came in at an annual adjusted rate of 5.37 million down (5.1%) from an upwardly revised level of 5.66 million in May.  However, this decrease was still 9.8% better than the 4.89 million units in June of 2009.

Our Perspective:  As we stated last month we have turned cautious in our outlook for the Summer Buying Season going into the Fall.  While individuals are still purchasing, we have concerns that with the continued high unemployment rate, weakening stock market and higher future inventories (due to short sales and REO’s), the real estate market is looking cloudy.

Florida Existing Home Sales May

Tampa Real Estate Market/National Real Estate Market

Florida Existing Home sales for the month of May were up 18%.  The numbers came in at 16.745 homes sold from 14,172  in May of 2009.  From a sales price perspective the median sales price was $140,400, which was up from April’s number of 141,100, marking the third month over month increase  this year.

National Sales of Existing Home (Single-Family & Condo) for the month of May.  The numbers came in at an annual adjusted rate of 5.66 million up 2.2% from an upwardly revised level of 5.79 million in April.  However, this decrease was still 19.2% better than the 4.75 million units in May of 2009.

Our Perspective:  We have had a reevaluation of the current market situation.  We have turned cautious in our outlook for the Summer Buying Season.  While individuals are still purchasing, we have concerns that with the continued high unemployment rate, weakening stock market and higher future inventories (due to short sales and REO’s), the real estate market is looking cloudy.  We will not know until mid July how things are progressing, so a cautious outlook we have taken.

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