Our Tampa Real Estate Market Perspective: From our perspective we certainly see lower priced homes moving very quickly. In fact we have had numerous cases were multiple offers are received on these properties. The # of individual investors and pooled investors have increased and they are focused on REO properties in significant numbers. They tend to avoid short sales (due to the length of offer evaluation time) and in most cases are paying cash, thus avoiding financing and appraisal hassels. While this is great to clean up the inventory, it is also the low hanging fruit, unless mortgage holders increase offer response time, renegotiate a mortgage with the home owner or decrease prices ,we will not clear out enought inventory to significantly get us back to a balanced level. To stay on top of market activity bookmark www.dwellintampa.com.
Sales of Existing Homes (Single-Family & Condo) for the month of December came in at an annual adjusted rate of 5.45 million down 16.7% from the November Levels of 6.54 million. While this was less than the expected number of 5.90 million, it is not suprising since the tax credit ending in November escalated home purchases towards the end that month. On two positive notes the year over year existing home sales level came in at 15% higher than the 4.74 million level in December of 2008. and home prices increased 1.5% year over year.