Print

Email story

Comment

Letter to the editor

Home sales not quite as bad

Sales and prices inched upward in October after a September we'd rather not remember.

By JAMES THORNER, Times Staff Writer
Published November 8, 2007

After September's rancid home sales in the Tampa Bay area, October's home sales managed to smell a bit sweeter.

Combined house and condominium sales in Pinellas, Pasco and Hillsborough counties totaled 1,969 last month, a drop of 28 percent from the 2,740 that sold in October 2006, Realtors said.

While such a drop may not inspire choruses of Happy Days Are Here Again, it's an improvement over the 39 percent decline between September 2006 and September 2007. In fact, between September and October, both the number of houses sold in the bay area and the median selling price rose slightly.

Inventory, defined as the number of homes for sale on the Multiple Listing Service, dropped about 300 in October, but remained stubbornly high at about 41,000 in the three counties.

At the current sales rate it would take about 20 months to exhaust the supply of homes on the market. A healthy market has fewer than 10 months' worth of homes on the listings.

"It's not that sales are that bad," said Craig Beggins, owner of Century 21 Beggins Enterprises in Apollo Beach. "But any number of sales compared to the huge inventory is overwhelming."

The region's median home sales price also perked up from September to October, rising to about $202,000. It had dropped below $200,000 in September. Realtors, however, don't place much faith in such short-term changes.

"The median price can bounce around from month to month, so the comparison from year to year on a single month is really not indicative of values going up or down," said Ann Guiberson, president of the Pinellas Realtor Organization.

September home sales were the worst in more than five years in the Tampa Bay area, and banks got much of the blame. Hit by a rash of foreclosures last summer, lenders denied home buyers many of the no-document, no-money-down loans to which they had become accustomed.

Beggins said the credit crunch still stymies sales as Realtors move into the slower holiday home sales season.

"In 2005 you didn't need a job, didn't need credit and didn't need cash," he said.

"Now you need all those things."

Many home prices in southeast Hillsborough, where Beggins is based, have returned to 2003 levels, he said. But Guiberson, from her vantage point in Pinellas, suggests they haven't fallen enough.

She said average listing prices have actually risen year to year, despite evidence of a weaker market.

"There's something wrong with this picture," Guiberson said. "Somehow sellers are missing the message that too many overpriced properties are a drag on the market."

James Thorner can be reached at (813) 226-3313 or thorner@sptimes.com.

Still, it's down, down and down

Pinellas: House and condominium sales fell 25.8 percent, from 1,034 in October 2006 to 767 in October 2007.

Pasco: Sales fell 25.2 percent, from 512 in October 2006 to 383 in October 2007.

Hillsborough: Sales fell 32 percent, from 1,204 in October 2006 to 819 in October 2007.

Source: Pinellas Realtor Organization

[Last modified November 7, 2007, 22:36:34]