Study: Housing Market in Lake City, FL

This is an article that was published in the Lake City Reporter yesterday. Written by Jeff M. Hardison.. & all credit goes to him & the Lake City Reporter...

This explains how the trend of more sale & activity but lower prices is still moving up north in Florida, still reaching into the Lake City, FL area. Here is the article.

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Statewide numbers for Realtor sales of single-family existing homes looked good in May of 2009, according to the North Florida Forecaster newsletter. The newsletter is a publication of the Lake City Board of Realtors. People who are in the house-buying mode as end users will find Lake City to be a good market now, said Lake City Board of Realtors Executive Vice President Dan Gherna.

A trend of property prices being drastically reduced is moving northward, Gherna said, as reflected by Ocala showing a 1 percent increase in the number of Realtor sales of single-family existing homes in May 2009 over May 2008.

In Ocala, there was a 22 percent decrease in median prices of homes sold in May of 2008 compared with May of 2009 — dropping from $143,100 to $111,600.

“It’s encouraging to see Ocala’s results,” he said.Gherna said the Lake City-Live Oak market reflects low sales from May in comparison with the same month in 2008.“The bad markets are Gainesville, Lake City and Tallahassee,” he said.Gherna said a 13 percent reduced median sales price from $150,000 in May of 2008 to $130,000 in May of 2009 for the Lake City-Live Oak market is not significant enough to expect a dramatic increase in sales.

The Lake City-Live Oak market showed a 22 percent decrease in the number of sales, dropping from 41 houses sold in May of 2008 to 32 homes sold in May of 2009, Gherna said.

“Our distress property sales were only 30 percent,” he said. This compares to South Florida, where they are upwards of 80 percent.”

The Fort Myers-Cape Coral market showed the most significant positive sales increase by going up 72 percent when comparing figures from May 2008 and May 2009. There were 823 houses sold in that market in May of 2008 and that jumped to 1,417 houses sold in May of 2009.The median price of houses in Fort Myers-Cape Coral dropped by 58 percent, from $212,400 in May of 2008 to $88,500 in May of 2009.“In Fort Myers and Cape Coral,” Gherna said, “it looks like a war zone. There are new subdivisions where people are not mowing and windows are broken. Banks see these homes as a liability.”

Gainesville, Tallahassee, Lake City-Live Oak and Sarasota-Bradenton markets are the only double-digit negative Realtor sales figures for May of 2009 compared with May of 2008.Of the 21 markets reviewed by a survey of Multiple Listing Services sales levels from Florida’s Realtors, only Panama City showed a single digit 7 percent drop in median prices from $190,000 in May of 2008 to $167,500 in May of 2008. All other areas dropped prices from 58 percent to 10 percent.