Orlando Real Estate

Just a quick update on the Orlando real estate market. Currently there are 16,295 active listings available through Orlando Realtors. REO's make up 1,266 of them and 5,124 are short sales. There are 8,731 pending sales stacked up with 1,725 REO's and 4,433 short sales. Almost 58% of the REO's, over 46% of short sales, but only about 21% of "normal" sales are under contract. It all comes down to price and price range. With roughly 50% of our sales coming under $130,000 and about 50% of the normal listings priced above $215,000 there is a disconnect in the market. The void between these two is being filled by bank owned and short sale properties. I am not saying that a home priced at $250,000 is over priced, but I am saying there is not much of a market for homes in that price range. Right now there are only 69 homes pending with a list price above $1,000,000. There are 242 pending with a price above $500,000 and 1,116 pending priced above $250,000. While that seems like a pretty good number in that price range there are about 5,400 active listings priced at $250,000 and higher. About one in six listings priced above $250,000 has a contract on it. That includes bank owned and short sales.

Closed sales this month are just about to break the 1,000 mark with 970 closed so far with a median sales price of $129,900. I believe this makes the sixth or seventh month in a row with a median price around $130,000. At this point, I think anyone would agree that we have bottomed out. We are into a typically slower time of year, but there is nothing typical about our market any more. It will be interesting to see what happens after the tax credit expires at the end of November. I am also curious to see the effect on mortgage rates and banks' willingness to approve short sales when The Fed stops purchasing mortgage backed securities at the end of the year. For right now, things are moving forward.

Orlando Real Estate, David Welch Real Estate Optimist