Orlando Real Estate

Another month has flown by, and sales continue to impress here in Orlando. So far 1,627 closed sales have been posted in the MLS with a median price of $130,000. That marks five months in a row with the median price hovering around $130,000. It is a little lower than July, but I am not concerned about monthly fluctuations. The other trend that is continuing is the decline in available inventory. As of this morning the number of homes available for sale through Orlando Realtors is down to 16,559 which is down about another 600 from last month. That will probably drop some more by tomorrow since typically a lot of listings drop off the market at the end of the month. The other trend that is still running is pending sales, now topping 8,300. Basically, a third of all our listings are under contract. In the last two weeks, I have written 10 contracts with several different buyers. More often than not, we have been beaten out by higher offers. The competition for well priced homes in good condition is pretty hot.

I like to break things down for the REO and short sale market too, but our MLS recently added a field to help identify these two types of listings and not everybody seems to be complying. Prior to this field being added I was counting more than 5,000 active short sales and more than 4,000 pending short sales. Now I have 4,719 active and 3,627 pending identified as short sales. Conversely, REO's were running closer to 900 and have jumped to 1,088. My take on these two situations is that many agents are still trying to hide the fact that their listing is a short sale, because most serious buyers are avoiding them. The REO agents frequently categorized their bank owned property as corporate owned under the former system categories. Using the new identifiers for short sales and bank owned properties, I found 1,512 pending REO's and 594 closed bank sales with a median price of $84,700. Once again the number of closed short sales was modest with 246 closing at a median price of $134,950. Combined short sales and bank owned account for 51.6% of all the closed sales, 61.8% of pending sales, but only 35% of active listings.

Orlando Real Estate, David Welch Real Estate Optimist