Orlando Real Estate

To read the complete story from the Orlando Regional Realtor Association click http://www.orlrealtor.com/Main/Main.asp?CategoryID=3&

Officially, 2,131 sales closed last month with a median sales price of $131,200. Both of those numbers are increases over May's sales. Year to date sales are up more than 43% over 2008 with nearly 10,000 closed sales so far in 2009. This remarkable increase in sales has pushed the months of inventory down to about 8.4 which is a 61% decline since January and the lowest level in the Orlando real estate market since July of 2006. The number of active listings currently stands at 17,831 which is over 27% lower than a year ago when we had 24,575 homes for sale.

Of the sales in June approximately 46% were categorized as bank owned or distressed in the MFRMLS. It shows in the median prices too. Bank owned properties posted a median sales price last month of $79,900 while distressed sales were at $152,000 and "normal" equity sales had a median sales price of $172,500. The distressed and equity sales both represented increases from the prior month. Only the bank owned properties continued to slide. This should be important for bank executives to note. The distressed sales are primarily short sales. If the banks would just start approving these sales you could infer from this data that they may make an extra $72,000 per sale compared to foreclosing. That does not include the attorney's fees and court costs not to mention the time value of the money they are losing.

Pending sales stood at 7,230 at the end of June which is more than double the number of pending sales in June of 2008. New contracts last month set another record for the year with 3,686. Just think what our sales would be like if the banks approved short sales, could efficiently process their REO's and actually made loans in a timely manner. Demand is there, but the banks' ability to close the deal is the only thing slowing us down here in Orlando. It is a good thing that banks are not allowed to be in the real estate business.

Orlando Real Estate, David Welch Real Estate Optimist