Are Florida Home Loan Numbers Inflated?

News of the scolding hot housing market in Southwest Florida is has been circulating for months. But one local realtor is questioning the validity of recent, impressive Florida home loan numbers.

Whilet he number of homes sold keeps going up, especially in the Fort Myers-Cape Coral area, RE/MAX realtor Brett Ellis raises an important issue.

“The state of Florida numbers started to flatten out and even go down in the fourth quarter of last year and miraculously Fort Myers and Cape Coral had some outstanding numbers for fourth quarter,” he said.

Ellis thinks those numbers aren’t as miraculous as they look.

According to Ellis, the Fort Myers Board of Realtors reports all its home sale numbers to the Florida Association of Realtors. The Cape Coral Board reports its numbers of homes sold to the same board. Can you see why this may create a problem of duplicity?

There are close to a thousand realtors who belong to both boards. Their sales could be reported twice because, resulting in state board of realtors combining the sales figures from both cities.

“It’s very likely that in the last couple of years when we’ve been on two separate systems that situation has existed,” said Don Heisler of Cape Coral Association of Realtors.

It also means the median home price would not be as high as the board has reported. Ellis believes this would be nothing more than an oversight - but one that ought to be corrected.

In 2005, the Fort Myers-Cape Coral market ranked in the top ten in the nation for home sales.

The president of the Cape Coral Association of Realtors says even if there is duplication, the Florida home loan market is still in very good shape. This is a sentiment shared by many experts.

Ellis says he’ll take his finding to the state board to see if anything can be done to prevent the problem in the future.