Charlotte County Home Sales Make Modest Turnaround; Prices Level Out

The Charlotte Sun-Herald reports that local home sales posted a modest upturn in December, but it’s difficult to say whether this represents a trend or just a temporary respite.

Despite some statistical discrepancies, it appears that Charlotte County was the only real estate market in Florida to show signs of recovery as 2006 drew to a close.

Local sales of existing single-family houses showed a modest increase while rest of the state still struggled, despite Florida mortgage rates staying more or less the same since the end of 2005.

The Florida Association of Realtors reported Thursday that December sales were down 28 percent in all 20 Florida metro areas, compared to the same month in 2005. Specifically, 12,415 dwellings changed owners compared to 17,215 in December 2005.

There seems to be a conflict between what the Florida Realtors reported and the December sales figures provided by the Punta Gorda-Port Charlotte-North Port Association of Realtors, which operates the MLS in the local market.

Linda Pizarro said her most up-to-date figures show 229 closed sales in December for a real estate market area that includes Punta Gorda, all of unincorporated Charlotte County and much of North Port.

However, the Realtors had earlier reported 243 closed sales for December in this monthly report, released around noon Thursday. The significance becomes clear when it’s compared with the 204 houses local mulitple listing service records indicate were sold in December 2005.

Contrast this figure with the Realtors’ report, and it seems the Charlotte market achieved a not-shabby 19 percent bounce from December to December. Sales were up 24 percent when compared with 194 houses sold in November.

The Realtors reported that December’s local median sale price was $209,100, down 3 percent from December 2005 and nearly 4 percent from November.

The statewide median price for December was $241,100, down 2 percent from December 2005, reflecting a decrease in housing demand fueled by a massive, five-year run-up in Florida home loan costs.

Sales volume in the other 20 metropolitan areas of the Southwest Florida housing market was down between 4-45 percent compared with the close of 2005.

The only exception may have been the Naples housing market, for which only incomplete figures were available. This raises the debate over whether local figures have been inflated.

Neighboring markets didn’t fare so well. It’s always worth an argument whether Charlotte more closely mirrors economic trends in Sarasota, Fort Myers or greater Lee County.

But for December, it appears that the Sarasota-Bradenton area showed a degree of recovery comparable to what was happening in Charlotte.

Sales of 626 houses were down only 7 percent from December, 2005 and almost exactly the same as November. But the median sale price of $284,700 was down 17 percent from the previous December.

The Realtors report doesn’t attempt to explain the collapse of Florida home mortgage demand in Fort Myers and Cape Coral, where December sales of 598 houses represented a 45 percent drop from the year-earlier period.

The median sale price lurched downward 19 percent, to $262,500.

What to make of all this? The housing market is supposedly in disarray, despite the fact that mortgage rates are still relatively low and there’s plenty of inventory on the market.

In Florida, as elsewhere in inflated markets across the U.S., housing affordability is becoming a bigger problem for working families. The Realtors report noted the median cost of a house in Florida was $127,700 only five years ago - a figure that seems like a dream in today’s market.

“We have to get prices back to where they were before Hurricane Charley,” said Ellen McCarthy, president of Port Charlotte’s McCarthy Realty.

McCarthy said many factors are now inflating the cost of housing without creating value for homeowners. Chief among these are high property taxes and homeowner’s insurance price hikes that followed the bad hurricane seasons of 2004 and 2005.