$250,000: The Defining Figure of the Central Florida Housing Market

A quarter of a million dollars.

That’s roughly what it takes to buy a typical, pre-existing home in the Central Florida housing market these days.

Existing-home sales soared to record heights in 2004-05, taking prices with them: The median price of a home in the Orlando area rose more than 60 percent in those two years, according to the Orlando Regional Realtor Association.

But since then, the local median has been stuck in neutral: For nearly a year now, the median has been exactly $250,000 or within a few thousand dollars of that amount in the Realtors’ core Orlando market.

So what kind of home can you get for that quarter of a million?

The answer varies widely depending on where the home is located in Central Florida. That same amount will fetch you a condo or small bungalow in downtown Orlando - or a nicely appointed pool home with a big yard in outlying parts of Volusia County, Lake County or Osceola County.

“The farther you get from downtown - the 32801 ZIP code - the more affordable housing is in general. It’s just basic economics,” said Marty Hunt, who has been selling residential real estate in metro Orlando and Central Florida for 18 years.

He said he has a home with about 1,300 square feet in Casselberry listed for $239,900 that would sell for “probably at least $50,000 or $60,000 more” if it were “closer to downtown Orlando or Winter Park.”

Also, the run-up in Orlando home prices in recent years - and throughout the state of Florida and much of the country - has pushed the median to levels few would have predicted not that long ago.

“Three years ago, you could get so much more” for $250,000, said Rhonda Morgan, an agent with Exit Real Estate Results in Orlando.

The Orlando market’s median sales price didn’t crack the $100,000 mark until mid-1998 - then promptly flattened out for nearly three years.

By the end of 2000, it had barely budged upward to $107,474, according to local Realtor records. As recently as January 2004, the median was still only $148,324 - about $100,000 less than it is today.

Most of the surge came during 2004-05, when Florida mortgage rates were low, the inventory of local homes for sale was tight and speculators began snapping up homes and fanning the inflationary psychology.

But the market slowed abruptly last year, and the median price flattened out at $250,000 as the costs of Florida mortgage loans soared higher than most prospective borrowers could bear.

Economists and industry experts say two of the three factors that fed the sales boom are now gone: Investors are no longer looking to flip properties for a quick profit, and the number of homes listed for sale has swelled more than sixfold to record and near-record levels.

Orlando’s existing-home inventory slipped from a peak of 21,324 in October to fewer than 20,000 by year’s end, but “a lot of that is seasonal,” Larson said. He predicts that many new listings will surface soon as people who yanked homes off the market late last year make another attempt to sell them during the prime home-shopping season this spring.

In January, inventory rebounded to 21,266 properties for sale.

The median has stopped rising, experts say, in large part because “people are buying at the bottom of the market, because it’s all they can afford,” and sellers have been slow to give ground by lowering their asking price.

For example, the average list price reported in January by Realtors in the Orlando area was $329,374 - about $80,000 more than the median for that month. The average list price never fell below $300,000 last year, despite the sales slowdown, as local sellers clung to hope that the market would soon rebound in their favor.

While housing prices now are relatively stable compared with recent years, sharp increases in homeowners insurance premiums and in newly resold homes’ property taxes have added to the pressure on Florida home mortgage costs and made it difficult for Realtors to close sales.