Palm Beach County Median Prices Drop

The Palm Beach Post has an early look at existing Palm Beach County home sales for February. Full data is due to be released on Friday by the Florida Association of Realtors.

The information below is from Illustrated Properties Real Estate (IPRE), which tracks multiple listing service sales from Boca Raton to Hobe Sound. All prices are from IPRE.

Even as Florida home mortgage rates remain at historic lows, the median price of existing homes declined from January ($300,000), but remained unchanged from a year ago: $285,000.

This jibes with many analysts’ predictions that the South Florida housing market is in a “trough” and likely will move up and down slightly for a while, but not sharply in either direction.

The inventory of homes remaining on the market, however, rose to a near-record high of 23,713, nearly on par with September’s peak of 23,886.

Inventory stood at 17,842 in February 2006, making last month’s tally of unsold homes a 33 percent increase year-over- year.

“Given the very large supply glut evident in these figures, I suspect we’ll end up with a lot of disappointed sellers this spring,” said Mike Larson, a real estate analyst with Weiss Research.

February sales declined 44 percent, year over year, to 623 from 1,106 in February 2006. At the current home sales pace, the inventory represents a staggering 38-month supply of homes.

The average days on market declined from January (140 days) but rose sharply from a year ago (86 days), climbing to 135 days in February.

Besides inventory and days on market - useful information the FAR report lacks - IPRE also gives price per square foot in all price ranges, and the number of homes sold within each price range. The latter is of particular interest when analyzing the median price.

Here are the number of homes sold in February in each price range, as well as the inventory (number of homes for sale) in each home price range:

• Less than $100,000: 33 sales / 891 for sale
• $100,000-$199,999: 118 sales / 3,278 for sale
• $200,000-$299,999: 185 sales / 5,585 for sale
• $300,000-$499,999: 169 sales / 7,407 for sale
• $500,000-$999,999: 75 sales / 4,466 for sale
• More than $1 million: 43 sales / 2,086 for sale

These numbers probably won’t align exactly with Friday’s report from the Florida Association of Realtors, but they give a good indication of what Florida mortgage trends likely will be going forward.

SOURCE: Palm Beach Post