Realtors See Bright Spots Ahead for Florida Housing Market

Realtor Cheryl Talbot probably spoke for several Wednesday who heard Wachovia economist Mark Vitner’s take on the struggling Florida housing market.

“It was very interesting, quite informative and sometimes depressing,” said Talbot, of Keller Williams Realty in Pensacola.

Vitner didn’t pull any punches Wednesday during his talk at the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition.

Bottom line: The state’s housing market has yet to bottom out and Florida home prices may have to decline some more, but there are signs of recovery on the 2008 horizon.

Despite Vitner’s remarks, Doug Gooch, Pensacola Association of Realtors president, sees the local housing glass half full.

“We’re still optimistic,” Gooch said. “I’m talking with people who are seeing more business now than we saw in the first two months of the year. I think we’re getting back to normal.”

Gooch conceded, however, that home sales for the first two months of 2007 in Escambia and Santa Rosa are 18 percent below the same sales in 2006.

Some encouraging signs that point to a recovery, he noted, are a slight decline in Florida mortgage interest rates and some spot instances of insurance rate declines in the Panhandle.

Cheryl Young, a Pensacola-area Realtor specializing in resort and waterfront properties, said sales locally are picking up, but by just how much depends largely on which sector of the local housing market is being examined. While Young acknowledges it’s a buyer’s market, she is also adamant that it’s not a market in free fall.

“People think they can come in with some wild offer on a property and the seller will take it,” Young said. “Well, the sellers are not taking it.”

The tempo and tone of the market, she and Gooch said, is a return to a pre-Ivan normalcy.

She expects sales to accelerate this spring and summer but is also wary about the Legislature’s plan to solve the property tax and casualty insurance issues.

“That’s the most challenging thing about this market,” Young said. “… Our local housing market never follows the national trend on anything.”