Naples Weathers Woeful Housing Market
According to the Naples Area Board of Realtors, closed sales reported for the first quarter of 2007 dropped 25 percent to 939, compared with 1,250 during the first quarter of 2006.
As Florida mortgage demand remains tepid in Southwest Florida, listings in the first quarter of 2007 dropped 14 percent, down to 5,885 compared to the record 6,851 reported in the first quarter of 2006, with home pending sales down 4.5 percent to 1,491 from 1,558 a year ago.
The median sales price of homes sold during the first quarter also dropped sharply from $425,000 in the first quarter of 2006 to $399,512 in the past quarter, although the latter was up from $375,000 in the fourth quarter.
“Median pricing is again showing a rise, with an overall upward trend line over the long term,” the board reported, while acknowledging that prices remain well below the level experienced during record sales periods in the first quarters of 2005 and 2006.
Nevertheless, “the value of the Naples location remains a strong draw for luxury second-home buyers and investors on the national and international level,” the board noted.
In a May 6, 2007 New York Times article, reporter Ernest Beck suggests that the Naples housing market “has developed a split personality.”
Beck notes that “for several years, the defining images of the frenzied Florida housing market boom were crowded open houses and speculators flipping preconstruction condominiums.”
“But since the market sputtered in mid-2005, as sales have fallen and inventory has soared, property auctions and price cutting have become commonplace,” Beck writes.
“Today, as the gavel comes down on everything from vacant lots to multimillion dollar estates, sales are still off, and foreclosure and delinquency rates Florida mortgage loans are rising.”
“Yet a closer look at different parts of the state, and at a wide range of properties, reveals a more complex picture of a market in flux,” he said.
Naples, situated in the Southwest Florida housing market, has seen prices holding for “desirable properties on golf courses or with waterfront access costing $500,000 and more. But bargains are available for houses below $500,000 because of a up inventory of standard two-bedroom, two-bath condos.”
Most analysts agree that current home prices will not affect the region’s rapid growth. No one expects southwest Florida’s population to stop increasing.
That likelihood raises infrastructure issues, however, and not everyone is confident that authorities are prepared to address them adequately.
Recent Census figures estimate the year-round population of Naples to be about 22,000, though that figure rises significantly during January-April as “snowbirds” spend their winters in vacation homes.
According to CensusScope, the population of Collier County, of which Naples is the county seat, soared above 300,000 in 2005, continuing the trend of the previous census decade (1990-2000) when Collier was the third fastest growing county in Florida.
At the center of the infrastructure controversy are plans to expland I-75, the regions’s major thoroughfare, to six lanes and maybe as many as ten.
The Florida Department of Transportation web site provides a comprehensive overview of transportation planning in the state, including a daily update on road construction projects in Collier County.
Naples Daily News columnist Mark Strain notes that for a long time, Collier County has been in violation of Florida statutes by allowing development to proceed with a failed primary hurricane evacuation route.
Clearly, Florida home mortgage problems aren’t the only thing the county has to worry about, with infrastructure woes increasing by the day.
