Fun Town Orlando, FL, is managing to grin and bear it as its housing market reveals last year will be a tough act to follow.
Home sales for the year through September were down 8.66 percent compared to 2005, a record year. Home prices, at a September median price of $250,000, are up only 2.5 percent since last September and off the record $254,900 set in July this year.
But that's all good news, according to the Orlando Regional Realtor Association (ORRA).
Low, steady increases in home values are favorably viewed by the relocating companies; relocating individuals; domestic and foreign second-home buyers; and retirees that drive sales in Orlando, observes ORRA President Beverly Pindling. Plus, Orlando in particular, with its large population of service-industry employees, needs housing values that do not price this segment out of homeownership. Pindling says the market remains strong enough to post its second best year ever in 2006, behind the record set in the frantic 2005 market.
The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight reported the Orlando-Kissimmee metro area enjoyed the nation's fifth fastest growing home prices, up 26.25 percent in the last year, ending the second quarter 2006. In the Sunshine State, only Lakeland, FL's home prices grew faster during the same period, rising 27.13 percent.
In the past five years, Orlando's home prices have skyrocketed 105 percent, according to OFHEO.
The market is taking a breather.
Eighteen real estate agents reporting to RealtyTimes' Market Conditions-Orlando report, put the Orlando market well into the buyers' corner with an Average Current Market Rating just below 2, on a scale of 1 (full buyers' market) to 5 (full sellers' market). The agents rated the market's Average Current Price Trend just below a 3, on a scale of 1 (prices are falling steadily) to 5 (prices are rising steadily).
"As we are more than half way through the year, it appears we may have a more 'even' playing field for buyers and sellers. No longer a sellers' market -- with more inventory now flooding the area -- buyers need not rush to purchase a home in fear of losing out, but go after homes they really want and not settle for second best," Char Sibiga of Realty Executives Orlando South, reported to Market Conditions.
Eighteen real estate agents reporting to RealtyTimes' Market Conditions-Orlando report put the Orlando market well in the buyers' corner with an Average Current Market Rating just below 2, on a scale of 1 (full buyers' market) to 5 (full sellers' market). The agents rated the market's Average Current Price Trend just below a 3, on a scale of 1 (prices are falling steadily) to 5 (prices are rising steadily).
"As we are more than half way through the year, it appears we may have a more 'even' playing field for buyers and sellers. No longer a sellers' market -- with more inventory now flooding the area -- buyers need not rush to purchase a home in fear of losing out, but go after homes they really want and not settle for second best," Char Sibiga of Realty Executives Orlando South, reported to Market Conditions.
Still, an ORRA study predicts Orlando home price appreciation will continue at an above normal rate and continue to pad the equity of existing home owners, especially those who stay put for the long term. Homes price appreciation in September was nearly 7 percent for the year, according to ORRA, which estimates, under current economic conditions, an annual home price gain of 4 percent for the year.
The study says mortgage rates would have to reach 10.5 percent before the market would experience a price decline of 5 percent. Mortgage interest rates for much of the year have been well below the previously forecast level of 7 percent.
Sales of duplexes, town homes, and villas are up by 22 percent this year, while single-family homes have dropped by 15 percent.
"Since August of 2005 we have seen an increase in home inventory and a reduction in buyer demand caused by seasonal changes and also strong increases in home prices. We see this market continuing to be a buyers' market," Gitta Urbainczyk, an agent with Keller Williams Heritage Realty in Lake Mary, FL, reported to RealtyTimes' Market Condition.
