Florida Home Buyers and Investors Blog

As reported by the Palm Beach Post 7/24/2009

The median price of an existing single-family home in Palm Beach County rose to $250,300, up 7 percent from May and the highest level since October, the Florida Association of Realtors said Thursday.

The number of sales in Palm Beach County also rose, hitting 859 in June, up 15 percent from a year ago.

Treasure Coast house prices dipped to $109,900 in June, down only slightly from $110,000 in May.

Realtors welcomed the rare piece of good news for Palm Beach County's housing market. Many say the worst is over.

"I think we bottomed out 60 to 90 days ago," said Jeff Lichtenstein, an agent at Illustrated Properties Real Estate in Palm Beach Gardens.

Sales activity has picked up as once-skittish buyers begin to conclude that the free-fall is over.

"It's been a great time to buy real estate for six months, but I think people are finally getting acclimated to it," said Douglas Rill, owner of Century 21 Americas Choice Realty in West Palm Beach. "Prices have come down dramatically, there's plenty of mortgage money, there's the $8,000 tax credit."

All of those factors pushed the statewide median price from $144,400 in May to $148,000 in June. Florida home prices were buoyed by rising prices in large markets such as Palm Beach County, Fort Lauderdale, Miami and Orlando.

Even some economists are willing to say the worst is over.

"We have finally bottomed out," PNC Financial Services Chief Economist Stuart Hoffman told Bloomberg News.

More skeptical observers say it's too soon to don party hats. Some 14,303 Palm Beach County homes received a foreclosure filing during the first half of the year, up 23 percent from the first half of 2008, according to research firm RealtyTrac.

And Palm Beach County's jobless rate soared to 11.1 percent in June, its highest level since 1992, the Florida Agency for Workforce Innovation said last week. Nearly a million Floridians are looking for work.

All that means home prices still have farther to fall, said Jack McCabe, a housing analyst in Deerfield Beach.

"The good news is there's a little pinhole of light at the end of the tunnel," McCabe said. "We're not there yet, but maybe things are bottoming out."

McCabe also warned that a one-month turnaround isn't a trend.

"The month-to-month figures can be highly volatile," McCabe said. "They can be dramatically up one month and dramatically down the next."

Palm Beach County condo prices also rose in June. The median condo price was $116,400, up from $107,500 in May.

The median price of a condo in the Treasure Coast rose to $110,000, up from $91,700 in May, although the small number of condos sold in Martin and St. Lucie counties makes the median price there more volatile.

While many economic experts think the worst is over, few expect a return to double-digit appreciation.

"If we are not at the bottom, we are very close to it," said Cal Cearley, president of Palm Beach Community Bank in Boynton Beach. "But I think we're going to be at the bottom for another year or two, and when prices do start to climb again, it's going to be very gradual."

Nationally, the median home price rose to $181,000 in June from $173,000 in May, the National Association of Realtors said. And sales volumes rose more sharply than expected.

"This is another hopeful sign," National Association of Realtors Chief Economist Lawrence Yun said in a statement. "If we can keep the volume of sales above the level of new inventory, prices could stabilize in many areas around the end of the year."