By Jennifer Warner Florida Realtors economist: Many sellers today plan to overprice their home, but overpricing isn’t new. Lead sellers to smart decisions using charts that show local trends. ORLANDO, Fla. – Pricing conversations tend to be difficult with sellers in any market because people view their homes through “love lenses.” Generally, they overvalue all the upgrades and personal touches they’ve done over the years, and even price in memories they’ve made while in the home. These conversations are dicey in normal times, and even more so as the market shifts in favor of buyers. Take these last few years
Read More

By Kerry Smith Fla. metros remain popular with outside-the-city homebuyers. In a 3Q top-state popularity contest, Fla. has 5 metros in the top 10 and Calif. has 2. SEATTLE – About one in four (24.1%) U.S. homebuyers considered moving to a different metro area in third quarter of 2022, according to a report from Redfin, and five of the popular metros in the top 10 were in Florida. Top U.S. metro areas by inflow in 3Q Sacramento, California: Top origin metro, San Francisco. Top out-of-state origin: Chicago Las Vega, Nevada: Top origin metro, Los Angeles. Top out-of-state origin: Los Angeles
Read More

By Derek Gilliam Some SW Fla. officials hope for change, but if destruction surpasses 50% of a home’s value – not including the land – it falls under newer and costlier building codes. NAPLES, Fla. – Thousands of homeowners in Southwest Florida whose homes were damaged by flooding from Hurricane Ian are running into a bureaucratic buzzsaw that may force them to tear down their properties and rebuild at higher elevations. In response, some local governments are seeking workarounds to help homeowners avoid wholesale reconstruction, but because the regulations are designed to prevent future flooding damage, federal officials seem unlikely
Read More

By Kerry Smith Sept.’s S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller 20-city price index found a year-to-year increase of 10.4%, but Miami (up 24.6%) and Tampa (up 23.8%) led the nation. NEW YORK – Dinged by rapidly increasing mortgage rates, home prices continue to show strong growth year-to-year but declines in month-to-month comparisons. In the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Indices (S&P DJI) for September, home price gains declined across the United States. Year-over-year The Index covers nine U.S. census divisions, and overall reported a 10.6% year-to-year gain in September, a decline from the 12.9% reported in August. The Index’s 10-City Composite came in at 9.7%,
Read More

By Christopher Rugaber While inflation numbers guide Fed decisions, two members say 5% will be the bare minimum stopping point, and it will be in effect at least through 2023. WASHINGTON (AP) – Two Federal Reserve officials said Monday that they favor raising the Fed’s key rate to roughly 5% or more and keeping it at its peak through next year – longer than many on Wall Street have expected. John Williams, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, who is among a core group of officials around Chair Jerome Powell, said in a speech to the Economic
Read More

By Kerry Smith Bucking a national trend, Sunshine State consumers expressed more positive attitudes about their current conditions and the future, both short- and long-term. GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Consumer sentiment among Floridians increased in November to 64.7, up 1.8 points from a revised figure of 62.9 in October, even as sentiment nationwide declined a bit. According to the monthly study by the University of Florida, all five components that make up the complete index increased. Current conditions: Perceptions of personal financial situations now compared with a year ago increased 1.9 points, from 51.9 to 53.8. And opinions on whether it’s
Read More

By Alex Veiga It’s the second week in a row for a notable drop in rates as non-inflation-rate factors influence demand. A few weeks ago, average 30-year rates were higher than 7%. LOS ANGELES (AP) – The average long-term U.S. mortgage rate edged lower for the second time in as many weeks, though it remains more than double what it was a year ago – a significant hurdle for many would-be homebuyers. Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac reported Wednesday that the average on the benchmark 30-year rate fell to 6.58% from 6.61% last week. A year ago the average rate was
Read More

By Amber Bonefont It’s easy for non-real estate people to watch news stories and think, “The market’s crashing.” But it’s just slowing during a market correction and still up year-to-year. ORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – 2021 was a record year for real estate in South Florida, yet the last eight months of 2022 have been about the market slowing. Questions linger as to how bad the decline in the market is and whether it’s headed for a crash. There’s little doubt that the market has slowed over the past six to eight months: Closed sales are down as buyers grapple with
Read More

By Jim Saunders Consumers don’t pay for reinsurance – but property insurers do as a kind of “insurance for insurers.” Rate increases add another challenge to Fla.’s RE market. MIAMI – As Florida lawmakers try to stabilize the troubled property-insurance system next month, they could face worsening problems with reinsurance, a critical part of the system. Fitch Ratings released an analysis Wednesday that said overall reinsurance prices are expected to increase by more than 10% in 2023, pointing to losses from disasters such as Hurricane Ian and “increasing frequency and severity of natural catastrophe claims.” “Price rises will be most
Read More

By Kerry Smith The Wall Street Journal polled economists who predicted a 5.5% drop in Oct. new-home sales – but the Census Bureau and HUD release reported a 7.5% increase. WASHINGTON – October 2022 sales of new single‐family houses were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 632,000, according to estimates released jointly by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. That number is a 7.5% increase over the revised September rate of 588,000, though 5.8% less year-to-year (671,000 in October 2021). Early numbers are notably unreliable, however, and the October has an estimated as
Read More