Tampa’s existing home sales on the rise – Tampa Bay Business Journal:

Existing home sales for Tampa, St. Petersburg and Clearwater climbed to 2,174 last month, up 29 percent from September 2008 while Lakeland was up 27 percent to 284 homes sold in September.

Sarasota didn’t have the same success, but its 7 percent drop to 550 units was the most contained drop of any market in the state.

In fact, only five of the 20 markets tracked by the Florida Association of Realtors showed declines with the statewide average up 24 percent over the previous year.

Values haven’t followed, however. The median home price in Tampa dropped 20 percent from $200,700 last year to $160,500 last month. In Lakeland and Winter Haven, the median home price fell 16 percent to $139,500, while in Sarasota-Bradenton, the median price was down 29 percent but remained just above the $200,000 mark.

Statewide, the median price dropped 22 percent year over year from $224,700 to $175,100.

via Tampa’s existing home sales on the rise – Tampa Bay Business Journal:

Good News, Bad News

Oh, if it were only a figment of our imagination...

 This will more than likely be a topic I’ll be doing pretty frequently. Here are two articles from the same publication (St. Pete Times) that contradict each other.

First, let’s rip the band-aid. The bad news focuses on the builders, building starts and permits (nationally). Yes, they’ve slowed down, but we’re still building right? There’s quite a bit of comparisons to the 80’s and 90’s for such a short article, but then again isn’t that when things were “normal”? Robert Toll (Toll Brothers) makes a cameo in the article saying things are “dismal” and then using some odd metaphor. It’s no secret the luxury home builders are feeling the crunch more-so than most.

Happy Time! GTAR does a good job here of leaking every bit of positivity they can proclaiming a higher number (5% increase) of sales in Tampa Bay than the previous month. There’s no breakdown of exactly what types of homes are selling (short sales?) and just when we’re ready to jump on the “love train” the article manages to commit a major party foul by reminding us that “The top July for sales was 2,932 homes in 2005. This year’s showing is 54 percent below that peak.”

Yeah, we know. We were there. Thanks.

St. Pete Times: Home building activity, confidence drop in unison; Tampa area home sales post July rebound