Florida’s housing market has been seeing great development in the recent past, even though this recovery process paused in October. According to Florida real estate agents and builders across the state, the underlying trend of recovery is still improving despite October’s setback.
The October setback for Florida’s housing market
Prices and sales were slowly scraping their way back to normality from the housing market collapse. The lower interest rates were doing well to lure buyers looking for their first home. Price appreciation was also doing a great job to boost move-up purchases from buyers who could sell existing homes that were bought in the last few years, without incurring any losses.
However, October presented a few obstacles in this steady recovery process. The partial shutdown of the government that lasted for two weeks seemed to have affected the confidence of consumers. The recent spike in flood insurance costs also hit the desire for customers to buy homes in coastal communities. Along with these reasons, seasonal trends of home-buying injured the number of sales when compared to the buoyant market in summer. Even though sales percentages were up from last October, the pace was slower than a 36% year-to-date growth recorded by the Florida area president of David Weekly Homes.
The housing market is recovery still recovering strongly
Recovery had taken a rapid and noticeable growth spurt in May, though October made itself a nuisance due to dramatic cost spikes in insurance as federal subsidies fell away. There were insurance bills that topped $10,000 which easily scared off prospective buyers. Such insurance bills effectually took away a large provision of inventory from the market. However, even though October was regarded as a small “hiccup” in the recovery progress, buyers are now focusing on newer homes that are less affected by these insurance premium increases. Thanks to this, November sales were off to quite a good start.
Price appreciation has started to bring move-up buyers and sellers back onto the market as their home equity returned. One-time homeowners that were subject to Orlando short sales and foreclosure have now repaired their credit enough to enable them to buy again. Even though it is quite normal for the market to dip at this time of the year, the government shutdown did not help. The biggest problems that are being faced right now are the job markets and consumer confidence. Builders are also not producing as fast as they once did. However, there are many Orlando realtors that remain very optimistic concerning the industry.
