Naples Area June Market Summary

This is the overall market summary for June published by NABOR:

Comment
While this picture conveys very clearly the strength of the market I do not find the detail particularly helpful as it combines all types of property – from single family to condo.

I will publish detailed reports by sector and by area this coming Saturday. Meanwhile, here are links to the preliminary reports I have already published for June: (more…)

The US is 3.8 Million Homes Short

The U.S. housing market needs nearly 4 million single-family homes to meet the nation’s demand, according to a new analysis from Freddie Mac. The 3.8 million shortfall marks a 52% increase in the housing shortage since 2018.

“This is what you get when you underbuild for 10 years,” says Sam Khater, Freddie Mac’s chief economist. “We should have almost four million more housing units if we had kept up with demand the last few years.”

Lawrence Yun, chief economist of the National Association of REALTORS®, has been among real estate economists leading the calls over the last few years for greater inventory and more homebuilding to meet demand. “We need to build more homes,” Yun told NPR, adding that since the housing crisis more than a decade ago, homebuilders have been building too few homes.

The housing shortage mixed with strong buyer demand since the pandemic is prompting home prices to rise rapidly. The median existing-home price for all housing types in February was $313,000, up 15.8% compared to a year earlier, according to the National Association of REALTORS®.

Click here to read the article. (more…)

Boom times ahead for Lee and Collier Counties

THOUGH THE PANDEMIC IS FAR from over in Florida, economic development directors and other economic experts in four counties forecast a boom: Each county will see at least $1 billion in development over the next two years and the creation of 2,000 jobs, according to this Florida Weekly article.

At Southwest Florida International Airport, things are looking up. Construction continues on a new $80 million Airport Traffic Control Tower. Meanwhile, the $280 million, 200,000-square-foot expansion of the airport terminal, a project that had been deferred for a year due to the impact of the pandemic, will be bid this month, said Ben Siegel, executive director for the Lee County Port Authority.

Passenger traffic may be down, but the airport is No. 1 among the top 50 airports in the country in recovery, he said. The airport has recovered about 60% of its pre-COVID traffic, more than any other airport in the nation. From the airport standpoint, “we are optimistic,” Mr. Siegel said.

In Lee County, $2 billion in economic development and 6,500 jobs are expected in the next two years, all in one booming development area, said John Talmage, Lee County Economic Development director. (more…)

Want to Sell Your Home as Quickly as Possible? Here’s How to Be Proactive About Making That Happen

Image by mynemesis2011 from Pixabay

If you’re anticipating putting your home on the market soon and want to sell it as quickly as possible, you’re probably thinking that the best way to accomplish this is to accept a major drop in price. Although it’s true that price points can affect how quickly a property sells, you don’t have to dip much, if anything, below market value to facilitate a fast sale as long as you live in an area with a moderately healthy real estate market. Following are five proactive ways you can help your upcoming home sale go quickly. (more…)

Naples market on fire in February

The February 2021 Market Report, released by the Naples Area Board of REALTORS® (NABOR®), which tracks home listings and sales within Collier County (excluding Marco Island), marks the last month of comparative activity before the pandemic shuttered the global economy in March 2020. That said, overall closed sales of existing homes in Naples for February increased 62 percent to 1,307 closed sales from 807 closed sales in February 2020.

Buyers are scooping up the available inventory of homes in all geographic locations within Naples almost as fast as they come onto the market. Inventory fell 68.8 percent in February to 2,224 homes from 7,127 homes in February 2020. (more…)

Goodbye sub 3% mortgages

It was only last July that the 30-year Fixed Rate Mortgage (FRM) dropped below 3% for the first time and this week it moved back above 3% again, following the direction of the 10-year Treasury Note (10T).

Mortgage rates (more…)

Where have all the sellers gone?

As I read this New York Times article: Where have all the houses gone? my mind went to Yogi Berra’s line of “it’s deja vu all over again” as I checked my files and discovered that this will be my 5th article with this title – and the first was written in 2013.

Let’s look at the what and the why.

First, the what. This chart shows that inventory has plummeted across the country:

Housing Inventory

The why (more…)

It’s 80 degrees in Florida…

In this weekend’s Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan wrote:
“In the past year the owners of great businesses found how much can be done remotely.
They hadn’t known that!
They hadn’t had to find out.
They don’t have to pay that killer rent for office space anymore.
People think it will all snap back when the pandemic is fully over but no, a human habit broke; a new way of operating has begun. People will come back to office life to some degree, maybe a significant one; not everything can be done remotely; people want to gather, make friends, instill a sense of mission; but it will never be what it was.
The Partnership for New York City reports 300,000 residents of high-income neighborhoods have filed change-of-address forms with the U.S. Postal Service. You know where they are going: to lower-tax and no-income-tax states.

A recent report suggested that 850 people per day will move to Florida for the next 5 years as they seek “the weather, lifestyle and tax benefits” offered by Florida. (more…)