By DUANE MARSTELLER

Original Link:  Bradenton Herald, FL   06.24.09

June 24, 2009

MANATEE — The local housing market continued falling last month even as the Florida and national markets showed fragile signs of recovery, according to statistics released Tuesday.

While sales of existing single-family homes rose 16 percent statewide in May from the same month a year ago, it fell by 10 percent in the Sarasota-Bradenton market, the Florida Association of Realtors reported. The pace of U.S. home sales fell 3 percent from May 2008 but rose 1.9 percent from April 2009, the National Association of Realtors said.

Sarasota-Bradenton’s showing was third-worst statewide, continuing a recent trend where the local market struggled as Florida appears to be slowly pulling out of a prolonged slump. May was Florida’s ninth consecutive month of year-over-year sales gains.

Analysts weren’t surprised that Sarasota-Bradenton is lagging behind, saying the local market was among Florida’s most artificially inflated during the 2004-06 building boom.

“The rockets that rise the fastest, crash the hardest, and we’re seeing that over there” in Sarasota-Bradenton, said Jack McCabe of McCabe Research & Consulting in Deerfield Beach.

He said a combination of widespread overbuilding, speculation and use of adjustable-rate mortgages led to the local market’s rapid rise and subsequent tailspin. Add in “a fair amount of fraud,” and it’s unlikely local prices will reach bottom until next year, McCabe said.

The local median home sales price — the point at which half sold for more, half for less — fell by more than a third in the past year, hitting $156,600 in May, the Florida Realtors’ group said. It fell 29 percent to $144,400 in Florida, and by 16.1 percent to $172,900 nationally.

Prices have fallen as foreclosures, short sales and other distressed sales dominate the local and state markets. But Florida’s median price was the highest reported so far this year, which one analyst called a promising sign that the state’s market is stabilizing.

“What is new in this month’s data release is that we are seeing evidence of prices beginning to firm,” said Sean Snaith, director of the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Economic Competitiveness. “While one month of data does not a trend make, it is the first green shoot we have seen in some time as far as prices are concerned.”

Sarasota-Bradenton’s condominium market also kept going in reverse, with sales dropping 32 percent from May 2008’s level and the median price falling by 40 percent to $148,500, the state association said. Statewide, condo sales rose 32 percent while prices fell 38 percent to $113,400.

The national Realtors’ group said sales of existing U.S. homes, condominiums, townhouses and co-ops rose 2.4 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.77 million, from a downwardly revised pace of 4.66 million in April. The results were below analysts’ expectations. However, the number of unsold homes on the market at the end of May fell 3.5 percent to nearly 3.8 million. That’s a 9.6 month supply at the current sales pace, a drop that was “the best news in the report,” said Joseph LaVorgna, Deutsche Bank’s chief economist.