Orlando’s existing-home sales fell from August to September, but prices rose, continuing a bouncy, years-long climb that still hasn’t hit the halfway point to a market peak reached more than a half-decade ago.
The midpoint price in the Orlando-area market was $125,000 last month, an increase of 4 percent from August and 11 percent from September 2011, according to a report released Monday by the Orlando Regional Realtor Association.
The August-to-September price increase mostly offset a $5,700 drop in the median price from July to August and was part of a mixed bag of indicators as the Orlando area continues working its way out of a real-estate downturn that began in 2005 and accelerated in 2007.
Dean Asher, president of Florida Realtors, the statewide trade group, said he expects prices to continue edging up. Just back from talks last week with real-estate investors in the United Kingdom, Asher said prices could get an even bigger boost if more financing becomes available for investors.
“I think it’s going to continue to trickle up a little at a time,” Asher said. “We will get a big bump when we get investor funding, … but if banks continue to release [foreclosure] inventory, it’s going to be hard to get momentum.”
About 600,000 houses statewide remain in Florida’s “shadow inventory,” which means those properties are in some stage of default or foreclosure but not yet listed for sale, Florida Realtors have estimated.
Members of the Orlando Regional Realtor Association completed 2,258 sales in September in the group’s core market, which consists primarily of Orange and Seminole counties. That was essentially unchanged from a year ago and a 16 percent drop from August.
“Our dip in sales is caused of a lack of inventory and not by a lack of buyers,” said Stephen Baker, chairman of the local association and a broker with Re/Max Central Realty of Lake Mary. “The demand is there.”
Another indicator that could suggest a softening in the recovery, however, is the local inventory of resale properties based on the current pace of sales, which grew from a three-month supply in August to a 3.6-month backlog in September. Still, both figures are far below the six-month supply that defines a market balanced between buyers and sellers.
The number of days it took to sell the average house also rose in September, to 84 days, compared with 79 days in August. And the difference between sellers’ average asking price and the average sales price dropped slightly, to 95.8 percent in September from 96.28 percent in August.
©2012 The Orlando Sentinel (Orlando, Fla.)
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