When will we recover?  

 Each month we look at Cape Coral single family homes sales and are frequently asked how long this market is going to stay like this. Many agents will look at current month sales rate and calculate how many months inventory exists.  That only works if additional homes were not coming onto the market. It is much like baling out a boat full of water. It isn’t just how much water is in the boat or how quickly you can bale, it also greatly depends on how much new water in flowing in. In our market, we get a lot of quarter to quarter variation in sales, so to predict the future it is best to look at trends over the past year.  With a 12 month look at the rate our market has reduced inventory, we see an average inventory drop of 65 homes per month.  With today’s inventory that is about five and half year’s worth.  It could be more or less but that will depend on how much of the newly used term “shadow inventory” homes exist. There are most likely 10000 – 20000 homes which need to eventually make it to market.  Looking at the history, it would appear we were down to about 40 months last summer as our sales peaked.  Sales, although still strong, have not been high enough to overcome new listings in MLS. As a result, we now calculate, again based on 12 month rolling average, 66 months of inventory. The chart below shows our months of inventory when calculated as a rolling 12 month absorption rate and what our current trend is.

Steve Koffman Broker/Associate

Century21 Sunbelt Realty, Inc

239-443-2463  Steve@koffman.com

Our evidence of off water homes median prices shows we most likely have reached the bottom of our price decline and may be on the long road to recovery.  In November in Cape Coral we closed 415 homes which continues the very strong trend of past 8 months. In addition, there are 1720 pending of the 4017 active listings. Our agents definitely report that the quality of the homes at the bottom of the market has decreased. Eventually as the pace of new foreclosures entering the market slows, we will see inventories shrink and our prices begin upward trends.

 Steve Koffman

Broker/Associate

Century21 Sunbelt Realty

239-443-2463  Steve@koffman.com

At the end of November, our inventory of homes on the market sat at 4115 houses for sale or under contract. This was down 78 homes from the end of October. That is a small drop considering the 548 homes which sold in November. This happened because 470 homes came onto the market to replace the 548 sold. You hear often of “number of months supply”. Purely looking at sales for the month vs. inventory, you might think we have 7.5 months supply. However, if you consider we dropped only 78 homes in inventory last month, we would be looking at over 4 years to run out of homes. We are down 1100 for the year or about 100 homes per month.  One of the reasons for this is the continued release of bank owned foreclosed properties. The number of pending foreclosures still numbers over 20000.  

Steve Koffman

Broker/Associate

Century21 Sunbelt Realty, Inc

239-443-2463 Steve@koffman.com

Gulf access home sales remained strong in sales volume with 87 homes closing in October 2009. Our sales data does not show that we have reached a stable point yet in this market segment. The last three months median sales prices were between $225000 and $230000, which were down from previous months.  It is obvious buyers are looking for value. We saw gulf access homes sell for as little as $123000 and riverfront homes sell for $550000 to $700000. The median sale price on the river in 2005 was $1,300,000.

 Steve KoffmanBroker/AssociateCentury21 Sunbelt Realty Inc239-443-2447 Steve@Koffman.com

During the month of October, we had another strong sales month with 523 single family homes closing in Cape Coral. At the same time, a net 550 listings came on the market. This caused our inventory to go up very slightly to 4193 homes.  As our hot sales of homes under $100m continues, we see inventory in that market segment begin to shrink. Our current inventory stands at 8 months. 

  Distressed properties continued to be the biggest sellers with 221 reo and 143 short sale homes closing. 174 “normal” sales occurred. There are currently 1473 pending sales.

Steve Koffman

Broker/Associate

Century21 Sunbelt Realty, Inc

239-443-2463  Steve@Koffman.com

At the beginning of October, we had 4166 unsold single family in Cape Coral. This went down slightly from the 4229 homes at the beginning of September. Sales remained strong with 506 closings but 443 added listings came onto the market for a net reduction of homes. The 4229 homes is an 8.2 month supply.  

   Distressed properties still dominated the sales with 212 foreclosed and 140 short sales closing last month. There are almost 2000 homes under contract so we should continue to see a trend of reducing inventory.

 Steve KoffmanBroker/AssociateCentury21 Sunbelt Realty, Inc239-443-2463 Steve@Koffman.com

In August, home sales remained very strong with 594 closed MLS sales in August. This is the third highest sales month we have seen. In spite of the strong closings, inventory went up by 131 homes to 4229 homes.  What this means is that for the 594 homes which closed essentially 725 homes came on the market. A great number of these homes are REO’s as a result of foreclosures. We had previously seen 6 straight months of inventory decline.  

Steve Koffman

Broker/Associate

Century21 Sunbelt Realty

239-443-2463 Steve@koffman.com

Gulf Access

 Gulf access lots showed a reduction in the median sale price a buyer was willing to pay in August. Although sales remained somewhat steady with 21 closed sales, the median sale price went down from $60000 last month to $48000. The problem we have is inventory with the 654 unsold lots representing between 2 and 3 years sales. The $48000 is the lowest median price in the past 5 years. The gulf access market is far less REO’s than is home market as only 23 of the unsold listings are reo’s. The prices however are affected as 9 of the 21 closed sales were REO’s. 

Fresh Water

The torrid pace of non waterfront homes continued in July with 499 closed sales keeping the fifth straight month of nearly 500 or more sales. The sales were again driven by REO sales with 271 sales. Adding in the 92 short sales which closed, distressed properties accounted for 73% of sales. The median sales price rose for 3^rd consecutive month to $87400. Our agents find that good non short sale homes under $100000 and available to buy are getting fewer. All trends indicate that we may have reached the bottom of this segment of the market.  Well priced homes command multiple offers which indicate that there are still many buyers looking for bargains.  Those bargains are beginning to get more expensive.  

Steve Koffman

Broker/Associate

Century21 Sunbelt Realty, Inc

239-443-2463  Steve@koffman.com

Cape Coral gulf access homes sales remained strong in July with 79 closed sales. Although sales were down from the approximate 110 sales in May and June, sales were still up considerably from the average sales over past 5 years. The median sales value has been relatively stable over the past 8 months with July coming in at $270000. We may be seeing the bottom of gulf access median sale prices. The gulf access market is affected by foreclosed homes and short sales with 52% of sales being distressed reo or short sales. There still is healthy number of “normal” sales occurring at 48% of closed sales. We still have a high inventory of homes with approximately 10 month supply.   

Steve Koffman

Broker/Associate

Century21 Sunbelt Realty, Inc

239-443-2463  Steve@koffman.com