Lee County market first-timers find prices are right

News Press By Dick Hogan

Investors also help drive home sales

Mike Lashbrook and his wife, Denise, rented and watched for two years before finally buying a house at today’s bargain prices.
It was well worth it, said Lashbrook, 42, who moved here from Fort Lauderdale to take a job with Gartner Group in Gateway.
He’s one of many first-time buyers who are snapping up homes in Lee County and driving a sales pace close to twice what it was a year ago, experts say.  The Florida Association of Realtors released statistics Thursday showing 1,252 existing single-family homes in the county were sold in August with the help of a Realtor — down from a record 1,570 in July but 83 percent more than the 684 in August 2008.

Many of the purchasers these days are investors who pay cash then rent out the houses while they wait for prices to go back up.
At the top of the market in late 2005, investors also were prevalent, but typically bought intending to flip the houses in a few weeks or months. That helped feed the sharp rise and subsequent crash in home prices in 2006.
Sixty percent of buyers are now paying cash locally, said Steve Koffman, a real estate broker with Century 21 Sunbelt in Cape Coral.   Of the remainder, he said, many are first-time buyers such as the Lashbrooks — drawn by lower prices and an $8,000 federal credit.  For the Lashbrooks, it all adds up.

“We got married two years ago, we wanted to start a family and Southeast Florida’s probably not the best place to do that,” Mike Lashbrook said.

They moved here but felt the price of housing was artificially inflated.

They decided to wait.

“We’ve been working with Debbie for going on almost a year,” Lashbrook said of Debbie Martin, their Century 21 Sunbelt agent.

He watched the list price on the house he wanted fall from $265,000 to $225,000 to $200,000 to $175,000 and, finally, to $125,000.

By that time, the low prices had brought a lot of competition.

“Investors were coming out of the woodwork,” Lashbrook said.

He offered $132,500 to make sure he got the house, but found he was being outbid.
But the top bidder lost interest and the Lashbrooks had their new home.

As competition has heated up to buy available houses, the number of homes for sale has steadily dwindled: There were 11,258 listed in August compared to 16,509 a year earlier, according to Realtors Association of Greater Fort Myers and the Beach statistics.

Builders say that with so many existing homes for sale at low prices, it’s generally impossible to compete by putting up a new house.

As a result, experts say, the home construction industry won’t revive until the inventory of existing homes is absorbed.

Nationally, home resales dipped unexpectedly last month, falling 2.7 percent from a month earlier, reversing steady monthly gains since April, the National Association of Realtors said Thursday.

Most economists, however, called the drop temporary and said they expected sales to strengthen later this fall.

Compared with a year ago, home sales are up 3.4 percent, and the inventory of unsold homes has been whittled down to an 8.5 month supply at the current sales pace. That’s the lowest level in more than two years.

Nationwide, sales fell to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.1 million in August, from a pace of 5.24 million. That surprised analysts, who had expected sales to rise to an annual pace of 5.35 million, according to Thomson Reuters.