New home construction is picking up in Southwest Florida while demand is down.
A report by Metrostudy, a national housing research firm, shows the pace of move-ins has slowed, while the inventory of homes is growing.
Finished vacant inventory rose from 703 units in the second quarter to 728 in the third quarter of this year in [...]

Naples News By Tara McLaughlin
Investors have discovered a new market in the latest blow to homeowners and the building industry — houses built with Chinese drywall.
About 30 homes disclosed to contain the noxious drywall sold in Lee County this year.
Experts say the trend is likely to continue as sales close for about half their [...]

Wall Street Journal By Nick Timiraos
New data suggest that foreclosures are rising in more expensive housing markets.
About 30% of foreclosures in June involved homes in the top third of local housing values, up from 16% when the foreclosure crisis began three years ago, according to new data from real-estate Web site Zillow.com. The bottom one-third [...]

Naples News By LAURA LAYDEN
BONITA SPRINGS — It’s no deal for now for members of the Bonita Bay Club.
David Lucas, chairman of the Bonita Bay Group, has called off talks with a Turnover Committee that has been handling the negotiations for members trying to buy their golf club from the developer.

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 [...]

Wall Street Journal By William Bulkeley
Bonita Bay Group, once a premier developer of upper-crust golf communities in this upper-crust town, is on the verge of collapse. The company says it will be forced to file for bankruptcy if it has to refund $245 million in golf-club membership fees some homeowners are demanding, in a battle [...]

Florida Association of Realtors
Florida’s existing home sales rose in August — marking a full calendar year (12 months) that sales activity increased in the year-to-year comparison, according to the latest housing data released by Florida Realtors®.
Existing home sales rose 28 percent last month with a total of 13,850 homes sold statewide compared to 10,813 homes [...]

BY NANCI THEORET  Florida Weekly
Realtors and industry experts in Southwest Florida say we may be finally looking in the rear-view mirror as sales numbers rise in Collier, Lee and Charlotte counties and prices continue to plummet to a 10-year low.
H. Shelton Weeks, the Lucas Professor of Real Estate in the Lutgert College of Business at [...]

By LAURA LAYDEN Naples News
Summer has been hot for Naples Realtors.
August brought another busy month, with home and condo resales up nearly 40 percent.
A monthly report by the Naples Area Board of Realtors shows 545 total sales in August, up from 395 in the same month a year ago.
The report tracks Realtor sales made through the [...]

By LUKE MULLINS US News
As the housing market shows signs of stabilization, home buyers are seeing their leverage over sellers dissipate, according to a new report from Zillow, a real estate information service. The report found that, nationally, buyers paid an average of 3.3 percent—or about $7,000—less than final listing prices in July, which is a substantially [...]