Foreclosures filed in Lee County fell in March to 1,198 – down 16 percent from February and lower for the first time in recent memory than the number of public auction sales of foreclosed properties.
“It’s the first time we’ve truly disposed of more out the doors of the courthouse since it (the collapse of the real estate market) started,” said Jeff Tumbarello, director of the Southwest Florida Real Estate Investors Association, which issued a report Thursday on the month’s foreclosures.
There were 1,412 properties sold at public auction during the month, according to the report.
“This should have a decent net effect” at reducing the number of foreclosure lawsuits backlogged in the county courts. About 23,000 cases are working their way through the system.
Even with the slowing pace of foreclosures, however, the county’s real estate market is not headed for a dramatic recovery, said real estate broker Denny Grimes, owner of Fort Myers-based Denny Grimes & Co.
“There is not going to be a lightning bolt from heaven that will end our misery,” he said, although “There have been some encouraging signs.”
For one thing, he said, in a few areas the price of building a new home is close to being competitive with the cost of buying an existing one, probably a foreclosure.
Tumbarello said the number of foreclosures is clearly on the wane, and noted that last year 64.5 percent of home purchases were cash and 71 percent this year so far.
There have been 65,000 foreclosures since the boom ended in January 2006 and there are only 245,000 parcels of land in the county, he said. “At some point we can’t foreclose on the whole county.”
In other real estate news, preliminary statistics released Thursday by the Lee County Department of Community Development showed that permits for 51 single-family homes were pulled in the unincorporated county in March.
That’s up from 34 in February and 20 in March 2009, and it’s the most permits issued since there were 56 pulled in June 2008.
In other municipalities in the county, one permit was pulled in Fort Myers Beach, one in Sanibel and 21 in Bonita Springs. Numbers were not available Thursday for the cities of Fort Myers and Cape Coral.
Courtesy of Naples News