Florida Market Update

Market Trends                                                     Last updated January 7, 2008
Source:  Reuters.com

"Florida is one of the leading states for job creation and

outperformed the rest of the country despite the housing market

meltdown," stated Fishkind. "The state's population growth also

slowed, but is still nearly greater than all of the other Southeastern

states put together. Florida has a very large and powerful economy

that has gone through a cyclical downshift, but it is still

outperforming compared to the rest of the nation."

   “The Fund's 2008 Real Estate Forecast shows that Orlando continues

to be the strongest residential real estate market in the state

because of its large share of fast-growing industries, such as

tourism, healthcare, education and defense manufacturing. Not all

markets in Florida mirror Orlando's resiliency, however. Miami-Dade is

currently going through the worst condominium bust cycle that Florida

has seen since 1975. Additionally, significant excess supply of

single-family homes in the Fort Myers and Cape Coral markets will not

begin to be absorbed until 2010.”

   "With Florida's real estate market, it is important to maintain

some perspective as recent reductions in home prices come after a very

lofty and unsustainable peak, and prices are still up considerably

compared to 30 years ago," explained Fishkind. "Florida has created a

tremendous amount of wealth and - despite many of the problems that

loose lending practices and subprime mortgages have caused - the state

now has the highest level of homeownership ever. The market has some

indigestion now, but housing markets will return to normal during the

next few years; the damage for some is significant, but in the

aggregate, Florida still had some significant economic gains."

Housing Market Indicators
Source:  Floridarealitors.org

• Florida existing home sales: -29%
• Florida existing condo sales: -20%
• Florida existing home median price: $222,100
• Florida existing condo median price: $192,400
• Florida consumer confidence: 77
• National existing home sales: 6.3%
• National existing home median price: $205,700
• National (Freddie Mac) mortgage rate: 6.14 %