Home Prices Slip Sliding Away

The Tampa Bay area's once red-hot real estate market continued to cool this year, even exceeding some economists' gloomiest predictions. During the housing boom, Bay area home prices skyrocketed nearly 140 percent, with the average home price peaking at $237,800 in August 2006. They held steady during most of 2006, when prices were falling in other parts of the country. But the Bay area's real estate market was thrust into the national spotlight in 2007 when the Tampa metro area posted an 11.1 percent yearlong decrease in home prices during September - the worst in the nation. In October, the most recent month for which data were available, the median price for existing, single-family homes fell to $222,100, an 8 percent drop from October 2006.

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Don't bet the house on a 2008 rebound

As unappetizing as Tampa Bay area real estate was in 2007, look for additional helpings of glop in 2008. The new year will be one in which we continue to do penance for the sin of housing over exuberance. Keep an eye on:

PROPERTY TAX REFORM: We get to vote Jan. 29 on what the state calls tax reform. The highlights: Double the homestead exemption - that part of your home's value you don't pay taxes on - from $25,000 to $50,000. And let people take their capped tax levels with them when they move, something called portability.

HOME SALES: It's hard to find anyone predicting that Florida real estate will recover in 2008. That doesn't mean homes won't sell. They will. By the thousands. But expect more cries of "crises" and "slumps" as monthly sales reports show declines from the weak figures of 2007.

CREDIT: The recent mortgage sales pitch - no income, no credit, no problem - has gone the way of cigarette commercials touting cancer sticks as "cool and satisfying."

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Tampa Area Home Sales Outpace State

More homes in the Tampa Bay metro area are selling than in any other area in Florida. During the first 10 months of the year, 20,810 existing homes sold in the metropolitan area of Tampa, St. Petersburg and Clearwater. The only other metro to come close was Orlando, at 14,901. Even more stunning: in October, real estate agents in the Tampa area sold 1,700 homes. In Miami, agents reported only 367 homes changed hands that month.

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US new home sales plunge 9 pct in November

Sales of new homes in the US plunged in November as tight lending conditions and consumer pessimism led to the worst rate in more than 12 years, new government data showed Friday. The Commerce Department reported that last month's new-home sales were down 9.0 percent to a seasonally-adjusted annual rate of 647,000 units, the lowest sales rate since 621,000 in April 1995. Analysts' consensus forecast was for a far more moderate slowdown of 715,000 units.

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The 10 Fastest Growing States

The 10 fastest-growing states in order are:

1. Nevada
2. Arizona
3. Utah
4. Idaho
5. Georgia
6. North Carolina
7. Texas
8. Colorado
9. Wyoming
10. South Carolina

Florida saw the sharpest fall off in population growth. Florida grew 1.07 percent, only slightly faster than the U.S. growth rate of 0.96 percent and the slowest growth rate in the state since 1990, making it the 19th fastest-growing state.

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Mortgage Rates Rise Following Bond Rates

The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage (FRM) averaged 6.17 percent with an average 0.5 point for the week ending December 27, 2007, up from last week when it averaged 6.14 percent as well. Last year at this time, the 30-year FRM averaged 6.18 percent.

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Tampa Home Price Fall Among U.S. Biggest

Even though home prices are falling, Tampa homes are still selling for 106 percent more than they did in January 2000, so the earlier people bought, the more appreciation they're seeing. That's little consolation, though, for some sellers who bought toward the end of the boom and are now finding their homes valued less than they paid for them.

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Housing Trouble Affecting Renters Too

It's tough being a Florida homeowner, beset by the triple threat of high property taxes, high insurance premiums and falling property values. But it's not easy being a renter, either. Florida has the largest percentage of renters spending 30 percent or more of their income on rent and utilities, according to the American Community Survey, which is conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. Financial advisers and the federal government advise against breaking the "30 percent rule." But 52 percent of Florida's 2.1-million renter households are doing just that, compared with 46 percent of renters nationally. In this somewhat dubious distinction, Florida is trailed by California, Massachusetts, Nevada and New York.

Renting costs

Median rents in the Tampa Bay area, including utilities:

Pinellas: $818/month

Hillsborough: $818/month

Pasco: $780/month

Hernando: $789/month

Citrus: $706/month

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How a development became a housing debacle

Then came 2002.

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Miami Surpasses Tampa For Worst Home Price Decline

U.S. home prices fell in October for the 10th consecutive month, posting their biggest monthly decline since early 1991, according to the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller home price index. The record 6.7 percent drop marked the 23rd consecutive month of price deceleration. Miami posted the largest decline among the 20 markets reviewed. Home prices in the Miami metropolitan area fell 12.4 percent in October compared with the same month last year, surpassing Tampa, Fla. as the worst-performing city. Tampa posted a year-over-year loss of 11.8 percent.

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Ft. Myers' Housing Bubble And How Bad It's Gotten

Southwestern Florida is in the midst of a gathering storm. It was here that housing prices multiplied first and most exuberantly, and here that the deterioration has unfolded most rapidly. As troubles spill from real estate and construction into other areas of life, this region offers what may be a foretaste of the economic pain awaiting other parts of the country.

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Bush signs bill to aid ailing homeowners

Americans who lose their home to foreclosure or bankruptcy no longer have to pay income taxes on any debt forgiven by the bank. A bill signed by President Bush yesterday voids the IRS practice of considering the bank’s write-off on the loan a taxable form of income for the family that already lost a home.

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After 5 Years, Citivest's Tower Adjacent to Tampa's Hyde Park Receives Approval

"It's about time," said Scott McLaren, attorney for Citivest Construction, which proposed building the 346-foot tower at Bayshore and DeSoto Avenue almost five years ago. The vacant 1 ½ -acre property is zoned to allow for high-rise development. The site is on the southern end of the Hyde Park Historic District, which is governed by the city's Architectural Review Commission. Neighbors have fought Citivest's plans and the project has been the subject of litigation for the past three years after the review commission denied issuing the certificate because the tower's height would be inconsistent with historic district design guidelines.

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Differences Over When Housing Will Fully Recover

The big question in the housing market is: How bad will it get? Depending on who’s guessing, the predictions – offered just in time for the new year – vary greatly but few are optimistic. A recent Economy.com report predicts home sales will hit bottom in early 2008, with housing starts hitting bottom mid-2008. But prices will continue to drop, and by early 2009 home prices will have fallen about 13 percent nationally from their peaks, according to the report. Prices will have fallen more than 15 percent if nonprice discounts to buyers are taken into account. Builders likely haven't seen the bottom of the market yet, according to James Hughes, dean of the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning & Public Policy at Rutgers University. "We certainly haven't hit bottom yet," Hughes suggests. "We may well be in uncharted territory here. Since the Great Depression, we haven't had a sustained national downturn like this." "Once we hit bottom ... we're going to stay there for awhile," at least in terms of new construction, predicted Richard F. Moody, chief economist of Mission Residential, a multifamily real estate investment firm.

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Building recovery predicted to skip Florida

The National Association of Home Builders released a tentatively optimistic report Thursday: New home construction should begin a slow recovery in the summer of 2008. Unless you live and work in Florida. In its year-end housing forecast, the Washington-based trade group predicted low interest rates and modest economic growth would encourage a national turnaround in 2008. But it exempted what it called "overheated markets" like those in Florida, California and Nevada. The glut is so bad in the Tampa Bay area, it would take close to three years, at the current sales pace, to clear away the inventory.

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Mortgage Rates Up Slightly For Second Week As Housing Market Shows Weakness

The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage (FRM) averaged 6.14 percent with an average 0.4 point for the week ending December 20, 2007, up from last week when it averaged 6.11 percent as well. Last year at this time, the 30-year FRM averaged 6.13 percent.

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Retiree Flow To Florida Slows

In 2006, Florida attracted an estimated 13 percent of people 56 and older who moved across state lines. That was down from about 16 percent in 2005. Figures from 2000 show that Florida received 19 percent of migrating seniors. Until 2006, Florida had led the nation in the "net migration" of people 56 and older (people moving into the state minus people moving out). However, in 2006 Florida fell to fourth in the nation in net migration of seniors, after Texas, Georgia and North Carolina. Florida fell because fewer seniors moved into the state last year than in previous year, while more seniors left the state.

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Pinellas County Votes For A Return To Neighborhood Schools

The Pinellas School Board on Tuesday officially stepped away from a decades long commitment to integration, voting 5-2 on a plan that will guarantee all students a "close-to-home" school. The decision, a landmark moment in a saga that began with a 1964 federal lawsuit, creates a system that is all but blind to students' race. The only exception is a pledge that the district will try hard to create diversity where it can -- largely through special programs such as magnet and fundamental schools, which tend to draw a racially diverse mix of students.

# Proposed Elementary School Map (PDF)

# Proposed Middle School Map (PDF)

# Proposed High School Map (PDF)

US foreclosure filings up 68 pct in Nov.

U.S. homeowners increasingly failed to keep up with their home loan payments in November, as the number of foreclosure filings surged 68 percent nationwide compared with the same month a year ago, according to a mortgage research company. In all, 201,950 foreclosure filings were reported last month, compared with 120,334 in November 2006, Irvine-based RealtyTrac Inc. said Wednesday. Last month's filings fell 10 percent from October's 224,451. The last time there was a sequential drop in foreclosure filings was between August and September, when they fell 8 percent. Nevada, Florida and Ohio had the highest foreclosure filing rates in the country last month. Florida had one foreclosure filing for every 282 households. The state reported 29,238 filings last month, down more 3 percent from October, but up 212 percent from November last year.

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Housing Construction Hits 16-Year Low

Housing construction fell in November and single-family activity dropped to the lowest level in more than 16 years as a severe housing slump showed no signs of a turnaround. The Commerce Department reported that construction of new homes and apartments dropped by 3.7 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.187 million units. Construction of single-family homes fell by 5.5 percent to an annual rate of 829,000 units, the lowest level since April 1991, while multi-family construction was up 4.4 percent to an annual rate of 332,000 units. In a bad sign for future activity, the government reported that applications for building permits fell for a sixth straight month, dropping by 1.5 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.15 million units, the slowest pace for building permits since June 1993. The overall construction decline left home building 24.2 percent below the level of activity a year ago. Housing has been in a serious downturn for the past two years following five boom years in which sales and home prices soared.

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FHA May Take Over Troubled Mortgages

The Senate moved Friday against the worsening mortgage crisis, voting to make it easier for thousands of homeowners with ballooning interest rates to refinance into federally insured loans. The legislation, approved 93-1, would allow the Federal Housing Administration to back refinanced loans for borrowers who are delinquent on payments because their mortgages are resetting to sharply higher rates from low "teaser" levels. The Senate bill raises the maximum the FHA can insure in high-cost areas such as California and the Northeast from $362,790 to $417,000, the same level as loans backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The House would raise the maximum mortgage to $729,750 in high-cost areas, with the higher limit a point of contention between the House, Senate and the White House. The Senate bill would also lower the FHA down payment requirement from 3 percent to 1.5 percent, depending on an assortment of factors, and make it easier for FHA loans to be used to buy condos.

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Flood of foreclosures creates new business

Housed in a black glass tower in Tampa's West Shore business district, Mortgage Contracting Services specializes in the nitty gritty of home repossession. For about $15 an hour, employees are paid to handle such messy tasks as "eviction scheduling and completion," "boarding and reglazing broken windows" and "debris removal." "We've been growing exponentially," said marketing director Kerry Wilcox, who touts the number of employees at 175. "But our CEO doesn't want publicity. Doing foreclosures doesn't make people very happy with you." A whole Foreclosures-R-Us industry has popped up, like wildflowers on the grave of a dead housing market, to service the Tampa Bay area's real estate meltdown.

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Home prices show big drop

According to several national housing experts, when the Tampa Bay area's topsy-turvy housing market finally rights itself, our homes will be worth about 25 percent less. November's home sales price declines could be a pretty good down payment on that prediction. The median sales price of single family homes in Pinellas County dropped 14 percent year over year. Prices fell to $185,000 in November from the $215,000 recorded a year earlier. Pasco County came out even worse, showing an 18 percent median home price decline, to $170,000 last month from $208,000 in November 2006. It was the worst year-to-year home price drop in at least a decade, though statistics don't go back far enough to prove whether it rivals declines in earlier housing slumps.

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Average Mortgage Rate Climbs Back Over 6% On Employment Data

The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage (FRM) averaged 6.11 percent with an average 0.5 point for the week ending December 13, 2007, up from last week when it averaged 5.96 percent as well. Last year at this time, the 30-year FRM averaged 6.12 percent.

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IRS ruling: State grants for hurricane mitigation are tax-free

Florida Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink announced yesterday that grants awarded to homeowners through the My Safe Florida Home (MSFH) program are not taxable income and do not have to be reported when filling out federal income taxes. CFO Sink made the announcement after receiving a Letter Ruling from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) stating that MSFH grants will be excluded from “gross incomes for federal income tax purposes.”

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NAR: Worst is over – existing-home sales to trend up in 2008

Existing-home sales are projected to trend up in 2008, with pending home sales showing a slight near-term rise, according to the latest forecast by the National Association of Realtors® (NAR). However, a recovery for new-home sales is unlikely before 2009. Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist, says the worst part of the credit crunch has already worked its way through the data. “The unusual mortgage disruptions that peaked in August were clearly seen in lower home sales that were finalized in September and October, so the market was underperforming,” he says. “Now that mortgage conditions have improved, some postponed activity should turn up in existing-home sales over the next couple of months, and I expect sales at fairly stable to slightly higher levels.” The Pending Home Sales Index (PHSI), a forward-looking indicator based on contracts signed in October, increased 0.6 percent to an index of 87.2 from an upwardly revised reading of 86.7 in September. It was the second consecutive monthly gain, but still 18.4 percent below the October 2006 index of 106.8. “The broad trend over the coming year will be a gradual rise in existing-home sales, but because sales are exceptionally low in the final months of 2007, total sales for 2008 will be only modestly higher than 2007,” Yun says.

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Realtors Group Says Housing Market Stabilizing, Upgrades Outlook

Bucking conventional wisdom, a trade group for real estate agents on Monday said the battered housing market is on the verge of stabilizing and inched up its outlook for 2007 and 2008 home sales. The revised monthly forecast from the National Association of Realtors, which came after nine months of downward revisions, calls for U.S. existing home sales to fall 12.5 percent this year to 5.67 million - the lowest level since 2002. Last month, the association predicted 5.66 million existing homes would be sold this year, down from 6.48 million last year. The Realtors' group also forecast sales will rise slightly in 2008 to 5.7 million, up from last month's prediction of 5.69 million.

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Not all homes are slow to sell

Tips for quick sales

- Price your house competitively. You want to be at the lower end of the price range of homes for sale in your area.

- Clean and de-clutter. Buyers have a hard time looking past dirt and overcrowded rooms. Remove as many personal items as possible, including wedding photos and the kids' drawings on the fridge.

- If you have time and money to repaint and/or recarpet, use light, neutral colors.

- If it's in need of repair, get it fixed. Leaks, cracks and broken items are signs of deferred maintenance that scare off buyers.

- Spruce up the curb appeal with some flowers and well-kept lawn and hedges.

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Average 30 Year Mortgage Rate Drops Below 6%

The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage (FRM) averaged 5.96 percent with an average 0.4 point for the week ending December 6, 2007, down from last week when it averaged 6.10 percent as well. Last year at this time, the 30-year FRM averaged 6.11 percent. The 30-year FRM has not been lower since the week ending September 29, 2005, when it averaged 5.91 percent.

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Amount Of Equity That Homeowners Hold Is Plunging

Homeowners started losing hold of their homes years before spiking foreclosures and the housing slump slammed the economy. Piece by piece, some gave away their homes by tapping equity to take cash out to pay for cars, weddings and vacations. Others never owned one brick. During the country's most recent housing boom, the term "homeowner" became a misnomer as lenders offered 100 percent or more home financing to some buyers. Now, slipping home prices threaten to further erode the value of many Americans' single largest asset, curbing consumer spending and jeopardizing retirement assets.

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Entrepreneurs target distressed homeowners

With the declining real estate market and the ravages of subprime mortgages, an increasing number of homeowners are unable to make payments on homes worth less than they owe. But one man's problem is another's possibility. A new market is forming for those who buy and sell homes about to be taken back by banks. Sometimes this can help indebted homeowners while it profits business and even bails out banks. But those close to the market add notes of caution.

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What Buyers Need to Know to Get a Loan

In the wake of the credit crisis, lenders have become much pickier about whom they lend to. Here are some basic facts that will help potential borrowers understand what they face. The measurement that most lenders use to assess applicants' credit risk is the FICO score developed by Fair Isaac Corp. The score ranges from 300 to 850. There's not one FICO score. Buyers have three: one for each of the three credit bureaus, Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax. Each credit score is based on information the credit bureau keeps on file. Since credit bureaus don't share their data with one another, the three FICO scores may differ, sometimes by as much as 100 points.

The components of a FICO score are:

* Payment history: 35 percent
* Amounts owed: 30 percent
* Length of credit history: 15 percent
* New credit: 10 percent
* Types of credit used: 10 percent


A consumer with a 580 credit score might qualify under FHA requirements, but, generally, in order to qualify for a prime loan, a borrower must have a credit score above 620 for a conventional loan at all and above 720 for a loan at terms and rates most borrowers would consider desirable.

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Mortgage Rate Freeze Agreement Nears

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said Monday an agreement was near on a proposal to help thousands of at-risk homeowners avoid foreclosures by temporarily freezing their mortgage rates. One of the last remaining issues to be resolved, officials said, was the exact length of time the low-teaser rates will be frozen. Speaking at a national housing conference and in later interviews, Paulson expressed optimism that an agreement could be reached very soon, possibly before the end of this week. Paulson and federal regulators have been holding talks with some of the country's biggest banks, mortgage investors and consumer groups trying to strike a deal in an effort to prevent an avalanche of threatened foreclosures in the coming year from sinking the overall economy. An estimated 2-million subprime mortgages, loans offered to borrowers with spotty credit histories, are scheduled to reset to much higher levels by the end of 2008. Those resets will push the payment on a typical mortgage up by $350 per month, taking it from $1,200 currently to $1,550.

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Banks Stalling Foreclosures

The firm RealtyTrac said 9,126 properties in the Tampa Bay area entered the foreclosure pipeline between July 1 and September 30. RealtyTrac is generous about what counts as "foreclosures." We're talking late payments in most cases. Banks will repossess only a minority of these homes. Nevertheless, so great is their fear of loading their balance sheets with confiscated houses and condos, banks are doing everything short of handing out free toasters to a surprising number of deadbeat customers: rearranging payments, granting extra time and discounting debts.

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Panel revives the tax swap

A plan to replace some property taxes with a temporary increase in the sales tax is under review by the panel that has the power to put such an amendment directly on the November 2008 ballot – the Taxation and Budget Reform Commission. The idea by panel member Carlos Lacasa, a Miami attorney and former state legislator, is to give every homeowner a tax exemption worth half of their property’s market value. To cover the $12 billion that public schools would lose from the exemption, the state’s six-cent sales tax would increase by a penny. If placed on the ballot and approved by voters, the tax exemption would be phased in over two years and the one-cent tax would sunset after three years, forcing the state Legislature to find a way to come up with the money.

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