Housing slump spares few Pinellas neighborhoods

In the prolonged housing slump, few neighborhoods in Pinellas County have been immune to falling prices and sales. Single-family home sales are off about 75 percent from their peak in late 2004, dragging overall prices down about 10 percent from their highs in 2005-2006. An analysis of about 60,000 home sales between 2004 and 2008 — from Tierra Verde to Tarpon Springs — shows that some neighborhoods have sunk beneath the waves while others have trimmed sails and weathered the typhoon. Low- to moderate-income places like Bartlett Park and Highland Oaks in St. Petersburg and southeast Clearwater recorded home price declines of about 40 percent from the peak. But higher-than-average price declines are also the scourge of upper-income enclaves like Venetian Isles and Snell Isle, where the median home price has dropped from about $1-million to less than $600,000 this year. A tiny handful of neighborhoods — Lake St. George in Palm Harbor and Historic Oldsmar, for example — have largely ducked housing depreciation. Another bunch have suffered only modest drops. Euclid-St. Paul, northwest of downtown St. Petersburg, shows a 4 percent dip.

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