Redington Shores, North Redington Beach, Redington Beach, and Madeira Beach.
Listings of single family homes appear to have peaked in the last few months. Although there were only two closing last month home purchases took and unexpected and most welcome jump to thirteen and the highest level in over a year. With 213 homes for sale it will still take over 16 months to clear up the current listings. We are still solidly in a buyers market and sellers need to price and market aggressively in today's market in order to successfully sell there home.
Buyers currently have over 50% more inventory to choose from so pricing and exposure are the key factors in successfully selling your home. The average asking price on listings $768,000 has dropped steadily over the last year and is now 25% below a year ago. The average sale price of $407,000 continues its downward slide and is now down 27% vs. a year ago.
The local beach condo market is suffering from the effects of the last several years of excessive and rapid expansion. Builders continued to expand believing that if they built, buyers would follow, when in fact 30% of their buyers were flippers. Once things slowed down the flippers turned sellers and we now have over 6 years of inventory on hand at the current sales pace. We are however experiencing a slow down in projects and many are being deferred or canceled so things may not be as bleak as they appear. We expect the sales pace of existing condos to pick up in the last half of the year, given that Florida continues to offer what people want, a great place to live, a wonderful climate, world class recreation and leisure activities and expanding job opportunities, .
The average asking price on condos is roughly the same as a year ago, while the average sales price on condo sales actually shows a big increase over a year ago. We attribute this to the fact that today's buyers are taking advantage of the big developer incentives being paid to liquidate units and purchasing higher priced new construction instead of the older lower priced units. We estimate that individual condo prices, just like single family home prices are actually down 25% vs. a year ago.
The fed continues to leave rates unchanged leaving mortgage rates range bound The 30 year fixed currently stands at 6.15%. Our new state government has mandated insurance reductions of 15 to 25% and has now turned its attention to property taxes. It's not the big fix but at least they're moving in the right direction to solve some of the problems that have plagued Florida Real Estate over the last several years.
