By SHANNON BEHNKEN The Tampa Tribune
Published: December 27, 2007
TAMPA – During the housing boom, prices in Miami and Tampa more than doubled, spurring builders and speculators to flock to the areas. Now, the two cities lead the nation in home price declines, and economists predict prices will continue falling through much of the new year.
In October, Miami and Tampa posted yearlong home price declines of 12.4 percent and 11.8 percent, respectively, according to Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller home price index, released Wednesday.
Those were the largest drops among 20 cities tracked by the index and were nearly double the national average of 6.1 percent. It was the 10th consecutive month the index showed price declines in Tampa.
“After 15 years of growth, the Florida markets are in a large downturn right now,” said Maureen Maitland, a vice president with S&P. “This is a reality check. Like stocks and bonds, home prices can’t go up forever.”
Even though home prices are falling, Maitland points out that 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.
“Unfortunately for sellers, prices could drop another 5 to 10 percent, and there is a real need for sellers to get aggressive with pricing,” said Mike Larson of Weiss Research in Jupiter.
The index tracks individual homes through repeat sales and takes a weighted average of the sales price differences for those homes. Some economists think the index more accurately reflects price trends than median prices reported by the national and state associations of Realtors.
See the full article here:
http://www2.tbo.com/content/2007/dec/27/na-tampa-home-price-fall-among-us-worst/
