Florida home construction growth 18 months away

The housing market will remain painfully slow for a few more years, but buyers will keep coming to Florida, and homes will keep going up.

This is according to a panel of local housing experts who spoke Thursday at a meeting of the Urban Land Institute's Tampa Bay chapter.

"We're about 12 to 18 months away from seeing big increases in building," said Tony Polito of Houston-based housing research firm Metrostudy. "But we have to compete against places we never had to before, like New Jersey."

More baby boomers are choosing to retire near their homes instead of traditional places like Florida, he said.

The Bay area has about 13,000 finished, vacant lots, Polito said, and it will take at least two years to work through them.

Some builders purchased lots after prices dropped during the downturn and now are finishing homes, he said.

But other builders are holding onto their lots until the market improves, said Jim Harvey, of Kolter Land Partners.

"Some lot owners just aren't going to sell," Harvey said. "They're sitting on market share and will start to develop over the next 12 months."

Mark Metheny of Lennar Homes said he's encouraged that buyers are starting to again request larger homes with more bedrooms. This is after recent buyers flocked to smaller inexpensive homes in recent years.

Younger buyers want to live closer to the urban core, but all the panelists agreed it will be a while before developers starting building in the city again.

"At the end of the day, it comes down to cost," Metheny said.

So many condominiums were built during the housing boom and are still vacant. Those have to be bought first, said Andrew Wright, of Franklin Street Financial Partners.

"The prices have now dropped to the high $100s and low $200s," Wright said. "People are buying now, but builders just can't afford to build those types of units for those prices."