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Median Home Prices Continued Slide In 2nd Quarter

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By JACOB SCHNEIDER

The Tampa Tribune

Published: August 14, 2008

Median home prices in the Tampa metropolitan area and indeed other Florida metro areas continued their slide in the second quarter.

In the Tampa metro area, which includes Clearwater and St. Petersburg, median home prices fell 18.8 percent in the second quarter of this year, compared with the second quarter of 2007, the National Association of Realtors said today.

The median home price -- the point where half the homes sold for more and half for less -- for existing single-family homes in the Tampa Bay region fell to $180,800. That is more than $40,000 less than the median price in the second quarter of 2007 of $222,700, NAR said.

Home prices in Tampa have been hit much harder than the national average. Nationwide, the median price fell 7.6 percent in the second quarter to $206,500.

The Tampa Bay area was not the worst hit metro region in Florida.

Median prices dropped19.3 percent in the Miami metropolitan area, and prices in the Cape Coral-Fort Myers area saw a 33.1 percent median price decline in the quarter.

Median home prices fell in more than three-quarters of U.S. cities in the second quarter, the latest sign of the breadth of the housing market decline, according to new data.

Nevertheless, home sales rose in areas where the market is flooded with foreclosures, indicating that borrowers are taking advantage of steep discounts.

Nevada and California, battered by a housing market bust, were the only states to show sales gains in the second quarter compared with a year earlier, according to a report by the National Association of Realtors.

Sales were up 18 percent in Nevada, compared with 2007, after median prices fell by nearly 24 percent in the Las Vegas area. Sales in California were up 3.7 percent. Prices in Los Angeles, Riverside and Sacramento have plunged by 30 percent or more, according to the NAR's data.

In recent months, the biggest home sales gains "have been in some of the markets with the steepest and fastest price drops," said Lawrence Yun, the trade group's chief economist. "Buyers in these areas are responding to deeply discounted home prices."

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report. Reporter Jacob Schneider can be reached at (813) 259-7850 or jschneider@tampatrib.com.

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