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Home Prices Tumble 18% Locally

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By JACOB SCHNEIDER

The Tampa Tribune

Published: August 15, 2008

TAMPA - Median home prices in the Tampa metropolitan area and 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 year-ago period, the National Association of Realtors said Thursday.

The median home price - the point at which 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 year-ago period, $222,700, the Realtors group said.

Nationwide, the median price fell 7.6 percent in the second quarter to $206,500.

The Tampa Bay area wasn't the hardest-hit region in Florida.

The median price dropped 19.3 percent in the Miami metropolitan area, and 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, the National Association of Realtors reported.

Sales were up 18 percent in Nevada compared with 2007, as the median price 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 plunged by 30 percent or more, according to data from the Realtors group.

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."

Meanwhile, foreclosures continue to soar.

Foreclosure listing service RealtyTrac said it had more than 750,000 foreclosed homes in its database of properties for sale, equal to about 17 percent of the 4.5 million U.S. homes that were up for sale in June.

Nationwide, more than 272,000 homes received at least one foreclosure-related notice in July, up 55 percent from about 175,000 in the same month last year and up 8 percent from June, RealtyTrac said. That means one in every 464 U.S. households received a foreclosure filing last month.

As reported in the Tribune on Thursday, Florida now ranks third in the rate of foreclosures nationwide.

July's numbers show that one in every 186 residential properties in Florida received either a notice for mortgage default, auction sale or bank repossession, RealtyTrac said.

For metropolitan areas, RealtyTrac said the Tampa area ranked 27th nationwide in July. There was one foreclosure filing for every 219 households, the company said.

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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