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Housing rebound slowly building

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BY KEVIN WIATROWSKI

THE TAMPA TRIBUNE

Published: February 6, 2009

Despite all the grim housing news these days, there are flashes of silver among all the dark clouds hanging over Pasco County.

Even as housing construction continues to inch along in Pasco, some real estate agents report getting multiple offers on existing houses. In the heart of Pasco, new houses soon will start going up again in the Connerton project.

The county ended 2008 having issued slightly more than 1,100 building permits for single-family houses, an 84 percent drop from the peak of the boom years. The 2008 number was the lowestsince the early 1990s.

The builders who got permits included many of the same corporate players who flooded the market with houses in 2005 and 2006, though the volume of houses under way now is significantly smaller.

As it has in the past, Lennar led the list of corporate builders, putting up 56 houses in 2008, most of them in its Concord Station project in Land O' Lakes. Also on the list were Standard Pacific, M/I Homes and KB Homes, companies that continue to build in some of the county's nicest subdivisions.

Amid the oversupply of existing houses - thousands of them lost to foreclosure in recent years - deals continue to close. The numbers pale in comparison to the boom years, but with the right combination of good credit and savvy pricing, buyers and sellers are finding each other.

County records show that slightly more than 7,000 single-family houses changed hands in 2008, less than half the number during the speculation-heavy days of 2006. Nearly 3,000 of those were at or above the county's estimated market value.

"The people who are in the market now are serious," said Kathy Britton, a broker in Dade City. "We are seeing multiple offers again, usually on properties that are priced correctly or below market and are in good condition."

The drop in sales has driven many less experienced real estate agents out of business, leaving old hands such as Britton and others who know how to close a deal.

"We're looking to loan money every day," said Ralph Cumbee, Pasco regional president of First Community Bank of America. "The problem is that people who qualify are fewer."

Cumbee said his bank's loan volume has dropped to a quarter of 2006's levels. Equity losses have made refinancing nearly impossible for homeowners tempted by historically low interest rates.

"Frankly, what we gained in the last eight years is virtually gone," Cumbee said.

There still are ways to get people in houses. Britton and Cumbee recently closed deals using the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Housing Service program to back loans for first-time buyers.

The USDA backed nearly triple the number of loans nationally in 2008 compared with 2007, said spokeswoman Dale Henshall.

Sarasota-based builder Taylor Morrison has begun building cottage-style houses this year in The Gardens section of Connerton. The company is nearly finished building three spec houses, hoping to lure buyers looking for newly constructed units, said Connerton President Stew Gibbons.

"There's a difference between buying new and buying poorly kept foreclosures," Gibbons said. "Most of the people we've been talking to have no interest in foreclosures."

The Taylor Morrison houses will be smaller than the Connerton residences that preceded them. They'll also be cheaper, running about $170,000, according to the company's sales information.

"In the peak, builders built toward the higher end," Gibbons said. "This is a product that's within the range we've always anticipated."

As another carrot to potential housing purchasers, Connerton opened its Club Connerton community center late last year.

So far, most of the people visiting Connerton have been looking, not buying. But Gibbons said his office saw 20 shoppers in the second week of the month, compared with half that number the week before.

"That's a little more than this time last year," he said.

Like many people in the Suncoast housing market, Gibbons and Britton continue to look for the light at the end of a long dark tunnel.

"In my experience," Britton said, "the only way we know where the bottom was is when we're going uphill."

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