Housing market continues to show signs of improvement

Still, the rising prices reinforced views that the market has bottomed out.

“We
believe that the only mistake a buyer can now make is not to buy a
property in the Florida Keys,” wrote the Coldwell Banker Schmitt Real
Estate Co. in its quarterly newsletter.

The
statement was the strongest Coldwell Banker has made since the market
began spiraling down in 2006, owner Brian Schmitt said.

According
to Multiple Listing Service figures provided by the agency, the Upper
Keys median home price from January through March was $315,000, up 5
percent from the $300,000 average during the same months last year. The
median price is the number at which half of the residences cost more and
half cost less.

The average Upper Keys price took a
much larger leap of 24 percent, rising from $380,000 during the first
quarter last year to $472,000 during the first quarter this year.

MLS
data does not capture homes listed by owner, nor does it include homes
sold inside the gates of the Ocean Reef community on north Key Largo.

Various
types of Upper Keys residential properties experienced the first
quarter price increases, MLS data prepared by Tracy Larson of Century 21
Schwartz Realty show.

Prices went up on dry-lot homes, oceanfront homes and condos.

Canalfront
homes saw the steepest increases, jumping 42 percent, from $521,000
during January through March of 2011 to $741,000 this year.

“I believe our market is becoming more and more stable,” Larson wrote in an email last week.

Data
prepared by Realty World Freewheeler showed that among Upper Keys areas
where there were at least 10 residential sales, Lower Matecumbe Key
brought the highest average price at $832,000. The lowest average price,
at $338,000, belonged to the north half of Key Largo.

The
Upper Keys outperformed other areas of Monroe County housing market,
according to the Coldwell Banker analysis. Overall, the median Florida
Keys home price was $307,000 in the first quarter, down from last year,
but by less than 1 percent. Meanwhile, the average price Keyswide
increased 3 percent.

Still, not all the news was
upbeat for the Upper Keys market. The total number of home sales during
the first quarter was down 10 percent from last year, just as it was
throughout the Keys. And distressed properties still made up 30 percent
of the sales.

For-sale inventories also still pose a
problem. Though the backlog of properties on the market continues to
drop from a high point of 55 months in early 2008, inventory remains at
20 months, according to Coldwell Banker.

Analysts
say that in most areas six months is the threshold figure that is
indicative of a healthy housing market. But inventory tends to run
higher in places like the Keys, where owners of second homes make up a
larger portion of the market.

Russ Post,
broker/owner of Ocean Sotheby’s offices in Islamorada and Ocean Reef,
said high inventory levels continue to be a problem for lower end
properties. But he too said the overall outlook is positive.

Buyers, Post said, have become less fearful of a double-dip recession.

“They
have decided that’s not going to happen, and that while the economy’s
not great, it will slowly continue to claw its way back,” he said.

rsilk@keysnews.com