St. Joe, the state's top corporate land baron with 638,000 acres spread mostly across the Florida Panhandle, suggests the real estate market, at least in its neck of the woods, might have bottomed.

“If we are in fact on the floor of the valley the question is, 'How wide is the valley?'’’ chief executive Peter Rummell said this morning in announcing the company made $32-million in profits the first three months of this year.

Helping its balance sheets in the first quarter of 2008, St. Joe sold 57,435 acres of its "non-strategic" rural land for $91-million. But its residential housing business has been in free fall. That side of the business brought in $30-million in early 2007 but only $9.8-million in early 2008.

Rummell said home and lots prices seem to have stabilized after deteriorating by 20- to 30 percent from their peaks in August 2005. The inventory of homes for sales has also stopped rising.

Rummell said the company's task is to "retrain buyers" that housing purchases can't be deferred forever.

"We have trained people to expect that price are going to be lower tomorrow than today if they just wait," he said. "So now people are going to have to learn that they’ve gotten to that point.”