Testing Grounds The latest industry being outsourced to India is clinical drug trials. And any number of tragic things can happen on the way to your medicine cabinet.
Friday Night Rewind It doesn't matter which team you cheer for. We've got video previews of every high school football program in Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco and Hernando County.
What percentage of today's home sales in the Tampa Bay area are distressed sales? By distressed, we mean properties owned by the bank or being sold for less than mortgage value by delinquent homeowners.
You might be surprised by September's numbers: About a third of Hillsborough County's home sales are either bank sales or short sales. In Pinellas it's 22 percent, in Pasco 29 percent.
Realtors didn't start fully classifying properties as distressed until this summer, when the tug of the foreclosure-heavy real estate market became too strong to ignore.
How terrible is the tug? According to Tampa real estate consultant Home Encounter, banked-owned properties in September sold for only 62 percent of what nondistressed properties sold for.
Short sales — selling homes for less than their outstanding mortgages — collected higher prices. But they still earned less than properties sold through normal channels.
Distressed sales help explain the duration of the housing slump. More than 600 such properties were sold in the bay area in September alone. It helps explain why a typical house that fetched $215,000 a year ago now goes for about $170,000.
Distressed sales might also help us project a housing recovery. In Pasco County, based on September sales, the price difference between short sales and normal sales was narrow. That suggests Pasco's prices can't fall much more.
The gap was wider in Pinellas and Hillsborough counties. In Pinellas, short sales earned 87 percent of the price of regular sales. In Hillsborough, it was 84 percent. That indicates homeowners haven't felt the full drag from distressed properties.
Don't think the market's about to surge. Home Encounter predicts prices will crawl along the floor for a while before struggling upward in 2010 or 2011.
But it's never too soon to scan the horizon for fairer skies.
[Last modified: Oct 15, 2008 04:53 PM]
Comments on this article
by darren
Oct 15, 2008 4:53 PM
Please. We just need to calm down. Governor Palin and Senator McCain has the plan that will get us all out of this by the grace of our Lord. I pray for the day she becomes President Palin.
by coco
Oct 13, 2008 1:43 PM
I am so glad for once you did not include Sarasota in this article because homes are selling here on this side of the Bridge...no distress!!!
by tim
Oct 13, 2008 1:20 PM
This is what happens when 10's of thousands of people just say "screw it" when it comes to paying their bills.
by ll
Oct 13, 2008 11:29 AM
Good! Florida and Florida's allowing this greed,deserves it all.
by Brooke
Oct 12, 2008 9:22 PM
I am sure the financial genius Sarah Palin and her sidekick Johnny will turn this market around. Ha-Ha-Ha!!!!
by Snoz
Oct 12, 2008 9:22 PM
Great. The experts were saying we'd be out of it in 2009, now we're throwing it back to 2011! That's 3 years from now!
by Jim
Oct 12, 2008 6:33 PM
Do you have any other sources? Home Encounter seems to be the only guy you ever quote, and you qoute him as if he is the end all expert. I looked his company up. He has only been in business about a year. What kind of expert is that?
by Ronnie
Oct 12, 2008 6:11 PM
There is an arguement that investor are starting back into the real estate market because prices are down and there is no where else to put their money.
by LionelB
Oct 12, 2008 6:03 PM
House prices have been inflated by greed.
I understand that here, in Britain, a builder can sell one new house to cover the cost of building three! (including the land).
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