Tuesday, August 25 2009
Greetings,
There are some interesting statistics about Lee County Florida real estate activity. The number of closed house sales, year-to-date, through 8/17/09 is 50% higher than the same period in 2008. There have been over 10,000 properties sold in Lee County thus far this year! Only 25% of these were traditional sales with over half being foreclosures and the rest being short sales
The number of closed condo sales in Lee County thus far in 2009 has also jumped 33% over 2008. That brings it to close to 2500 condos sold so far in 2009! Just about 1/3rd of these were foreclosed properties.
It is great that these foreclosed and short sale properties are moving off the market. The sooner this happens, the sooner the market will start returning to some sort of normalcy.
On Sanibel Island we have not seen the same type of activity. There are many fewer properties in general and many fewer foreclosed properties. We have actually seen a 21% decline in house sales and a 20% decline in condo sales in 2009 vs. 2008. Because the great deals are not there, we have not had the activity that Ft. Myers, Lehigh and Cape Coral have seen. Sanibel prices too, while they have pulled back, we haven't seen the severe drop in prices that other parts of Lee county have experienced.
