Orlando Real Estate

So far there have been about 400 bank owned properties off the market in Orlando since Bank of America, JP Morgan and GMAC announced plans to halt foreclosures. Active listings have dropped from 2,176 to 1,928 in the last week, and pending sales have dropped from 2,102 to 1,952. Of course new listings come on the market and pending sales close all the time, but if you look back over the last several months the numbers of active and pendings have been fairly steady. The terminal number is in the closed sales, which I believe is already showing some effects of the foreclosure slow down.

Closed sales look to be a bit slower this month with only about 300 closed sales so far. I was looking for sales in the 2,400 to 2,600 range for the month, but now expect to see closer to only 1,800 closings this month. Already equity sales are outpacing REO's and it shows in the median price of the closing so far of $121,000. September's median sales price was only $105,000 and that was up 5% from August. This is just a temporary situation, and once the foreclosure process is cleaned up these properties will be coming right back on the market. If more lenders follow suit, we may see sales numbers cut in half, closer to what we saw back in 2008. That would not be good for the market. Of course if this becomes a prolonged situation, we can hope banks will start approving short sales.