During the 2016 Florida Real Estate Trends event last week attended by about 400 Realtors, speakers of the said event pointed out that the Florida real estate industry will continue to ride the momentum gained by the real estate market by the end of 2015 until the later part of 2016.
"Florida is positioned to become one of the hottest spots in the country with rising demand, positive gains in recovery, really good fundamentals and positive momentum," said Jonathan Smoke, chief economist of Realtor.com. "Fundamentally, we are experiencing a market with not enough to sell. We are forecasting slightly better growth for construction and new home growth, but still not to the usual supply, which is putting pressure on the existing home supply (and existing home prices). On Realtor.com, every single month in 2015 had fewer inventories, and inventory was moving more rapidly - and we're seeing the same in January 2016."
Smoke tackled the national housing outlook for the coming year and said that the housing industry in Florida is pretty much back to its normal levels.
"For homebuyers, this is quite literally the year to buy a home - and the same is true for sellers who want to sell and buy another home," added Smoke. "This should be our best year since 2006. It is now cheaper to buy a home than rent in 77 percent of counties in the U.S."
In the press release of Florida Realtors in PR NewsWire, Dr. Brad O'Connor, chief economist for Florida Realtors, said that Florida's real estate sector will continue to experience growth and positive momentum in the coming months. He also stated that they are expecting an 8-10 percent increase in home sales and about five percent rise in home prices in 2016.
"2015 was a very good year for both home and condo sales," said O'Connor, who noted that as of December, statewide median prices have increased (year-over-year) for 49 months in a row. "The estimated Florida shadow inventory is slowly but surely disappearing. We're down to about 200,000 non-listed but potentially in foreclosure homes (the so-called shadow inventory). Negative equity loans are down to below 20 percent."
The 2016 Florida Real Estate Trends were sponsored by the Miami Association of Realtors®, Realtors® of Greater Fort Myers & Cape Coral, and BB&T Bank.
