Your Central Florida Home's true worth: Who can tell these days?
One of the biggest mysteries in the region's tumultuous housing market these
days is: How much is that house worth?
Appraisers, real-estate agents,
buyers and sellers across Central Florida are in a quandary about whether to
include bargain-basement sales in the price mix when determining the value of a
nearby, comparable home.
"It's really causing havoc in the market right
now," said Les Simmonds, president of the Orlando Regional Realtor Association.
"Hopefully it will turn around as we go through inventory of foreclosures and
other distress sales. But I want to emphasize that could take some
time."
The confusion over local home values in a changing market is
compounded when it takes weeks — or even months — for actual sale prices to
reach government and commercial Web sites. One nationwide Internet sales site is
taking on that problem by rolling out next-day closing prices, with the hope
that it will draw potential customers by helping take some of the guesswork out
of determining the worth of nearby properties.
Realtor.com has started
posting sale prices the day after the transactions close in 22 U.S. markets —
including the Daytona
Beach area, parts of Brevard, the Miami area and Northeast Florida.
Picking list price 'an art'
"If you're trying to track
trends in your neighborhood, you can find out what homes sold for in 24 hours.
You don't have to wait 60 to 90 days," said Julie Reynolds, a spokeswoman for
the Web site, which serves as a national, consumer version of local Realtors'
well-known Multiple Listing Service. "With the rapidly changing market trends,
especially in Florida, it's an art to establish the right list price or the
right bid."
Current sales information also can affect homeowners who are
considering whether to sell or refinance their property, she said. The sales
information is available in the "Find Home Values" feature on Realtor.com's home
page.
Leah Selig, executive director of the Space Coast Association of
Realtors, said her group voted to disclose its members' sales-price information
to the public on a next-day basis to give the Realtors' Web site an advantage
over competitors such as Zillow.com, which provides property listings and
estimated home values for houses throughout the country.
"Some of these
public sites are publishing data that is not always current or accurate," Selig
said. "And you've got consumers out there relying on that information when it's
really months old."
Zillow posts sale prices within about three weeks of
closings in most markets.
So far, the Orlando Realtor association, with
members throughout the region, hasn't embraced next-day reporting of sale
prices. The group voted against the idea about a year ago, noting that the
information typically becomes available on government Web sites within a few
weeks of a closing, Simmonds said.
But he added that the Orlando group is
likely to review its earlier position, perhaps as soon as next week.
Include 'distress sales'?
Though quicker reporting of sale
prices can give the public more-accurate snapshots of the home market as a
moving target, it won't untangle confusion over whether foreclosures and short
sales should affect the value of other homes.
Orlando real-estate
analysts have tried to keep such "distress sales" from sullying the rest of the
housing pool by separating the two in monthly price reports. On the other hand,
Orange County Property Appraiser Bill Donegan often includes foreclosures when
his staff computes home values in particular neighborhoods.
The state
Department of Revenue has advised county property appraisers that they are
allowed to, but don't have to, use foreclosure sales when determining the value
of nearby properties. Donegan said his staff is factoring foreclosures into
property values in areas that contain numerous bank-sold houses.
"It's
got to be more than one, or even five, foreclosures spread out among 3,000
houses," Donegan said. He said his appraisers are "being awfully cautious, based
on what they did before [the housing bubble deflated]. They'd rather be low than
high."
The Orlando Regional Realtor Association has taken to
distinguishing between the prices paid for foreclosure properties and those paid
for homes sold through conventional methods. In May, for instance, the median
price paid for all distress sales was $140,000, compared with the $165,000
median for "normal" sales, the association said.
Simmonds said he thinks
it's important to categorize the two types of sales because people need to
understand why prices overall have continued to drop, even as monthly sales
volume has been improving compared with a year ago.
Lucy Clark
Marketing Director and Photographer for Realtors, Jane and Alan LaFrance
'Mickey Homes - Central Florida Real Estate Agents - Your source for Homes for sale near Disney World'
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