2006 NW Fla Real Estate Market - 3/1/06 Update

Around Northwest Florida, the real estate activity for February 2006 looks a lot like January. For the entire area surrounding Pensacola, the total number of single family homes sold was 420 (390 in January). A subset of those numbers is the number of houses sold in Gulf Breeze (23 in January and 27 in February). The active, sold, expired, and withdrawn listings paint a dim picture for sellers in the market (good news for buyers!). The active listings for single family houses are hovering around 4,000, so that is still quite high. The sold figures show that the homes being sold are mostly under $200,000. There are few houses in that price range across the bay in Gulf Breeze, so sales are moving about half as fast there as in Pensacola. In summary, too many houses on the market, too few selling, and too many local people that can't afford the houses at the current prices. Advice to sellers --- expired and withdrawn listings reflect a much higher price per square foot than those houses that sold this month ---- so the price has to come down to the current market level in order for them to sell! We welcome your comments -- you can send an email to me at joe@stukey.com or post a comment here.