Clearwater Real Estate

The seasonal ban on foreclosures by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has been lifted as of March 31, 2009.  It was a temporary measure to allow for the government interventions to take hold, allow for families to remain in homes during the holidays and give the markets time to level.  The governmental action seems to have worked.

Inventories in the Tampa Bay area did reveal some leveling and confidence in an apparent normal sales pattern for the area.  The future of the market will be determined mostly by a good spring and summer sell off and continued monitorng of the Alt-A default inventory build up.  It would not be unreasonable to see another stay at the end of 2009 which would continue with the soft landing theory of 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010.

This is a good test time for the government to see if all the assistance is enough to bring us out of the trough and clearly into recovery.   Buyers will appreciate the last of the good inventory this summer as well as the best affordability indexes of our time.

The Pinellas market statistics come out this week and I’ll look at those numbers in detail along with the Case Shiller numbers from last week.  I anticipate a difference of opinion between what CS has reported and what we are seeing locally regarding price declines.  We’ll see.

The good news is that we have seen a lot of activity in showings over the last 10 days and that always leads to less inventory available to good buyers.

 

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