Shopping For A House?

After more than a year of free-falling sales and prices, Central Florida’s battered housing market is getting support from both first-time home buyers and investors taking advantage of record foreclosures and distress sales across the region.

With mortgage-interest rates at record lows and an $8,000 tax credit for buyers who haven’t owned a home for at least the past three years, existing-home sales in the region have started rising again compared with a year ago. And half the deals involve bank-owned foreclosures or “short sales” – properties for which the bank has agreed to take less than the amount owed on the mortgage.

Who’s buying them? Anecdotal reports and a few surveys indicate that first-time home buyers, who don’t have to worry about selling an existing property, and investors venturing into the second-home market for the first time or searching for bargains to add to their inventory, are responsible for most of the sales.

Bulk auctions of both homes and condominiums are creating buzz in the local market, and bankers are saying yes more often to short sales, which spare them the expense of a full-blown foreclosure.

Lenders are becoming more responsive. Short-sales still remain slower and more cumbersome than a regular, open-market sale between a willing seller and a qualified buyer.

HouseHunt Inc. noted that 48 percent of sellers nationally are now getting multiple purchase offers for a single property, nearly double the 25 percent rate during the same period last year.

If you are considering purchasing a home, the time is looking sooooo right !!!

Please get in contact with me so we can discuss your housing needs.