Pensacola Milton Homes

Pensacola Milton Homes: "Monday, October 02, 2006" There is a question from the floor - "What's next?" I am always leary of people who claim to know the future or what other people think. Watch any political TV talk show and no matter what the screaming-match de jour you will always hear two things; 1) "The American people want... (or don't want, or think)" and 2) "If that happens then xxxx will happen..."

Our brains try desperately to find patterns in the numbing amount of input we feed them. We have enough challenge trying to analyze what just did happen without the greater challenge of predicting what come next. But, survival depends on that prediction. Touch the red-hot burner, check your gas tank with a lit match or wander down the wrong street and poor predictive skills will severely limit your chances of producing offspring (who would only inherit your propensity for sudden death and have problems of their own). So, predict we must.

Alright - enough philosophy. Here's my guess:

Yes, things are going to reach some dynamic stability because that's what capitalism does. Sooner or later supply and demand curves meet and prices must approximate value (def. Value vs Price).

There is a demand for housing. Realtors are closing about 625 properties per month in this area - there are more when you count FSBO's and corporate sales. There are about 6700 properties for sale through Realtors (again, not counting FSBO's, etc), so we can extrapolate about a 10-11 month inventory right now.

The Haas Center at the University of West Florida publishes an economic report every quarter that includes information about real estate sales and permits pulled. These are free to the public and are, I believe, at least partially funded by Gulf Power. (ftp://143.88.89.2/NW_Florida_Economy/)
1st quarter 2004 (Before Ivan) real estate sales were 1,787. So what? you ask. Well 1787 divided by 3 months gets you just under 600 sales per month. So, in 30 months of massive displacement and destruction and wild economic times it looks that we are selling real estate at a rate about the same as we did before.

The obvious question presents: "OK Mr. Smartypants, if we are selling about the same amount of real estate every month then why are there 6700 properties for sale today?"

I will leave that for the gentle reader to cogitate and hope that others will chime in. The answer (my opinion) is multi-faceted and lends itself to pattern recognition and market prediction (remember prediction? We were talking about prediction) because it looks like the same things are happening now further west along the gulf coast where they had their big hurricane (Katrina) a year after we did.

So stick around

Jordan
www.PensacolaMiltonHomes.com