REAL ESTATE
22
BALANCED MARKET GOOD
FOR BUYERS AND SELLERS
TCBusiness.com
CITY OF PORT ST. LUCIE
The real estate market on the Treasure Coast for the first quarter showed fewer sales but higher prices, and Realtors say the market is becoming more balanced.
Consumer confidence and low mortgage rates
point to continued strength
Home sales on the Treasure Coast fell in
the first quarter of 2019, but rising prices
and expectations that the economy will
remain strong point to a robust real estate
market for the rest of the year, local and
state industry leaders report.
Florida Realtors showed that singlefamily
home sales in the metro area,
including Martin and St. Lucie counties,
fell 6.8 percent, while median prices rose
3.3 percent. For the same period and
area, condo and townhouse sales fell 11
percent and median prices for those sales
rose 8.6 percent.
For Indian River County, single-family
home sales fell 6 percent and median prices
rose 4 percent. Condo and townhouse
sales rose 7.5 percent and values rose 21.7
percent, according to Florida Realtors.
Median price is the point at which half
of sales are lower and half are higher.
Jarrod Lowe, a Realtor in Jensen Beach
and the president-elect of the Realtors
Association of the Palm Beaches, covering
Martin and St. Lucie counties as well as
the much-larger Broward and Palm Beach
counties, says the first-quarter decline in
sales is nothing to worry about. The market
has already strengthened in April and
May, he said, in part because of continuing
low mortgage rates and consumer confidence
that the economy will stay strong.
The recovery from the recession a decade
ago was slow. It took about five years
for the market to return to good health,
Realtors told Treasure Coast Business. If a
significant economic slowdown strikes,
the real estate and housing markets are
likely to be quicker to recover, as the last
recession was largely caused by a housing
price bubble and loan crisis, which is not
expected to recur.
“We have more of a competitive, balanced
market, where before we were
definitively in a buyers’ market for a long
period of time,” Lowe says. “We are close to
10 years of sustained growth in the real estate
market. We’re balancing and evening
out, and it’s a healthy market which is fair
for both buyers and sellers.”
REAL HEALTHY
Andrew Harper, president of the Realtor
Association of Indian River County, says >>
BY BERNIE WOODALL
/TCBusiness.com