bhhomesforsale.com

Debbie Sforza sold a Palm City lakefront home in only two months.The 2,200-square-foot structure with three bedrooms, two baths and two-car garage showed well and, at $475,000, was priced right, said Sforza, a broker’s associate at Realty Executives in Palm City.

Still other South Florida homes are sitting on the market anywhere from six months to a year.”If it’s overpriced, it’s going to be on the market for a long time,” she said.

“For Sale” signs sit on front yards everywhere but aren’t as effective as professionals who can offer aggressive pricing information to get buyers in the door, said Will Rosselle, a broker at Rosselle Real Estate Group in Port St. Lucie.

The number of homes for sale has tripled, even quadrupled, since last year, according to Rosselle, who is primarily seeing buyers from more pricey points south.

The 2004 and 2005 hurricanes, along with rising property taxes and insurance, also have been causing South Floridians to move to areas such as the Carolinas, according to area Realtors.

But the supply vs. demand situation is part of a nationwide cycle that will change, they say.

Glenn Sudnick attributes the current bent on the supply side, in part, to a lack of “flippers,” or investors who purchase properties to profit on them in a short amount of time.

The current real estate market is “normal — one where people are purchasing homes because they want to live in them,” said Sudnick, the broker and owner of Palm Beach Florida Properties and chief administrator of the Palm Beach School of Real Estate, both in Juno Beach.

John Reichard, owner and president of Southwind Construction and Homes in West Palm Beach, builds new homes from Boynton Beach to Port St. Lucie, where he has a model along Southwest Mercedes Avenue selling for between $285,000 and $325,0000.

To move the properties, he has increased broker commissions and tried making upgrades such as granite countertops and paver driveways standard. Still, he said, he’s seeing home prices in general fall somewhere between 12 percent and 18 percent.

Tags: Homes for Sale, Real Estate, Mortgages, Realtors, MLS, Multiple Listing Service