Collier County Prices dip in Feb.

Collier County was the only area in Florida to show a decline in February home prices from a year ago, according to statistics released Thursday.The median price of a house sold with the help of a Realtor was $492,300, down 1 percent compared to $498,400 in February 2005.That's the only negative year-to-year figure in the state, according to the Florida Association of Realtors, which compiles the monthly figures. The next weakest performance was by West Palm Beach-Boca Raton, which showed an 11 percent increase.
In Lee County, the numbers were incomplete because data from the Cape Coral Association of Realtors was not available.Nationally, mild winter weather sparked the biggest increase in U.S. home sales in two years last month, signaling the predicted slowing in housing will be gradual.
Bruce Babcock of John R. Wood Realtors in Naples said Collier's market is definitely in a downturn. "There's still a lot more listings than there were six months ago and they're not moving. The buyers are being cautious, they're kind of waiting on the sidelines. I'm still showing properties, I'm encouraging offers, but they're still of the belief prices will come down and if they wait, they'll be able to get the properties at a lower price.''Meanwhile, he said, "There are plenty of price decreases, some of them two or three times" over the past two or three months.Higher-priced homes have done relatively well, he said. "Port Royal is very active and I've got a new listing on the beach on Gordon Drive for $16 million. There's lots of showings, lots of interest. It's the ones that are lower priced, say between a million and two million, that are pretty slow."
In Lee County, there's been "a little more activity" recently as buyers go after houses that have had deep price cuts, said Michael Schneider-Christians of Century Sunbelt Realty, based in Cape Coral.
"The sellers are coming down and some people are realizing those are good prices."One of his clients, Carolyn Reynolds, sold her Cape house recently for $299,000, down from her original asking price of $365,000."I was extremely relieved because I'd already bought another house outside the area and I was sweating it out," said Reynolds, a retired Allstate Insurance employee.
"We put it on the market in late December and not one person came to look at it for three months," she said, but after cutting the price to $299,000, "from last Friday I showed it to three different prospective buyers and the third one bought it."Now she's moving to Aiken, S.C., "a smaller town, more like Fort Myers used to be when I first moved here 25 years ago."
Emanuele DiMare of Sellstate Landmark Properties said prices of lots in Lehigh Acres have fallen from $55,000 last summer to about $35,000 now.He's encouraging clients who are investors to buy a lot and build a house on it. Although prices are soft now, he said, "In 12 to 14 months from now when the home is finished, the market is going to be strong again."Diane Cox of RE/MAX Realty Group said there's still a lot of action in the market. "People are moving out because of hurricanes and whatever and moving to the mountains, and baby boomers are looking for properties they can retire to."
Dave Drabik of Sellstate Superstars Realty said he's kept track for the past four months of home sales reported by the Realtor Association of Greater Fort Myers and the Beach and prices have held steady at about $335,000 on average.With the incomplete figures, Lee County in February had a median price of $279,900, down 2.5 percent from $287,200 in January but up 22 percent from February 2005.
In Collier, the price fell from $511,400 in January to $492,300 in February, a drop of 3.7 percent. The number of homes sold in Collier dropped from 264 in January to 228 in February, a drop of 13.6 percent.Charlotte County's median price was $226,300, down less than 1 percent from January but up 20 percent from February 2005.Nationally, sales of previously owned homes rose 5.2 percent during the month to an annual rate of 6.91 million, compared with a revised 6.57 million a month earlier, the National Association of Realtors said in Washington.
"It shows there is still solid underlying demand for housing and that activity this year, while slowing, is not going to collapse," said Michael Moran, chief economist at Daiwa Securities America Inc. in New York.The median price of an existing home rose 10.6 percent in February from a year ago to $209,000, after an 11.1 percent year-over-year rise in January, the Realtors group said.