PHOTO GALLERY: See highlights from Market Snapshots, Midyear in Review
The first six months of 2013 have seen rising prices, increasing home sales and declining numbers of homes listed for sale.
Just like the old days -- the 2003-06 boom. Of course, we have not seen the 30 percent annual home value increases of the boom years, and that is a good thing. But over the past year, local prices are up about 12 percent, reducing the number of people who are underwater on their mortgages, and builders are constructing houses again, employing people in the process.
Lazy Heron, a 2.5-acre bayfront Palm Island estate, is listed for sale by Tom Wagner of RE/MAX Alliance Group at $ 3,995,000. It has three bedrooms and four baths in 4,909 square feet. (Staff photo / Harold Bubil)
And, buyers are snatching up foreclosure houses, fixing them up and returning them to the market to sell or rent, helping reduce the blight that distressed properties bring to neighborhoods.
That is the good news. The bad news is that home prices are getting too high for many middle- and lower-middle-class families as institutional investors overpay; qualifying for a mortgage is difficult; mortgages rates are going up; and rents are climbing alarmingly, at least to would-be renters.
"We were in a dead period for a while, but now we have a market on steroids," said real estate broker Michael Saunders in May.
"It's a real problem trying to find housing for those who want to work and raise a family here," she added.
And insurance rates are going up, too.
Still, most everyone would agree that the local real estate market -- the only one that matters to most of us -- is healthier than it has been in years.
Over the past seven months, correspondent Chris Angermann and real estate editor/photographer Harold Bubil have traveled to a different neighborhood each week, looking for interesting properties, historical anecdotes and market trends.
This week, we look at some of the for-sale houses we have photographed, and what their fate has been. Most sold, but some are pending and some have been pulled.
