Amy's Orlando Real Estate Blog

In October, our local housing market continued to improve, with our median price increasing almost 19% since January of this year. There were 2,068 homes sold in our area, which was an increase of 6% over October 2010.  Our inventory of available homes for sale has remained below 10,000 for the second month, which is down over 35% from a year ago. This low level of homes for sale has not been seen in our area since 2005, and represents a supply of about 4.8 months.  A normal market supply is considered to be five to six months, so this is another favorable aspect. 

The housing market continues to improve, however, our road to recovery still needs more help from the job market.  High unemployment continues to hurt our recovery in the housing market, especially since the unemployment rate for those 25-34 years old rose to 9.8% last month.  This segment of the market would typically be strong housing consumers, where many of our first time buyers would come from.  Recent studies at UCF expect a level of local job growth to be 2.1% through 2014.  Jobs are the key to keeping our housing recovery on track.