Many in the area remember over the last two years that it was not uncommon to see 2000+ houses for sale in the area.  In fact, many are still under the impression that the level is still that high.  The good news is that the number of houses for sale in Palm Coast and Flagler County has significantly dropped.  As of 5/16/09 we have 1095 Residential Houses for sale in Palm Coast and 1502 for all of Flagler County (See a full market report for the area). 

The biggest contributor are properties designated as 'Short Sales' (occurs when the owner owes more than the property can sell for).  Short Sales contribute 393 of the listings or 26% of all listings in the county.  Currently 63 are pending for sale in Flagler County.  Short sales will remain a significant part of houses offered for sale for some time.  There have been several issues that have hindered short sales including lengthy timeframe to get responses back from banks, varying policies depending on lenders, and a lack of guarantees which have caused "surprises" at closings and sales to be lost.  Since these are situations where the lender will be receiving less than what is owed to them, they naturally want to minimize that loss as much as possible.  Coupled with the fact that the lenders saw a flood of these cases go through departments that were not able to handle the volume or had not developed policy or processes since the situation is a rarity in real estate.  Recently, the government has stepped in to bring both incentives to lenders and consistency to the process.  Click here to get more information on these updates.  We have seen over the last year better response times from lenders in terms of offers and more upfront information and direction form the lenders to make the process more efficient. 

The other big question on seller and buyer minds is concerning foreclosures.  This is an area where the Flagler County made significant progress over the last year with sell-thorughs and use of the short sale option.  Currently the area has only a handful of foreclosure houses for sale (designated as 'Lender Owned' in the Flagler County MLS).  Click here to see the foreclosure properties for sale in the area.  There are currently 244 properties filed with the Flagler County Clerk of Courts Office at this time.  Foreclosures are obviously attractive to buyers because of price, but can often be in need of repairs.  An inspection by a licensed home inspector will give you a clear idea of repairs which need to be made allowing you to get the most accurate picture of the total cost of the purchase. 

In terms of sales, Flagler County has had 462 Residential Houses sold through 5/22/09 compared to 478 the same period last year.  So we are beginning to see the number of sales "flatten out" which is a positive sign for the future.  We began to see the same "flattening out" in terms of median prices last year.   Again these are both positive signs to stabilization in the market.