Thanksgiving sales, Labor day sales, Christmas sales, are all times that we think of for record shopping activity. But there is a different kind of sale going on in southwest Florida. May sales of existing single-family homes in Lee County continued at a near-record pace while prices spiked up, according to statistics released Tuesday by the Florida Association of Realtors.

The median price rose to $88,500, up 3.5 percent or $3,000 from April’s $85,500. But prices remained less than half what they were after the precipitous drop of the past year — the median was $212,400 in May 2008.

Some area agents expect the median price to continue rising as more mid- to high-end homes come on the market.

There were 1,417 existing houses sold with the assistance of a Realtor — down from April’s record 1,468 but up sharply from the 823 sold in May 2008, according to the association.

In most of those homes the seller was under financial pressure to sell relatively quickly.A breakdown for the Florida association’s statistics wasn’t available, but the Realtor Association of Greater Fort Myers and the Beach showed 62 percent were sold by lenders that had taken the house back in foreclosure and then resold it.

Another 14 percent were “short sales” in which the lender agreed to reduce its mortgage so a house could be sold for a lower price.

In a separate report also released Tuesday, the National Association of Realtors said U.S. home sales rose 2.4 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.77 million, from a downwardly revised pace of 4.66 million in April.

The increase in Lee County prices may have come because rock-bottom prices for low-end homes in Cape Coral and Lehigh Acres have spurred bidding wars for those homes.  

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