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Market Rebound

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Real Estate Agent with MYFLBROKER TEAM
Economist: Area set to rebound

ORLANDO, Fla. - July 2, 2007 - One of the state's top private economists, Hank Fishkind of Orlando, said this week that Central Florida, and Orange County in particular, are far stronger economically than many people realize, despite the painful housing slump.

Job creation, population growth and personal-income growth are holding up well, Fishkind told some of the region's leading real-estate professionals during an invitation-only meeting Thursday evening at Stirling Sotheby International's new Global Gallery in The Plaza, in downtown Orlando.

"It's really remarkable how robust the economy really is," Fishkind said as real-estate agents, builders and developers sipped wine and looked out on Orlando from the 16th floor of the new mixed-use tower complex.

Orange County's net job growth during the past year, he said, has been better than the job growth of some U.S. states, and he predicted that 2008 and 2009 will be stronger. "The economy is losing the drag from housing," he said.

Before his comments to the several dozen real-estate elite invited to the gathering by Stirling Sotheby owner Roger Soderstrom, Fishkind said privately that he agrees with University of Central Florida economist Sean Snaith that the Orlando area is in the midst of a soft landing.

Fishkind said he was in New York earlier this week and did not see Snaith's quarterly report for UCF's Institute for Economic Competitiveness, but he agreed with Snaith's view that the economy is poised to rebound.

Fishkind is founder and principal of Fishkind & Associates Inc., a twenty-six member economic-and-financial consulting firm with offices in Orlando, Naples and Port St. Lucie. Before launching the company in 1987, Fishkind was associate professor of economics at the University of Florida and director of the university's forecasting program.

Two of the Orlando area's top commercial real-estate brokers said Friday they concur with Snaith's soft-landing scenario, at least for the Orlando area.

Matthew McKeever and Richard Solik, senior directors of office brokerage services for Cushman & Wakefield of Florida Inc., said the Orlando area's office towers and major downtown buildings made it through the 2001 national recession by refinancing debt during a period of lower interest rates.

That was in contrast to earlier economic contractions such as in the 1980s, they said, when most of Orlando's large commercial buildings were reclaimed by banks and lenders.

Those properties have been weathering the recent economic slowdown partly because of those refinancings and the ongoing environment of lower interest rates. Job growth, McKeever said, has been a key to keeping the Orlando area's economic and growth trends on firmer ground than those in other parts of Florida or in other states.

Copyright © 2007 The Orlando Sentinel, Fla., Jerry W. Jackson. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

Comments (1)

Fred Griffin Florida Real Estate
Fred Griffin Real Estate - Tallahassee, FL
Licensed Florida Real Estate Broker

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Aug 01, 2016 11:48 AM