Here's a Real Estate overview from Chappy Adams, president of Illustrated Properties on the local property market. 

The prognosis is in: The housing market is picking up steam. There's no turning back. Sales volume and prices ticked up on a national level at the end of the summer, with existing home sales up 9.3% in August compared to a year ago, and median prices up 9.5% from a year ago. Locally the news is also positive:

• The inventory of available homes is down 13.7% from a year ago.
• The months of supply of available homes is down to 7 months which is close to the historic norm.
• The average asking price in PB County is up 4.3% from last September.
• The average sold price is up almost 23%, it must be noted that almost all of the gain in sold prices has been in the lower end of the market up to this point.  There is still downward pressure on prices in the luxury market.
• Average days on market has dropped almost 10% from 151 days last year to 139 days today.

With this positive news many people still ask: What about all those foreclosures economists and experts have warned about? Shadow inventory? Are there threats to the recovery that could crop up and throw us off course?
 
The good news is the foreclosure market is easing. Foreclosure inventory was down to its lowest level in August since April 2010. The 57,000 foreclosures completed in August puts the total number of homes that have foreclosed since September 2008 at 3.8 million, according to CoreLogic's latest report.

The continued downward movement in the foreclosure market is a good indicator that the recovery is picking up speed.  Florida ranks 2nd to California with the most foreclosures, so while improving it still remains a serious concern in our area. Thankfully, the shadow inventory problem that many were worried about these past few years seems to have deflated more gradually than initially thought so we didn't see a second flood of foreclosures all hit the market at the same time at the national level.

As a company Illustrated Properties sales were up 47% for the month of October and pendings are up 31% so the fourth quarter looks strong and we are very optimistic about 2013.