Chad Stewart

This is great news for the Lake City, FL area... As you may know, the port in Jacksonville has experience growth & could be experiencing even more... The Panama Canal is expanding as well allowing larger ships to come thru from Asia & other area...
Click for news story link.. all credit ito JaxBizJrn

Lake City, Florida is primed area for distrubution & light manufacturing growth for many reasons... 1st the obvisous connection to the article above... When frieght comes into Jax to get to most of Florida, will load onto trucks & then onto the Interstates..
Well Lake City, FL sits at the intersection of 2 major interstates, I-10 running East West from Jacksonville, to Tallahassee, to Pensacola, and I-75 running down from Atlanta, GA thru Ocala and all the way thru Tampa to Naples...
2nd Lake City is a quality of life destination. The landscape, the people, the springs with fresh water & more make Columbia County a inviting place to live.
The size of our community is just the right size that we are aggressively looking for development opportunity to grow our town effectively.
Contact me, Chad Stewart at Westfield Realty for industrial, commercial, large land tracts & information on this area... http://www.chadstewart.com

From Florida Association of Realtors...

"You didn't really lose in housing free fall..... ORLANDO - Aug. 11, 2009 - Stan Smith has some news for longtime homeowners having a pity party over falling house prices in Central Florida: New research shows that current home values are just about where they would have been if the real-estate bubble had never inflated and burst. A long-term view of the market reveals that, even though prices rose and fell dramatically in recent years, they appear to have settled back into historic patterns, according to an analysis by Smith, a University of Central Florida finance professor." http://www.floridarealtors.org/NewsAndEvents/article.cfm?id=221351

Blogged by Chad Stewart - Westfield Realty Group in Lake City, FL

Foreclosure bargains are disappearing...Some houses go under contract less than 90 minutes after they're put on the market, says the founder of Foreclosure.com
http://www.floridarealtors.org/NewsAndEvents/article.cfm?id=221235

Here in Lake City, FL similar case as well....

41 home listings in Columbia county, Lake City FL are Bank, Foreclosure, or Short Sales,
That is out of 433 total home listings... Only 10% of the listings...

164 homes sold this year in the county...
58 of those were Bank owned, Foreclosures, or Short Sales...
Again roughly 30% of the market is this...

Chad.

Here are 8,000 reasons for you to get of the fence.

There has NEVER been a better time to buy. Really and honestly...

When you qualify & buy a principlal residence before December 1st, 2009, then you are eligible for a $8,000 tax credit (or 10% of the purchase price of your home if the home you purchase is less than $80,000)

http://www.chadstewart.com/Files/8000%20Tax%20Credit%20REALTOR%20flyer.pdf

The National Assoc of Realtors gets all the credit for this "dollar" bill & the flyer. Thanks NAR. We love it.

Its a great day in the real estate business.

This is an article that was published in the Lake City Reporter yesterday. Written by Jeff M. Hardison.. & all credit goes to him & the Lake City Reporter...
This explains how the trend of more sale & activity but lower prices is still moving up north in Florida, still reaching into the Lake City, FL area. Here is the article.
__________________

Study: Housing Market poised for growth. Trend of Price reduction moving toward county.

Statewide numbers for Realtor sales of single-family existing homes looked good in May of 2009, according to the North Florida Forecaster newsletter. The newsletter is a publication of the Lake City Board of Realtors. People who are in the house-buying mode as end users will find Lake City to be a good market now, said Lake City Board of Realtors Executive Vice President Dan Gherna.

A trend of property prices being drastically reduced is moving northward, Gherna said, as reflected by Ocala showing a 1 percent increase in the number of Realtor sales of single-family existing homes in May 2009 over May 2008.

In Ocala, there was a 22 percent decrease in median prices of homes sold in May of 2008 compared with May of 2009 - dropping from $143,100 to $111,600.

"It's encouraging to see Ocala's results," he said.Gherna said the Lake City-Live Oak market reflects low sales from May in comparison with the same month in 2008."The bad markets are Gainesville, Lake City and Tallahassee," he said.Gherna said a 13 percent reduced median sales price from $150,000 in May of 2008 to $130,000 in May of 2009 for the Lake City-Live Oak market is not significant enough to expect a dramatic increase in sales.

The Lake City-Live Oak market showed a 22 percent decrease in the number of sales, dropping from 41 houses sold in May of 2008 to 32 homes sold in May of 2009, Gherna said.

"Our distress property sales were only 30 percent," he said. This compares to South Florida, where they are upwards of 80 percent."

The Fort Myers-Cape Coral market showed the most significant positive sales increase by going up 72 percent when comparing figures from May 2008 and May 2009. There were 823 houses sold in that market in May of 2008 and that jumped to 1,417 houses sold in May of 2009.The median price of houses in Fort Myers-Cape Coral dropped by 58 percent, from $212,400 in May of 2008 to $88,500 in May of 2009."In Fort Myers and Cape Coral," Gherna said, "it looks like a war zone. There are new subdivisions where people are not mowing and windows are broken. Banks see these homes as a liability."

Gainesville, Tallahassee, Lake City-Live Oak and Sarasota-Bradenton markets are the only double-digit negative Realtor sales figures for May of 2009 compared with May of 2008.Of the 21 markets reviewed by a survey of Multiple Listing Services sales levels from Florida's Realtors, only Panama City showed a single digit 7 percent drop in median prices from $190,000 in May of 2008 to $167,500 in May of 2008. All other areas dropped prices from 58 percent to 10 percent.