While Florida’s real estate recovery may be tenuous, the public’s consensus is one of cautious optimism, according to a first-quarter survey conducted by the University of Florida’s Bergstrom Center for Real Estate Studies. Despite a 12.3 percent unemployment rate in March, respondents said that they believe the current real estate market — in both the residential and commercial sectors — has hit bottom. But this doesn’t mean it’s time to throw a party quite yet, said Timothy Becker, director of the Bergstrom Center. “One of our respondents summed it up by stating that ‘if anything, we will get less bad,’” Becker said. “Florida has hit bottom and is in the process of stabilizing across most property types.” TRD

A statewide survey of real estate professionals puts unemployment at the top of a list of stumbling blocks to a robust market recovery. Since unemployed people don’t need office space, don’t shop, don’t pay rent and don’t buy houses, one respondent said, it’s unlikely to mean a serious recovery is in the offing. Reactions from 319 participants in 13 urban regions of the state representing reactions for 15 types of property were largely unified: more vacancies and decreasing rents will hit commercial and residential real estate for some time. The current unemployment rate of 11.8 percent must decline before people can start participating in the market again, said Tim Becker, director of the University of Florida’s Bergstrom Center for Real Estate Studies in Gainesville, which conducted the survey. [GlobeSt]

Call it South Florida’s year-end home sale surge. The number of
residential properties under contract to be sold in South Florida
continued to rise, nearly doubling from this time last year, according
to a new report from Miami-Dade County-based real estate consulting
firm Condo Vultures Realty. The report provides strong evidence that
more buyers than ever in the tri-county region are responding to the
raft of deeply discounted residential properties and are taking
advantage of the federal government’s homebuyer tax credits. Scott
Agran, broker and owner of Lang Realty in Boca Raton, said his agency
saw a “push” by buyers over the last month because they knew the tax
credits were set to expire at the end of November. Then two weeks ago,
President Barack Obama extended until April 30, 2010, the $8,000 tax
credit for first-time homebuyers and added a $6,500 tax credit for
buyers relocating after living in a home for at least five years.
[more]

Some regional real estate markets believe they’ve hit bottom and are on
the way up, but a statewide recovery will not be rapid or robust. A new
survey by the University of Florida’s Bergstrom Center for Real Estate
Studies shows respondents expect prices to stabilize, maybe rise
slightly, then see more sales as a result of low interest rates. But
Florida needs jobs to shore up commercial real estate, including the
retail and office markets, which are suffering amid high unemployment. [more]