Greg Snow - Southwest Florida Real Estate Expert provides real estate services to Cape Coral, Fort Myers, Sanibel and Captiva Islands

Hi , Hello, and How are you ?

Kind a cool way to start a converstion. :). Our very own U.S. Census Bureau, http://www.census.gov  provided us with some housing news last week for sunny Florida. They disclosed they felt over 1.6 MILLION homes are sitting vacant (over 18%), which would be a rise of more than 63 over previous 10 years. During the housing boom (2003-2007), our state was one of the hottest real estate markets in the land.  I usually find some of our government stats to be somewhat "half baked" (like in the movie " the Graduate", when Ben told his dad his marriage was "fully baked") and these may be no different. The bureau feels the worst hit county is Collier (32%), folllowed closely by our Lee (30%) and Miami-Dade of only 12%. What many people reading this report would not realize is that the U.S. Census Bureau views seasonally occupied units as being vacant. This is really an inaccurate way to see what market absoption Lee and Collier REALLY need before home prices will begin to ascend.