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

Our Lee County marketplace had a tremendous volume of real estate sales in 2009. Nearly 17,000 single family residences sold in 2009, up over 90% from 2008. Our December 1340 sales were over 48% bank owned, 18% short sales, and the remaining 33% were traditional sales. Median sales price in December was almost $90,000, which is down almost 8% from December 2008. These numbers are heavily influenced by the bank owned properties.

Trying to find a home for a customer or client is very difficult when faced with competeing offers, uninterested or overwhelmed bank asset amnagers, virtual listing brokers, and if your indidvidual needs financing, most of the qualifying and approval for funds needs to be finished.  With the tax-crdit deadline rapidly approaching (4/30/10), www.irs.gov/recovery, the average time to get a home loan processed has increased from as little as 30 days to about eight weeks, and that is assuming no real problems with appraisals, inspections, and unknowns. Oue Lee County, Florida marketplace has seen some tremendous real estate deals in the past 16 months and opportunites still present themselves. One needs to be ready to move quickly with quality representation to obtain the American dream of owning property in southwest Florida.