Home sales still strong in Seminole Heights and other Tampa urban core neighborhoods

According to today's Times, homes sales have delcined 17 % in Hillsborough County. However "sales dropped in all but the oldest neighborhoods. But there, with lower home prices, the boom barreled on. Houses sold briskly in Sulphur Springs, Seminole Heights, Ybor City and the University of South Florida area"

This is because the newer homes are too pricey.

"Analyst Tony Polito suggests the distinction may stem from the supply of new houses. January through March, builders in Hillsborough poured 3,100 slabs for new houses, the most ever, according to Polito, the local director of Metrostudy, a market research and consulting firm on housing. Those new houses are competing with sellers of older homes in places like Westchase and Tampa Palms.

But they're too expensive to affect the home market in the older neighborhoods. Instead, the rising costs of land and construction are pricing home builders out of houses cheaper than $200,000. Over the past year, builders in the five-county Tampa Bay area have started only a third the number of new houses priced below $200,000 that they did two years earlier, Polito said."

Good news for us. I wonder what comments our local relators have about this?