PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — Florida's hot housing market seems to be trending in another direction in one city on the Treasure Coast if you read a new report from CoreLogic.
The data suggest Port St Lucie could see home prices sharply decline over the next 12 months.
“Port St Lucie, the reason why it is showing up in this report I think is the mortgages that have been taken out and the assumption that there will be foreclosures based on mortgages,” Realtor Holly Meyer Lucas said.
She said several factors go into the report to form an algorithm — factors like the amount of mortgages, school ratings, interest rates and potential tax assessments. But there's one thing she said they're not factoring in.
“I think if you’re buying a home right now, I think it's dangerous to look at this report and think that is going to be happening in Port St Lucie. Home prices will stabilize but they're not going to drop so significantly, and the biggest reason is our population increase here,” Lucas said.
Lucas said the four Florida markets cited in the report at risk of home decline are all part of the mass migration of people to Florida. In fact, we spoke with one real estate brokerage firm in Port St. Lucie. They told us they can't build homes fast enough for the amount of people who want to live in them.
Scripps News
Which cities are seeing the biggest growth in home prices?
Lakeland-Winter Haven, Northport-Sarasota-Bradenton and Cape Coral-Fort Meyers are the Florida areas cited. Utah-Orem also was listed in the top five.
"I tell people if your waiting for the crash to happen, please don't hold your breath. It's not happening anytime soon in my opinion here," Steve Banasiak, a real estate broker at Baron Real Estate, said. He said the sky is not about to fall here and all you have to do is look at the numbers.
"Right now, we're still sitting well within a seller's market, about two to three months of inventory right now, and if you flash back about 10 years ago, we were at about 5 1/2 months of inventory, so we've got a ways to go before we actually start going into a balanced market, a buyers’ market," Banasiak said.
He said St Lucie County has 1,100 homes on the market. Construction is booming to keep up the amount of people moving to Florida daily. Simply put, the optics of the new report seem shaded given the fact the Sunshine State and Port St Lucie in particular continue to shine when it comes to real estate.