The recent trials and tribulations on the stock market have been both good and bad for Florida real estate, based on whom you ask.
The recent gymnastics on the Wall Street stock indexes has impacted businesses in America by varying degrees, and for Florida real estate, the outcome has been neither good or bad, but uneven – especially depending on whom you ask.
The first two weeks in August, the Dow Jones, Nasdaq, and S&P 500 reacted wildly to several factors, namely economic uncertainty in Europe, worries about U.S. debt, and lackluster job reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. For example, from Aug. 3 to Aug. 10, the Dow fell from a high of 11,896 to a low of 10,719, a drop of more than 1,000 points.
According to a recent survey by the University of Florida, that uncertainty in the markets did impact the state’s real estate industry, if only marginally: “The outlook for the real estate markets in the state declined slightly in the second quarter as uncertainty in the direction of the economy and the political gridlock in Washington weigh on respondents’ minds,” stated a summary of the report.
The report also said that the decline was the first in seven quarters, despite generally positive “fundamentals” in the economy. It went on to say, “Economic and political uncertainties were the common themes put forward by the respondents. Topping the list was job growth. Even though unemployment in Florida improved in many markets, the pace of change and the still high levels are affecting the pace of improvements in the real estate markets.”
A recent piece by The Miami Herald, though, paints a different picture, one of a local economy functioning independent of national woes.
For instance, though luxury homes remain a tough sell, the extremely low prices of condos, apartments, and other multi-unit properties have attracted wealthy investors; Marcus & Millichap, a commercial real estate brokerage firm, recently released a report showing gains in Miami, Kendall, and Coral Gables; and Coastal Construction, an apartment builder based in South Florida, has hired back 65 workers in 2011.
CEO Tom Murphy told the Herald, “We’ve started 10 new projects this year. Last year we started two, and the year before we started one.”