Property Appraiser: Home Value Data Premature

The local property appraiser didn't think much about the recent data that ranks Hernando County among one of the hardest hit in the housing crisis.

He questions it because it's too early. He is still months away from tallying the final numbers for 2008.

"We're in the process of analyzing home sales right now," said Property Appraiser Alvin Mazourek. "It has come down, but we're unable to (say) how much it has gone down ... They're using some statistical data they didn't get from us."

The local residential market has slipped so much, Hernando is considered among the top 10 hardest-hit counties in the nation, according to Integrated Asset Services, a Denver-based agency that tracks home valuations.

The IAS home index revealed a drop of nearly 40 percent in home prices for Hernando County since the summer of 2006. That makes it the county with the eighth-sharpest decline in property values in the nation.

Those values have dropped by 39.4 percent since June 2006, according to IAS. Pasco County is slightly worse at 39.7 percent. Its peak month was July 2006. Pasco is ranked seventh on the list.

The 10 counties hardest hit during the decline were located either in Florida or California - the two states that benefited the most from the most recent housing bubble. The other Florida counties on the list were Lee (44.6 percent) and Charlotte (42.2 percent).

"It has made housing more affordable," said Marylyn Pearson-Adams, president of the Hernando County Association of Realtors. "When there was a boom and with the income being what it is in this county, it made home buying difficult. There are more first-time home buyers in the market in years."

Pearson-Adams did not argue with the data from IAS. She compared prices today to when she sold houses more than two years ago. Forty percent is about right, she said.

By comparison, 73 percent of the county's homebuyers in 2008 used Federal Housing Authority financing. It used to be more like 20 percent, Pearson-Adams said. The FHA is available to a lot of first-time home buyers as well as those with low to moderate incomes.

The IAS index also showed a 13.8 percent decline in home values nationally for the full year in 2008 and an overall drop of 19.1 percent since the end of 2006.