Foreclosures half what they were last year

There were half as many foreclosures filings in Hernando County during the second quarter of this year compared to the same period last year.

In April, May and June, the county clerk's office recorded 284 filings, a 48 percent drop from 551 the same three months in 2010.

Meanwhile, the county building department recorded 30 single-family permits during the second quarter, down from 48 a year ago.

Local builders are still scrambling to pick up remodeling jobs, if they can find work at all.

Between January 2005 and December 2010, Hernando County has lost 2,531 positions in construction, representing 60 percent of that industry's labor force, said Dave Hamilton, operations manager for the Pasco-Hernando Workforce Board.

"It's not pretty," local builder Dudley Hampton Jr. said of the home building news. "There's just a glut of houses on the market right now and until that inventory goes away I don't see much of an uptick in the new housing market."

Banks are moving on the foreclosed homes and that is one positive sign, said Hampton, a member of the Hernando Builders Association.

Hamilton agreed the "precipitous drop" in foreclosures can be attributed to better bank oversight.

"I think they have slowed down because there is more scrutiny being placed on the banks to do it right," Hamilton said.

Hamilton alluded to the recent "robo-signer" controversy, where some banks and mortgage houses were found to have paid people to forge their names on mortgage documents that were then used to start foreclosure proceedings.

The federal Office of Comptroller of the Currency has ordered financial institutions to review their practices.

On the existing home front, there were 263 single-family home transactions in Hernando County last April. The average sales price was $98,864 and average days on the market was 119, according to the Hernando County Association of Realtors.

That compares with 311 transactions a year ago, an average sales price of $105,150 and 126 days on the market.

The HCAR did not have statistics available for May and June.

The median price of an existing home in Florida as of today is $135,000. Nationwide, the median price is $166,500, according to Florida Realtors.

The National Association of Realtors said pending home sales rose in May, pointing to higher housing activity in the second half of the year.

"Absorption of inventory is the key to price improvement, and this solid gain in contract signings implies that home values in many localities are or will soon be stabilizing as inventories get absorbed at a faster pace," NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun said in a press release.