by Miranda G. McLeod
Staff Writer
Northeast Florida Builders Association members Mark Carlson and Glenn Layton are telling the builders’ side of what’s going on in the market and they spoke to more than 40 members of the Beaches Council of the Northeast Florida Association of Realtors last month.
“It was good to hear from them,” said council chair Paul Gruenther. “They were reflecting on the market from the building side.”
But he’s not totally sure anyone can put their thumb on this market or when itís coming back, but he does see that people are suddenly more conservative about buying.
Carlson and Layton presented a short video of three commercials from NEFBA to air over the next year that promote Jacksonville’s real estate and developing economy.
“Our market is going through an adjustment period. We as an industry don’t use the “R” word, and that is ‘Recession,’ said Layton, who has been in the industry for 22 years. “Recession is totally different than what’s going on in our market. We have so many positive things that are happening here. If you look at some of the statistics on how fast we grew in 2004, it is absolutely incredible.”
Layton told the group that he thinks the industry will level off at the 2004 pace, which was a record year, he said.
“People shouldn’t panic,” said Layton. “It’s not like South Florida where buyers have completely shut down — we’re still selling houses. We’re not selling for what we used to, but its depleting the inventory that we have and getting us down to a manageable pace.”
Layton said he thinks it may be next Spring before the market goes back up, or maybe even the following Spring, but he maintains that people need to stay optimistic.
“We all have to stay positive,”he said. “We need to know the facts.”
Gruenther agreed with Layton, saying “Keep your chin up and don’t despair at this point.”
“Everyone is having to figure out how to survive in the slow market,” said Gruenther, noting that short-term investors have pretty much left the market because they can’t make the money they used to.
He said those investors would start looking at foreclosures because that’s where the money is going to be.
“There’s going to be a good volume of (foreclosures) in the future,” he said. “It’s a good time to be conservative. There were are lot of risk-takers in the past and they missed the signs (to pull out) last year. The volume of houses was a signal and the year-over-year increases were also. You can’t keep having those. We probably had that for four years here at the beach.”
As far as the market coming back in the next nine months as Layton said, Gruenther doesn’t know.
“The springtime is the time things crop back up. Maybe it will be a late thing. If it is late, I think it will be weak. We could kind of fumble along until next spring,” he said. “What I believe is the astute buyers are going to look for the bargains. They are going to be the winners if they pick up quality properties, such as those with good features such as waterfronts and golf courses.”