John R. Wood

According to a Lawrence Yun,  chief economist and senior vice president of research for the National Association of Realtors, homes in Naples will appreciat3e by 10% this year.

Real estate is in recovery, locally and nationally, buyers have stepped up and prices are firming up, said Yun “Some of the hardest hit markets, including Naples, have been leaders in the recovery, he said. That has a lot do with their location. As you all know all real estate is local,” Yun said. “You can not pick it up and move it somewhere else.”

He predicted as much as a 10 percent appreciation in home prices by December in the Naples market over last year. While the markets in neighboring Lee County are recovering too, it’s not happening as fast because they saw more overbuilding during the boom years, Yun also said

Nationally, Yun said he expects home prices to increase by 1 to 3 percent by December. He expects increasing sales nationally, which he said could be boosted by 15 to 20 percent if banks just went back to using “normal underwriting standards,” instead of using such strict standards that are so limiting.

“This is not some wishful thinking,” Yun said, adding that he believed an over correction in the local market has pulled prices down too far.

In Collier County in the first quarter of 2012, pending sales increased 14 percent in the $300,000 to $500,000 market. They were up 29 percent in the $500,000 to $1 million market and rose 14 percent in the $1 million to $2 million market.

The median home price in the quarter increased 14 percent. The median is the price at which half the homes sell for more and half for less.

In addition to Yun, all speakers at the 2012 Economic Summit were optimistic about the real estate market in Southwest Florida.

Yun was just one of five speakers at the 2012 Economic Summit, a first-time event sponsored by the Naples Area Board of Realtors, or NABOR. The event, held at the Realtor association’s conference center off Pine Ridge Road, attracted a sell-out crowd of 250.”It sold out before we could even advertise it to our members,” said Brenda Fioretti, a Naples broker and NABOR spokeswoman.

The other speakers were John Tucillo, a chief economist with Florida Realtors, a statewide trade group; Shelton Weeks, a real estate professor and director of the Lucas Institute for Real Estate Development & Finance at Florida Gulf Coast Univesity, Doug Duncan, a vice president and chief economist for Fannie Mae, and Cindy Carroll, the vice president and manager of the residential division at Carroll & Carroll Real Estate Appraisers and Consultants in Naples. All of the speakers delivered a heavy dose of optimism about the real estate market in Southwest Florida.

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