By DICK HOGAN

Sales of existing homes in Lee County ended the decade with a bang, a record 16,260 were sold with the assistance of a Realtor in 2009, according to statistics released Monday by the Florida Association of Realtors.

That shattered the old record of 12,123 set in 2005 at the top of the residential real estate boom that collapsed the following year.

Meanwhile, prices were moving in the opposite direction. The median sales price for an existing house was $278,200 in 2005 but only $90,400 in 2009.

Nationally, sales of previously occupied homes took the largest monthly drop in more than 40 years last month, sinking more dramatically than expected after lawmakers gave buyers additional time to use a tax credit, according to a separate report today by the National Association of Realtors.

That report reflects a sharp drop in demand after buyers stopped scrambling to qualify for a tax credit of as much as $8,000 for first-time homeowners. It had been due to expire Nov. 30, but Congress extended the deadline until April 30 and expanded it with a new $6,500 credit for existing homeowners who move.

In Lee County, prices finally reached a point in 2009 that triggered a wave of buyers, said real estate broker Denny Grimes, president of Fort Myers-based Denny Grimes and Co.

"We had the banks setting loose the foreclosures for the first time," he said. "The prices were coming down and you had sellers (the banks) who were determined to find the market. Everybody wondered if there was a market there, they were hoping and praying there was."

The moral of the story, he said, is that, "There's never a shortage of buyers, only of willing and realistic sellers."

But not every prospective seller is able to make a deal with today's low prices.

Duane Clairmore, 72, a retired Western Union manager from Wisconsin, said he has been trying for two years to sell his south Fort Myers house without success.

He paid $200,000 for the house in 2005 at the top of the market, but hasn't been able to sell it even at his current price of $155,000. The county Property Appraiser's Web site has it appraised at $121,490.

Time is of the essence for Clairmore, who owes $132,000 on the house and is facing a reset in May to a higher interest rate on his adjustable rate mortgage from Chase Bank.

Already stretched to the limit paying the current amount on his $20,000-a-year income, he hopes to negotiate a modification to the mortgage at a mortgage workshop Wednesday.

If not, Clairmore said, he'll likely lose the house. "I'd just have to bow out," he said.

Grimes said that for the market as a whole, 2010 should see a continuing erosion of prices for high-end homes as banks take back more houses in that bracket and sell them for what the market will bear.

That process has already occurred with less expensive homes, which were largely purchased and then abandoned by speculators when prices started to fall, he said.

Grimes said, as prices fall for the more expensive homes, the result likely will be an increase in the median sales price.

Nationally, December's sales fell 16.7 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.45 million, from an unchanged pace of 6.54 million in November, the National Association of Realtors said Monday.

Sales had been expected to fall by about 10 percent, according to economists surveyed by Thomson Reuters.

The median sales price was $178,300, up 1.5 percent from a year earlier and the first yearly gain since August 2007. However, some of that increase could be due to a drop-off in purchases from first-time buyers, who tend to buy less expensive homes.

Sales are now up 21 percent from the bottom a year ago, but down 25 percent from the peak more than four years ago.

The big question hanging over the housing market this spring is whether a tentative recovery will stumble after the government pulls back support.

The Federal Reserve's $1.25 trillion program to push down mortgage rates is scheduled to expire at the end of March, a month before the newly extended tax credit runs out.

Article provided courtesy of News-Press.com.

As always, please feel free to contact me at 239-357-9558 with any of your Real Estate needs or questions. Rgds, Jay