Feb 24, 2014, 5:46pm EST Roundtable: Real estate ‘shadow inventory’ no longer a concern Eric Snider Staff Writer- Tampa Bay Business Journal The shadow inventory that’s supposed to have plagued the residential real estate industry in Tampa Bay and elsewhere has turned out to be smoke and mirrors. That was the consensus at a roundtable presented by the Tampa Bay Business Journal and sponsored by the Tampa Bay Insurance Group, held Monday afternoon at Capital Grille. “It seemed like every time I’d go to an industry get-together there would be talk of the floodgates opening and putting a deluge of distressed properties on the market all at once,” said Brad Monroe, broker associate at Pangea Realty Group. “We’d hear it was going to happen in the next three months, or six months. I’ve been hearing it for a few years now and I’ll tell you what: It’s not going to happen.” While according to one study 30 percent of Bay area home sales in December 2013 were processed as either foreclosures or short sales, the deluge of distressed properties choking the market — causing prices to plunge and housing starts to slow — has not occurred. Calculating shadow inventory has been likened to tracking a ghost in the fog. The key, Monroe emphasized, is not so much the volume of distressed properties, but what banks are doing with them. “It doesn’t benefit the banks to flood the market, for starters,” he explained. “And when they take the property back, it becomes their responsibility — to insure it, pay taxes on it, keep it up, market the property. “These assets are appreciating fairly regularly. It’s not like prices are falling apart and they have to get rid of these properties now. “It’ll be more of a trickle than a flood.” Eric Snider is a staff writer for the Tampa Bay Business Journal.
Posted on: Tue, 25 Feb 2014 14:49:26 +0000
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