By: Mary Shankin
Source: sentinel.com
A just released real-estate analysis of the Metro Orlando area reveals that, housing starts have been chopped by more than fifty percent during the past year. According to the report by Metrostudy, construction starts remained flat over the past three quarters with a continuing reduction in the housing stock, suggesting that the biggest declines may be over.
Mike Inselmann, president of the real-estate-research company Metrostudy, described the national housing landscape as “bouncing along a sloppy bottom” — a description that fits Metro Orlando, too, said Anthony Crocco, director of Metrostudy’s North and Central Florida divisions. How long the local market bounces along that bottom depends on uncertainties in the job and financial markets, Crocco added.
Construction was started on 848 homes in Orlando’s four-county metropolitan area during the second quarter, fewer than half the 1,765 starts recorded during the same period last year. And this spring’s total was little more than one-fourth the number of starts in the second quarter of 2007.
Have Metro Orlando housing starts hit bottom?