Real Estate in Northeast Florida and Around the World

How many times have you heard someone spew out information about the nation's real estate market?  Have you thought about what this really means?  Do you consider that such a market truly exists?

A national real estate market exists as much as a national college sports team exists.  Everyone has a favorite college sports team, but every area is different.  In fact, there are some areas of the country where you can have 2 or more very predominant sports teams, just like there are areas in the country where you can have very different real estate market environments.  Housing markets are local - not national.  While there may be similar activities occurring in different markets, a 20% decline in values or sales in one market does not automatically occur in every market.

Take Florida, for example.  In the news, Florida is commonly referred to as one of the worst real estate markets (right there with California and Nevada).  However, if you look deeper into the statistics, you will find that Northeast Florida - specifically areas around Jacksonville - are in much better shape and have fewer instances of foreclosure, fraud and flipping (the 3 "F's") than Miami, Ft. Lauderdale and the Tampa markets.  In fact, in most "troubled market" reports, Jacksonville rarely makes it on the radar screen.

Also, you will hear that the nation's housing market is suffering, right?  Did you know that there are markets in the country where real estate values have been increasing during the last 2 years?

Talk is cheap.  We should demand more facts and less conjecture from our media sources.  If you are interested in factual real estate data for your part of Florida or another part of the country, just let me know.