I got this email this morning from our Venice Broker, Mary Smith, and I thought I would share it. Keep in mind if you link the Sarasota Tribune from here the title of the article is "Home prices fall by the steepest rate on record." Now I'm not one to blame the media for the problems they report. However, Mary's point is buried in this article. The areas that saw the declines first are actually showing the signs of recovery first:
Aaron
"Good article in our morning paper. . . . As we have spoken about in the past, the North Port area hit the wall first in our area - back in Oct 2005, the prices in that area stopped climbing.
For the first time since then, that area's pricing actually increased since Nov 2008. Still harsh overall, but I am happy that any area may be seeing the bottom. The Sarasota-Venice area still dropped; however, we hit the wall later than North Port."
"In Sarasota-Bradenton, the December median price hit $160,000, a 35 percent decline harking back to April 2002 and driven by short sales and foreclosures.
December's median was a drop of $82,000 from where it may have been under a projection developed by the Herald-Tribune, one aimed at determining where prices would be with a generally accepted 6 percent annual appreciation rate and no three-year housing boom.
The median in Charlotte County-North Port was $102,400 last month, up 4.8 percent from $97,700 in November but down 37 percent from a year before. The $97,700 figure was on par with June 2001."

