Tallahassee Real Estate Blog

In today's Tallahassee real estate blog, we'll address a question that many potential sellers are asking: with the improvement in the economy, when will Tallahasse home prices return to normal? 

First, we need to realize what normal is.  We just came off the largest real estate bubble in the past 80 years.  The bubble wasn't just in 2006 and 2007.  It really started back in the early 2000s.  We may not see 2007 prices again for many, many years.  We are generally back to 2003 Tallahassee prices. We will stay there for some time.

Price gains will be dependent on supply and demand.  We need to see a decline in the number of distress sales on the market, and we need to see a jump in employment, wages, and household formation (people getting married, moving out of their parents' home, etc.)  None of this is happening right now.

For the sake of illustration, let's look at a best case for price appreciation.  In this case, we'll assume we're at the bottom of the market, and we'll assume price appreciation will start this year.  And, we'll assume prices will aprpreciate at 5%.  These assumptions are all wildly optimistic, but we don't want to be accused of doom and gloom predictions.  The point is, even with some extremely rosy predictions, we don't even get back to peak levels by 2015.  In reality, it may take until 2013 until we see any appreciation, according to many experts.   

Potential home sellers need to understand that waiting for the market to get better next year will not likely improve their price situation.