The worst is over for Lee County’s residential real estate market — but that won’t necessarily keep the value of your home from going into free fall.
That was the message that Denny Grimes, owner of Denny Grimes & Co. real estate company, had Thursday for the audience of The News-Press 2010 Market Watch at Harborside Event Center in downtown Fort Myers.
He drew a nervous round of cheers when he said the Market Watch in more affluent times “used to be a Who’s Who event. This year, it’s a Who’s Left event.”

Prices for homes in higher-price brackets likely will face downward pressure as more working people are He called that “kind of a good news-bad news thing” because even though the sector is slow, a lack of construction will allow the over-supply of buildings to be absorbed.

Stouder urged potential investors to be bold and decisive in a beaten-down market, using the allegory of a man who dives into a swimming pool and retrieves the bar of gold at the bottom while a crowd of people waits for the pool to be drained so they can easily get the bar.

He predicted that the commercial market —although in bad shape now — will recover more quickly because owners are businessmen who will “make decisions a lot quicker” to let go of properties if it doesn’t make sense to hold on.
But commercial real estate broker Gary Tasman of Commercial Property Southwest Florida LLC, a Cushman & Wakefield alliance member, said this generally isn’t a good time for an investor to jump in because bad conditions likely will linger too long to make buying a good long-term decision.

Opportunities exist, however, for business owners to buy or expand their buildings or lock in long-term rates to take advantage of today’s weak market conditions, he said.
Loans are available from the Small Business Administration and a business owner can position himself to succeed by financing a purchase now, Tasman said.

Commercial real estate broker Brian Tunnell, president of Bonita Springs-based National Commercial, said he sees some signs that the residential markets in Southwest Florida will continue to show strain but that “there appears to be some activity on the part of some of the national builders who are still in the marketplace, positioning themselves” for the expected recovery.

But, Tunnell said, that doesn’t mean the turnaround is right around the corner. “That may not come for 12 to 18 months.”

As for commercial construction, he said a revival is even further out in the future because of tight financing and the increasing numbers of commercial foreclosures.

“We’re not going to see a lot of activity there for 21⁄2 to three years,” Tunnell said.
forced out of their homes by unemployment and business failures, he said.
“The economy’s doing a downward spiral,” Grimes said. “More and more people are reaching the end of their financial rope — working people. People who used to be double income are now no income.”
Median price for the county’s housing market may well go up because lower-priced homes already are priced to sell while the owners of more expensive houses are still hanging on instead of selling for the real market value, Grimes said. Still, the drop in prices made 2009 a turnaround year in attitudes about local real estate, Grimes said.
“We had confidence return to our market” when prices reached a low enough level that “buyers were comfortable buying again,” he said — the result was a record year for sales with 16,260 single-family homes sold.
Stan Stouder of commercial real estate brokerage CB Richard Ellis said a big problem in commercial real estate is a lack of financing.
“All of a sudden the wheels came off” as banks found themselves unable to lend because of increasing numbers of bad debts, Stouder said.
That’s led to a collapse of commercial construction, Stouder said, noting that, “In January 2010, for the first time since they were keeping records, there were zero commercial permits in unincorporated Lee County.”

He called that “kind of a good news-bad news thing” because even though the sector is slow, a lack of construction will allow the over-supply of buildings to be absorbed.
Stouder urged potential investors to be bold and decisive in a beaten-down market, using the allegory of a man who dives into a swimming pool and retrieves the bar of gold at the bottom while a crowd of people waits for the pool to be drained so they can easily get the bar.

He predicted that the commercial market —although in bad shape now — will recover more quickly because owners are businessmen who will “make decisions a lot quicker” to let go of properties if it doesn’t make sense to hold on.

But commercial real estate broker Gary Tasman of Commercial Property Southwest Florida LLC, a Cushman & Wakefield alliance member, said this generally isn’t a good time for an investor to jump in because bad conditions likely will linger too long to make buying a good long-term decision.

Opportunities exist, however, for business owners to buy or expand their buildings or lock in long-term rates to take advantage of today’s weak market conditions, he said.
Loans are available from the Small Business Administration and a business owner can position himself to succeed by financing a purchase now, Tasman said.

Commercial real estate broker Brian Tunnell, president of Bonita Springs-based National Commercial, said he sees some signs that the residential markets in Southwest Florida will continue to show strain but that “there appears to be some activity on the part of some of the national builders who are still in the marketplace, positioning themselves” for the expected recovery.

But, Tunnell said, that doesn’t mean the turnaround is right around the corner. “That may not come for 12 to 18 months.”
As for commercial construction, he said a revival is even further out in the future because of tight financing and the increasing numbers of commercial foreclosures.

“We’re not going to see a lot of activity there for 21⁄2 to three years,” Tunnell said.