A Trulia Tale of Two Cities: Vero Beach and Sunrise
Popular real estate search engine Trulia always offers snapshots of a variety of real estate price trends, and this month's data focuses on two Florida cities moving in opposite directions. Trulia's Price Movers table summarizes month-over-month movements in median prices nationwide. Among the Top 5 Gainers is Vero Beach at #2 which reported an 8% increase in median prices last month. At the opposite end of the spectrum is Sunrise, Florida which ranked #2 among the Top 5 Fallers down almost 10%. Unlike Sunrise, Vero Beach weathered the housing bath well thanks to higher median incomes, more builder restraint during the boom years and fewer unsold units today.
"Florida For Sale!" Declares Wall Street Journal Reporter
Wall Street Journal reporter Brett Arends travels to Southwest Florida and discovers some drastic condo price cuts on the order of 20-30%, but he cautions that recently reported median price drops are not factoring in the inventory that has been slashed further and remains unsold for a variety of reasons. He points to websites like Zillow that are still valuing some Naples and Sarasota properties at pre-bath levels. The writer summarizes his motivation for flying to Florida and kicking the condo tires first-hand, "What's actually happening in these markets isn't always showing up right away." Further up the coast in tony Longboat Key, Arends finds some multi-million dollar waterfront mansions that have also been drastically reduced. 
Like her counterpart at the Wall Street Journal, CNBC's Margaret Brennan ventures out to the local strip mall to get the lowdown on the downturn in retail real estate. And what she finds are more vacancies than tracking firms are reporting in markets like Florida, Arizona and California. Retail real estate's "dirty little secret" boils down to the thousands of Mom and Pop stores that chased residential construction growth during the boom years and closed their doors when foreclosures rose and population growth faltered. She notes that formerly hot big box retail chains CompUSA and Linens 'n Things have both gone bankrupt. 
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