Last Monday, I posted information about single family home listings and sales.  June statistics had just been released and the news was better than it had been for awhile.  Today, as I give you the stats on condo sales, you’ll see that there’s a positive trend here, too. 

The number of condominium listings in Pinellas is down 16.9% from where it was last year.  At the end of this June, there were 6,059 condominiums listed on the market in Pinellas – at the end of June last year, there were 7,293 condos for sale.  A very healthy drop in inventory…

As far as price goes, the median price of all June condo sales was $139,000, which is the highest median price for condos yet this year.  If you look only at ‘regular’ condo sales, excluding short sales and/or foreclosures, the median price of all Pinellas condos sold this June was $146,500.

Continuing the good news, the actual number of condiminiums that sold in June was up 29% from June of last year, from 327 sold units last June to 422 sold this June.  The greatest percentage of condos sold were those in the $100,000 to $120,000 price range, at 10.7% of all units sold.  But not too terribly far behind was the $200,000 to $250,000 price range, at 8.5% of all units sold.

Clearly, the Real Estate market still has a way to go before it recovers, and these statistics don’t dispute that fact.  But they do show a continued positive trend in Pinellas, with sales up, prices up, and unsold inventory down, when compared to June of last year. 

It is definitely time for anyone who is considering buying a home, whether it’s a single family house or a condominium, to get off the fence and get serious.  Prices are going up, not down.  And the $8,000 tax credit for first-time home buyers or those who have not owned a home in three years or longer only applies to sales that have closing completed by November 30th.  That’s $8,000 of absolutely free money for you, if you are that first time home buyer.  Questions?  Contact me for details.

[All data referenced in this post is courtesy of the Pinellas Realtor Organization and is believed to be accurate, but is not guaranteed.]

So, here it is. I’m sure that my thoughts on what this blog will be are going to morph over time, and I’m sure that my ‘blog voice’ will change, too. But my idea is to create very casual entries that give you, the reader, some idea of what it’s like to live in St. Petersburg. If you’ve never been to St. Petersburg, I hope that my posts will introduce you to our city and will entice you to come and visit. Or maybe even come and live.

If you are already living in St. Petersburg, maybe you’ll enjoy reading about your city from someone else’s perspective. Maybe you’ll hear about something that you didn’t know about and you’ll try it out or visit it. The nice thing is, it’s free to read what I write. If you don’t like it, you can decide not to read it – no big deal. If you do like it, maybe you can make a comment to let me know. I’m likely to keep writing anyway, but I’ll be much happier about it if I know that someone, somewhere, is reading and enjoying what I write.

I used to work in the Corporate World, at Raymond James and Associates, here in St. Petersburg. While there (for ten years), I was known for sending out some rather lengthy emails whenever I was trying to entice people to do something extra, be it baking some wonderful dessert for a charity fund raiser or putting extra creative effort into dressing up for Halloween so that our department would win the annual contest (and we did win, year after year!) People read my stuff and told me that it was fun to read, so that just served to make me keep on writing long emails. I’m not sure that was a good thing, but it is what it is, and I’ve decided that I like the idea of writing blog posts.

Hula Girl Hibiscus Flower

Although the URL for my site is StPeteRealEstateBlog.com, I’ve decided to give it a shorter, crisper title – thus, Assignment: St. Petersburg is the name you see in the header. I like the sound of that, as it fits the way that I’m thinking about this blog. I’ve given myself an assignment to go out and grab bits of St. Petersburg and share them with you. Sometimes, I’ll throw in some history, if I think it’s interesting. I’ve lived here since I was four, so I know a lot about the city and I have certainly seen a lot of change!

To add some visual interest, I will always include a photograph with my posts. I think that it’s much more engaging to have a nice photo to look at, along with the reading. And besides, I love taking pictures. So all of the photos that you see will be pictures that I, personally, have taken. For today’s post, which is all about the blog itself, I couldn’t think of a relevant St. Petersburg photo to include. But when I walked outside of my own front door and saw this gorgeous hibiscus flower looking up at me, I decided that it is a perfect example of St. Petersburg! If you click on the picture, you’ll get a full view of it, and it’s worth a closer look!

This is a Real Estate blog with a twist. I will never post listings on this blog. I will never try to sell you anything on this blog. Rather, I will try to get you to fall in love with St. Petersburg, or to fall further in love with it. If, along the way, you decide that you’d like to consider buying or selling a home, then I’d love to help you, and you can always find a link to my Real Estate business web site over in the right hand column. What I will do, in regards to it being a Real Estate blog, is include occasional posts about St. Petersburg Real Estate and about Real Estate in general – maybe some educational bits, maybe some statistics to keep you abreast of how the local market is doing, some interesting facts. But I promise to try to keep it light and at least a little fun, as I don’t want to chase anyone away. There will be a lot of what I write that is coming right out of my head – thoughts, memories, visions, opinions. But I’ll always endeavor to clearly differentiate between what are my opinions and what are factual entries.

As a First Post, I haven’t really talked at all about St. Petersburg, but I promise that I will in my second post. I hope that I am able, through this blog, to provide some enjoyment and some education and some enticement to some of you out there in the ether to further explore St. Petersburg. I’m looking forward to writing the second post and the third, and on…