Florida economists are predicting that the state’s housing market will bottom out in the second quarter of 2008 and that the state will avoid a recession.
"The peak [housing] price reached in June of 2006 is many years away. Anyone who is hoping to sell their home at that price will have to wait a very long time," says Christopher McCarty, an analyst with the University of Florida Survey Research Center. "Buyers, on the other hand, may want to consider second-quarter 2008 prices as very near lows."
Likewise, Sean Snaith, director of University of Central Florida's Institute for Economic Competitiveness and author of the quarterly Florida Forecast, predicted that annual housing starts, after bottoming out in 2008, would return by 2010 to the same levels seen back at the start of the decade.
"People have been predicting an apocalypse. I see more of rapture than an apocalypse," he quipped. "There will be some rough quarters to get through, but the long-range economic outlook is an upward trend for the region."
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