Floridians and outside investors waiting for the Sunshine State's real estate market to show signs of improvementš are going to wait awhile longer. That's the feeling of real estate experts surveyed in the University of Florida's latest study of statewide housing trends.
For months now the brokers, appraisers other industry insiders surveyed in the study showed some optimism.
While single family housing looked gloomyš, many clung to the stability in commercial and rental housing. Now, those same experts say real estate across the board shows signs of sickness.
Wayne Archer is a U of F Real Estate researcher.
"If our respondents were physicians, they would be telling us that we've got certain markets that are pretty seriously ill with pneumonia: the condominium market and some housing markets."
Rental housing has started taking hits in the eyes of many real estate insiders. Commercial real estate has also seen drops in occupancy. But researchers say some real estate sectors may be 'sliding along the bottom' and could start to slowly rebound in 2009.
"There are certain kinds of signals they give us on the outlook for investment and the outlook for the value of things and these are holding fairly steady. They're not great, but they're holding steady."