Jacksonville foreclosures for sale are expected to keep the city's recovery at bay despite expectations by some housing analysts that the city will rebound sooner than other Florida cities.
According to Metrostudy, economic recovery is expected by many to occur sooner in Jacksonville than in other areas of Florida because home prices did not overshoot as in other cities during the boom. The city's shipping port and the presence of military bases are also seen as strong buys for the city's economy.
But the continued rise in foreclosures due to unemployment has been dousing positive expectations of recovery. Over the 12-month period ended August this year, Jacksonville employers laid off 23,000 workers, pushing the unemployment rate higher in September to 10.7 percent. During the three months before September, the city was able to hold the jobless rate at 10.6 percent.
Metrostudy analysts said that while the unemployment rate may have reached its peak, a significant rebound in job creation may not occur quickly.
The analysts also said that sales of single-family homes have been rising again, but the still high number of Jacksonville foreclosures for sale has been pushing home prices down.
Anthony Crocco, head of the Central and North Florida divisions of Metrostudy, said distressed sales are still showing their impacts on the market, although home price drops in Jacksonville have not been as sharp as in other Florida cities.
In the July to September quarter, starts for single-family houses declined by around 25 percent compared to the same three-month period in 2008. But when compared to the previous quarter, housing starts jumped from 916 units to 1,020 units, an increase of 104 units.
The Metrostudy report about the impact of unemployment on recovery in Jacksonville has also been discussed in another report on Northeast Florida, with focus on Jacksonville. This report explained the role of the chronically unemployed in the continued rise in foreclosures in the city.
Jacksonville posted an increase of 64 percent in foreclosures in the July to September quarter this year compared to the same three-month period last year, and analysts are not pointing to subprime mortgages or exotic loans as culprits, but the double-digit jobless rates.
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