Regional Spotlight: Buy a New or Used Home?

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RISMEDIA, June 26, 2007?(MCT)?It’s a choice that many home buyers grapple with, as new-home sellers aggressively market their offerings in the slowing market. A fresh report out today shows the strategy is working.

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Existing home sales in the Orlando area are still outpacing new-home sales, but losing ground to the new home builders as they pull out all the stops.

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Local and national builders with deeper pockets than a typical homeowner trying to sell their home are revving up the marketing mojo, offering steep discounts, free motorcycles and other goodies to keep sales perking as best they can.

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A joint report by the Orlando Regional Realtor Association and the Attorneys Title Insurance Fund in Orlando shows that 6,845 existing single family homes sold in the metro Orlando area, while 4,084 new homes were purchased in the same four-county area during the same three-month period.

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Of the 10,929 total homes sold — both new and used — local Realtors accounted for 53.9% of the sales through their Multiple Listing Service.

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That was down from 55.5% in the same period a year ago.

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Excluding the new home portion, though, Realtors accounted for 84.9% of existing single-family home sales, up from 82.1% a year earlier.

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So that indicates that the pros gained ground over the for-sale-by-owner group.

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Looking back to last year, during the first quarter of 2006, the Orange, Lake, Seminole and Osceola metro region had 15,707 homes sold — new and existing. That’s a hefty bit more than the 10,929 sold in the same quarter this year.

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But during last year’s first quarter, 10,382 of the 15,707 homes sold were existing homes, or resales, while 5,325 were new homes.

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That means that while both new and existing home sales fell from early last year to this year, existing home sales fell far steeper than the new home sales.

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Copyright ? 2007, The Orlando Sentinel, Fla.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

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