Planning to buy or sell your home in 2007?
Look around first at the ''For Sale'' signs in your neighborhood -- they are key to understanding the housing market this year. For every home that sells in this market, 14 do not, according to a Miami Herald analysis of housing in South Florida.
The result: Buyers will have plenty to choose from this year, but they should plan to keep their homes for at least a few years rather than flip them. And sellers will have to price their homes carefully -- sales prices in 2006 were 8 percent higher than a year earlier, but asking prices went down 13 percent.
And everybody will have to take a deep breath and get used to a slower pace.
''You just have to be willing to stick it out,'' says Henry Harper, president of The Intrepid Real Estate Company in Miami. ``That is what real estate used to be. It was a slow game, and that's what we need to get back to.''
We analyzed sales and inventory in 2005 and 2006 for a snapshot of the real estate market. Turn to the Issues & Ideas section, 1L, to see what we found and what you can expect in 2007.
