All that remains in the living room is a rectangular area rug with a wine-colored sofa and matching ottoman placed on top of it. The rug covers a portion of the white tile floor. The blinds are slightly open, allowing rays of light from the afternoon sun to hit the bare beige walls. Except for the small splash of color, Jenny Heath’s Pinellas Point house is empty. It has been since March.
Heath, 30, and her husband Mark, 29, put their 1,600-square-foot home on the market last Thanksgiving. Their goal at the time was to sell their house by March and move to Georgia, Jenny Heath’s home state. Now, more than seven months later, their St. Petersburg, Fla., home is still waiting for a buyer.
More than 18,000 homes are up for sale in Pinellas County. Most will stay on the market for at least four months, says Carolyn Kling, chairman of the board of the Pinellas Realtor Organization.
Caught amid all those home-sellers are many families just like the Heaths, people who want to move, or have to move. The Heaths are stuck in one of the biggest real estate lulls in state history. More houses are on the market than ever before, and they’re staying there longer, Kling said.
Heath and her husband knew the housing market in Pinellas County wasn’t ideal for sellers. Nevertheless, last November they decided to put their house up for sale and look for new jobs in Georgia. Heath, who works for Progressive Insurance, requested a transfer so she could live near family and friends. She and her husband want to work less while they raise their son Ian, 2, and consider the possibility of more children.
In Georgia the prices of homes, property taxes and insurance are all lower than what the Heaths paid while living in St. Petersburg. A home the size of theirs would cost approximately $60,000 less in Athens, and their property tax would be a fraction of what they pay in Florida, she says.
“We realized we would never be able to live in Florida, have more kids, and have me work less,” Heath says. “We knew if we came to Georgia I could work part time and he could make a decent living.”
Jenny Heath’s transfer came through in March. That forced a tough decision: either turn down the transfer she had requested, or move to Georgia before their Florida house sold. The Heaths chose Georgia, which has meant paying for two homes at once. Jenny Heath believes the changes will benefit the family in the long run, but in the mean time they struggle to make ends meet.
Since the family moved out of their home, they have stretched their $3,500 monthly income to pay their mortgage in St. Petersburg and their expenses in Georgia. Heath still works full time. Her husband, Mark, finished his service in the Army in August 2004. In St. Petersburg he worked as a home inspector and now he’s working full time at Lowe’s, while he applies to the Athens Police Department.
The Heaths moved into a 700-square-foot, two-bedroom duplex in Georgia because they could not afford to pay their $1,600 mortgage along with a second mortgage for a house in Athens. They pay $650 a month in rent for their small place in Georgia.
“We rented a duplex and signed a six-month lease with hopes that we would sell by then,” Heath said. “But that’s not looking too promising now.”
The St. Petersburg house, on 55th Avenue South, wouldn’t have been difficult to sell a year earlier, when the Florida housing market was one of the hottest in the nation. It was built in 1956 and remodeled before the Heaths bought it in 2005. Ironically, that was near the peak of the market craze, and just before real estate started a downward slide that has yet to stop.
The house had fresh paint, new appliances and clean floors. The yard of the three-bedroom, two-bathroom home is lined with shrubs and small flower gardens. The back yard is fenced; the back patio that consists of a well-furnished patio from thepatiopro.com is private.
They bought the house for $215,000. When they decided to sell after living in the house for nearly a year, they tacked on what seemed like a modest increase, listing it for $235,000. It seemed like a great deal. Some weeks two or three people would come look at the house. Some weeks nobody came.
While they were still in St. Petersburg, Heath had to be constantly prepared in case buyers did want to look at the house. She spent hours each day cleaning and picking up her son’s toys. Heath’s friends and a real estate agent told her to keep her house clutter-free, make it appear as spacious as possible and put away all family photos. Heath said she did all of those things, except for removing photos. She wanted her house to still feel like home, even if strangers were wandering through.
Gradually the couple dropped their asking price to $215,000 — back to what they paid. Heath said she would feel lucky if they could get $10,000 back from the house once it finally sells. They still owe $182,000 on the mortgage.
Dropping the price of a house will usually make the property more appealing to buyers, Kling says. Sometimes, when dropping the price isn’t enough, sellers may have to help cover the buyer’s closing costs, further cutting into the seller’s profits. Heath and her husband are not willing to go any lower, and she said they will continue to wait for it to sell.
Since the family left St. Petersburg, their real estate agent, Charlene DeWitt of Dean & DeWitt Properties, has shown the house to several interested couples. But each time it looked as if the house might sell, the deal fell through. Three different buyers that wanted the house all had problems coming up with the money, Heath says.
The story is the same all over Pinellas County. In May of 2005, when the market was hot, 1,439 homes changed owners. The next year that number dropped to 1,071. This year it fell all the way to 602.
As a result there is a glut of homes for sale. The 18,000 homes on the market now are more than the number two years ago.
The record number of homes on the market doesn’t seem to worry Kling too much, though. The real estate market fluctuates frequently, and eventually this buyers’ market will swing back into a sellers’ market, says Kling, who has been in the business for 27 years. Real estate has always appreciated over the long haul, and she is confident the trend will continue.
Frank Williams, a Florida state economist, agrees. The increasing mortgage rates, slowing income growth and dropping prices of homes statewide may cause the market to be sluggish, he says, but it will bounce back. Historically, time is the best remedy for an ailing market. He expects a turnaround near the end of the year.
Until then though, families like the Heaths are stuck with homes they neither want nor can afford.
Each month the Heaths live paycheck to paycheck, and dip further into their savings. They plan to shut off the electricity and water at their Florida home so they can save a bit more each month.
“I don’t even focus on selling it anymore,” Heath says. “I just try to make sure I can pay the next month. Even when I’m not thinking about it, I still am. It’s always in the back of my mind.”
Heath, a self-proclaimed control freak, says sitting and waiting for the house to sell has been stressful. She hopes the house will sell soon so she and her husband can look for a home in Athens, but knows the situation is out of her control.
“If it takes six more months, yeah, it sucks for us, but there is nothing we can do,” she says. “At some point somebody has to buy it, right?”
