Jacksonville Real Estate Market - The Ups and The Downs...
Jacksonville, Florida Market Update
Life is full of ups and downs and how we perceive those fluctuations determines, to a large extent, how we progress through life. People who tend to focus on the down cycles tend to be less productive than those who focus on the up cycles. It is all about perspective.
How we view what is happening around us has far more influence on our behaviors and decisions than most of us realize. This is why motivational experts encourage us to surround ourselves with positive thinking, positive talking and positive acting people. It is in maintaining a positive outlook and perspective that we enable ourselves to move forward even in the face of adverse conditions around us.
Unfortunately it is common for news reports to focus on the negative. It seems that even the most positive news, when reported at all, is buried deep inside the story. The HEADLINES are designed to capture attention and for some odd reason negative headlines grab more attention than positive - or at least that is what editors seem to believe.
One such HEADLINE I saw recently said "Home sales fall 37%, median prices down 6%". The headline was comparing March 2008 with March 2007.
What the headline DID NOT tell us is the fact that Home Sales INCREASED 20% in March 2008 over February 2008 and that the median price INCREASED 5% for the same period. To the writer's credit, he did include this information within the body of the story but it was not the emphasis.
What the article also did not tell the reader is that the average sales price for a single family home in Jacksonville INCREASED more than 44% during the first quarter of 2008 compared to the first quarter of 2003 - not bad over a short 5 year stretch! Real estate... it has ups and downs like everything else but over the long haul it just keeps getting better.