Located in the southern region of Tampa Bay, Florida, the city of Bradenton has recently experienced a surge in home sales, providing local real estate experts with optimistic views of the future of the Bradenton real estate market. However, experts still point out that the real estate struggle isn’t over yet, considering the continuing decline in median sales prices and a still heavily distressed housing inventory. The Tampa Bay area has suffered from sharp declines in median prices and high foreclosure rates due to the recession that began in the fall of 2008. However, affordable housing prices, low interest rates, and the federal first-time homebuyer’s tax credit have enticed many prospective homebuyers to reenter the Bradenton real estate market, making Bradenton one of the most improved real estate markets in the Tampa Bay area in terms of single-family home sales.

According to the Tampa Bay Business Journal, the region has recently posted major increase in both its single-family home sales and condominium sales. Realtors say the recent burst of real estate activity has resulted in almost a 111 percent increase in condo sales. However, at the same time, the region also posted a 21 percent decline in median sales prices from about $131,000 in November of 2008 to $104,000 in November of 2009. Bradenton posted the largest increase in single-family home sales with a 63 percent jump from 482 sales to 784 sales between November of 2008 and 2009. However, Bradenton real estate also suffered from a 7 percent decline in median sales prices. Nevertheless, realtors are optimistic that the federal tax credit will continue to spur real estate activity in the region, promoting a successful and speedy recovery in the near future.

Tampa Bay Online has also noted the recent improvements in the Tampa Bay region real estate market. Most realtors in the region have reported that most homebuyers are saying that the federal tax credit was a major influence in urging them to invest in real estate. The Bay area posted a 34 percent increase in home sales in November from the previous month, with much activity taking place towards the end of November when the federal tax credit was expected to expire. However, since the deadline for the tax credit was extended to April, local realtors hope it will continue to promote real estate growth in the region.

Santa Barbara real estate is poised for recovery and stability, according to economist Mark Schniepp through a Pacific Coast Business Times article published on November 17, 2009, by Hendry Dubroff. While commercial real estate markers and other economic benchmarks like job growth and a turnaround of other measures may continue to be problematic for Santa Barbara, it is a good sign to see the housing market begin to level off.

RealtyStore.com’s October 2009 California Foreclosure Report was released on October 31, 2009, and brought good news for real estate in Santa Barbara. Based on NODs, or Notices of Disclosure, Santa Barbara and the surrounding county saw only a 26% increase while the rest of the state suffered from a jump of 34%. “The figures indicate that many California homeowners are struggling even more in 2009 to meet their mortgages.” However, it is important to realize that the actual foreclosure rate in Santa Barbara is also much smaller than that of other cities and communities in the state. Although the number of notices increased by about a third, this doesn’t mean that 33% more homes were actually foreclosed by banks.

Santa Barbara homes for sale aren’t completely free of worry yet, though. David Streitfeld wrote on October 27, 2009 in the New York Times that “even as new figures show house prices have risen for three consecutive months, concerns are growing that the real estate market will be severely tested this winter. Artificially low interest rates and a government tax credit are luring buyers, but both those inducements are scheduled to end. Defaults and distress sales are rising in the middle and upper price ranges. And millions of people have lost so much equity that they are locked into their homes for years, a modern variation of the Victorian debtor’s prison that is freezing a large swath of the market.”

A smaller percentage of Mexican immigrants in the United States sent money back to their homeland than in 2006, according to new data from the Inter-American Development Bank’s Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF). The drop in remittances was steepest in states where immigration most recent — in so-called “new destination” states including Georgia, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, remittances plunged from 80% in 2006 to just 56% in 2007. The data come from a survey of 900 Mexican and Central American immigrants, both legal and undocumented.

These reports are consistent with data from the Mexican central bank, which reports that remittances to Mexcio were essentially flat during the first half of 2007 as compared to the same period last year. In contrast, remittances to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras rose by an average 11% during the first half of 2007, compared with the same period last year. The explanation for the difference, suggests the MIF, is that Mexicans are far more likely to live in “new destination” states than are Central American immigrants.

The New York Times picks up the story from the political angle, suggesting that the uncertaintly regarding immigration laws in the United States has spurred immigrants to save. 83% of the immigrants survey said that they felt discrimination against Latino immigrants in the United States was growing. Nearly half of all immigrants surveyed in “new destination states” said they expected to be living in the United States in five years.

Mark Thoma at the Economist’s View points out that the “I might go home” story is only one of several that might explain the dip in remittances. Remittance rates can go down because immigrants decide to save more in anticipation of a return-trip to Mexico. But they can also go down because immigrants have less money to send. An unstable economy, unemployment, and the soft housing market are all good reasons to think that the immigrants in MIF’s survey may simply not have the cash to send home that they did last year.

These two hypotheses — call them the “I might go home” story versus the “I have no cash” story — are testable, presuming the data is available. And, of course, the two stories are probably intimately related, i.e. “I might go home” because “I have no cash.” In addition to citing increased discrimination, the immigrants surveyed by the MIF stated that finding a good-paying job this year was harder than it was last year. Heightened discrimination against Latinos was amongst the reasons they cited for *why* finding a good job was harder today. If I’m having trouble making ends meet in the United States, it’s probably a combination of heightened discrimination and the economic squeeze effecting all Americans. And if I’m having trouble making ends meet here in the U.S., I’m unlikely to be able to send much home. I might even start planning to head back to Mexico myself, which means I need to save, which means even less money to send home.

Why should we care? Remittances to Mexico from the United States totalled $23 billion in 2006, making them the country’s second-largest source of foreign income after oil. About 2 million Mexicans depend on remittances as a major source of their incomes, according to Donald Terry, manager of the MIF, and the slowing of remittances represents a lost “vital lifeline.”