“Lee County’s housing market got a double dose of good news Thursday as July foreclosures dove to the lowest level in more than six years while new home permits stayed strong.
Even with Fort Myers Beach statistics not available, builders throughout the county pulled 247 permits for single-family homes — nearly as many as June’s 256, according to statistics released Thursday by the municipalities that issue permits.
Lenders filed only 244 foreclosure lawsuits in July, down from 362 in June and 584 in July 2012, according to a report issued Thursday by the Southwest Florida Real Estate Investment Association.
July’s number was lower than it’s been since the number of foreclosures started to edge up in 2007 after the effects of the housing crash started to be felt.
“I did them twice because I thought I’d made a mistake,” said Jeff Tumbarello, a real estate agent with Steelbridge Realty who’s director of the association.
But, he said, the low number is part of a long-term trend of decline in foreclosures as the ill-advised home loans of the boom in 2004 and 2005 have been replaced by mainly cash purchases in recent years.
“It’s not like there’s this endless bucket of bad mortgages in Lee County,” Tumbarello said. “It can’t go on forever.”
He noted that 62 percent of purchases now are cash transactions, ushering in an era of less debt and more equity in the housing market.”