Winter Park and four Lake County cities dominate a new list of the most popular housing markets in Metropolitan Orlando.
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The rapidly redeveloping Winter Park market was rated No. 1 for attracting buyers in a new report by the real estate research firm Zillow, which considered the time homes were listed for sale, the inventory of homes available and the amount of price cuts.
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Although Winter Park has long been one of the strongest submarkets for real estate in the greater Orlando area, what was new in the Zillow ranking was that the Lake County cities of Tavares, Leesburg, Mount Dora and Lady Lake also landed on the list of Top 5 markets attracting buyers within the region.
Larry Pierce, a broker for Pierce Realty in Mount Dora, said that what Winter Park and the four cities have in common is that they are not stereotypical Florida subdivisions. The markets noted in the Zillow report have more local businesses than national franchises, architecture as old as 100 years and even some changes in elevation.
“People think of Florida as being flat, sunny and the oldest homes built in 1972,” he said. “People from the small towns in the Northeast and Midwest connect with these places. They all have their own sense of community.”
The popularity of cities in Lake County also was evident in a sales report released this week by the Orlando Regional Realtor Association. While the volume of sales declined in Orange, Seminole and Osceola counties in February from a year earlier, the number of sales increased in Lake County.
Overall, Lake is more affordable than the rest of metropolitan area, with median prices of $141,500 in February. The median price last month was $165,375 in Orange, $165,000 in Seminole and $143,000 in Osceola, according to the Orlando Regional Realtor Association.
At the other end of the spectrum, the Orlando-area market with the greatest number of sellers and houses taking the longest to sell was the east Orange County city of Ocoee. Also on that list was the Meadow Woods development in south Orange County, Altamonte Springs, St. Cloud and the Lockhart area of east Orange County.
mshanklin@tribune.com or 407-420-5538
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