The average sales price in November 2019 decreased 4.9% to $265,638 from $279,463 one year ago.

Annual trends show that single-family home sales increased to an annual rate of 3,193 in November, up from the 3,160 reported last month. The annual rate of sales is 3.5% above the annual rate of 3,084 reported a year ago.

The chart below shows the annual rate of single family sales in Leon county over the last 24 months.

The average price of homes sold over the last twelve months in Leon county was $261,615. This is 0.7% above the $259,668 sales price reported one year ago.

The average sales price chart below shows the 12-month and 3-month average sales price of single-family homes in Leon county over the last two years.

The Passenger Traffic Report shows passenger counts increased for the two major carriers. American was up 18.3% and the Delta Group was up 2.4%. Silver Airways was down 42.3%.

The graph below shows the annualized number of passengers for the last 24-months. The annual rate of passengers at TIA in July was 842,526. This is 7.30% above the annualized rate reported during this month last year. The annualized number of passengers is calculated by summing the previous 12 months of traffic.

The annualized passenger traffic before the Great Recession was approximately 947,000 in 2007.

The unemployment rate increased from 2.9% in May to 3.5% in June. One year ago the unemployment rate was 3.8%.

The number of people working in June 2019 has increased when compared to last year. The Leon County Jobs Report, listed below, indicates that 150,205 were working in June, 2019. This is 2,638 more than the 147,567 reported working in June last year.

Also, the labor force expanded when compared to one year ago. In June, 2019 the workforce was 155,580 compared to 153,326 last year.

At the state-level, 4,000 jobs were added in June, 2019. However, the unemployment rate increased to 3.5% from 3.1% in May, 2019.

The chart below shows that monthly level of jobs in Leon County over the last three years with a 12-month average trend line. As the chart shows, the current monthly trends are consistent with the movement in jobs over the last three years.

“Tallahassee’s economy continues the positive trend that has prevailed for most of this year, pushing the index higher in three out of the last four months. It is now competing for the best start to a year since 2016. Airport Traffic and Lumber/ Building Supplies Sales continue to please, both have been on a tear seeing multiple months of seasonally adjusted growth” said TEI Founder Brett F. Ewing. “Despite having the lowest YoY growth rate since 2016 Median Sales Prices of Existing Homes helped fuel this month’s rebound by growing more than four percent compared to April of last year.”

“The TEI bounced right back in April & continued its momentum in what is turning out to be a very nice year of accelerating growth for the capital city.” Said Lance Mitchell, Director of Research at the TEI. “New construction permits has been trending up all year, but April marked its strongest month, almost doubling from this time last year. Realtor sales surged, increasing over 20% YoY, proving lower mortgage rates can spark demand and stopping a worrying trend of declines in that category. As we head into the Summer months, we feel it’s important to see this trend endure if we expect growth to continue its acceleration into the back half of the year.”

• Airport Traffic dipped 3.30 percent from last month, and continued its ascent moving up 4.19 percent from one year ago
• New Construction Building Permits grew 27.45 percent MoM, and 85.71 percent YoY
• Median Sales Prices of Single Family Homes gained 4.42 percent from March, and compared to April of last year
• Initial Claims for Reemployment Assistance went up 16.74 percent MoM, and slipped 16.47 percent YoY

The Passenger Traffic Report shows passenger counts increased for the two major carriers. American was up 24.0% and the Delta Group was up 1.1%. Silver Airways was down 47.3%.

The graph below shows the annualized number of passengers for the last 24-months. The annual rate of passengers at TIA in June was 837,626. This is 8.29% above the annualized rate reported during this month last year. The annualized number of passengers is calculated by summing the previous 12 months of traffic.

The annualized passenger traffic before the Great Recession was approximately 947,000 in 2007.

The average sales price in June 2019 decreased 1.2% to $278,806 from $282,073 one year ago.

Annual trends show that single-family home sales decreased to an annual rate of 3,021 in June, down from the 3,025 reported last month. The annual rate of sales is now 4.6% below the annual rate of 3,168 reported a year ago.

The chart below shows the annual rate of single family sales in Leon county over the last 24 months.

The average price of homes sold over the last twelve months in Leon county was $262,786. This is 5.0% above the $250,176 sales price reported one year ago.

The average sales price chart below shows the 12-month and 3-month average sales price of single-family homes in Leon county over the last two years.

The futuristic looking station has been under construction for a couple of weeks. The station is located strategically near Interstate – 10 and will serve as another piece of the Tesla re-charging network.

Currently, Florida has 12 Tesla Supercharger stations with the closest to Tallahassee located in Lake City.

The station can also serve Tesla automobile owners here in Tallahassee.

The station will accommodate 6 Tesla cars at one time.

Based on Tesla’s website, Tesla Motors was founded in 2003 by a group of engineers in Silicon Valley who wanted to prove that electric cars could be better than gasoline-powered cars. In 2012, Tesla launched Model S, the world’s first premium electric sedan.

Tesla has more than 50,000 vehicles on the road worldwide. Tesla owners have the benefit of charging at their home so they never have to visit a gas station or spend a cent on gasoline.

For long distance journeys, Tesla’s Supercharger network provides convenient and free access to high speed charging, replenishing half a charge in as little as 20 minutes. Superchargers now connect popular routes in North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific.

The station in Tallahassee is connected to the City of Tallahassee electric utility grid. The site houses hardware which “transforms” electricity from the grid into a form which can rapidly recharge Tesla automobiles.

The numbers from July show that 305 homes were sold for an average of $222,000. This is up from a year ago, when 243 homes were sold for an average price of $206,000.

This increase bumped up the 12-month single-family rate of sales to over 2,800 as shown in the chart below.

The steady increase in resales continues to be one of the more positive aspects of the local economy.

However, over the last two years, July and August proved to be the beginning of a cooling off period for resales. This downturn usually lasts to December. Will this trend continue, stay tuned.

The losses began in November, 2014 when employment fell by 1,327 jobs. This loss was followed by job losses of 553 in December, 408 in January, 253 in February, 732 in March and now, 474 in April.

In October employment stood at 145,964. Since that time, Leon County employment has fallen to 142,246 for a loss of 3,718 jobs.

During April, employment in Florida grew by 24,000 with gains reported in the North Florida counties of Escambia, Santa Rosa, and Okaloosa. Leon and Bay counties reported job losses.

Yun added, “As long as solid job growth continues, wages should eventually pick up to steadily improve purchasing power and help fully release the pent-up demand for buying.” On the local front, sales of existing homes in Leon County followed the national trend by falling 1.25% in August to an annual rate of 2,382. This comes on the heels of two consecutive months of growth in existing home sales in Leon County.

The chart on the front page shows that sales of existing homes in Leon County are beginning to slow down after a significant increase from September 2012 through November 2013.
During this period, the annual rate of existing home sales increased a whopping 30% from an annual rate of 1,745 homes in September, 2012 to a rate of 2,445 homes in November, 2013.
However, since November of last year, the annual rate of existing home sales has fallen from 2,445 to 2,382 in August of this year.

While existing home sales in Leon county have recently slowed, our area has been able to avoid the major drop off in existing home sales that hit the national market late last year and into the first part of this year.
The slowing at the national was in part due to inventory shortages. Yun said “there really should be stronger levels of home sales given our population growth. “In contrast, price growth is rising faster than historical norms because of inventory shortages.”

However, in Leon county price growth of existing homes has been significantly less than the national average and the average in the southern region.
Since August 2013, prices for existing home sales have increased 1.1% in Leon county compared to 5.6% in the U.S. and 5.1% in the south.
Looking forward, economists see continued job growth and an increase in wages as improving purchasing power and resulting in more home sales.

Innovation Park is the areas university-based research park that is overseen by the Leon County Research and Development Authority (the Authority).Among the partnerships highly valued by the Authority are those with Florida State University, Florida A & M University, and Tallahassee Community College, as well as those with governmental and industrial sector representatives.

The Authority is governed by a nine-member Board of Governors that includes appointees from Leon County (five appointees), the City of Tallahassee (one appointee), Florida State University (one appointee), Florida A & M University, (one appointee) and Tallahassee Community College (one appointee).

Unfortunately, until recently, the Park has been in the news for all the wrong reasons -internal squabbles, financial irregularities, and the lost of a well respected Director.

But over the last three years, the Board of Governors have quietly gone about their business of trying to reset the path of the Park and put more focus on executing their mission.

The mission of the Innovation Park is to work in partnership with Tallahassee Community College, Florida A&M University and Florida State University to promote scientific research and development activities and to foster economic development and broaden the economic base of Leon County.But before the Board could focus on the mission, years of questionable management and the lack of a cohesive strategic approach had to be addressed.

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Excerpts from LCRDA Memorandum of Understanding

III. Mission Statement

The Parties to this MOU affirm a common mission to promote scientific research and development and to foster economic development through incubating start-up businesses, facilitating community outreach to engage existing businesses and recruiting businesses to Leon County that arise from or are connected to specific research areas sponsored by the Universities or areas articulated in the LCRDA’s Strategic Plan. The shared goal of the parties is for Innovation Park’s common campus to create an environment that fosters ideas and innovations which translate into commercial application. The parties recognize that Innovation Park provides access to the development of talent creativity, and scientific research. The parties agree that the continued effective operation of Innovation Park is essential to the mission of the Parties.

IV. Restructuring

The restructuring plan for Innovation Park as outlined herein will allow: (1) LCRDA to better focus on the economic development at Innovation Park; (2) FSU and FAMU to have control over the land and buildings they are currently leasing, using or occupying in some capacity; and (3) each Party to develop additional parcels so that they can meet their individual needs while continuing to contribute to economic development a Innovation Park. The properties described herein are under a master lease from the Board of Trustees of the Internal Improvement Trust Fund (hereinafter “BTIITF”) to the LCRDA that expires in 2074.

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Getting “the house” in order required the development of more effective internal controls, a new set of bylaws and taking an inventory of the assets and evaluating how the assets helped or hindered the mission of the Park.

To that end, the Board appointed a working group of “outsiders” that took a look and found an organization in financial straits with no real plan to make money in the future.The working group also found that much of what the Park was doing was managing property, which was not a financially lucrative and not consistent with the mission.

Given these findings the Board, under the leadership of County Commissioner Kristin Dozier, who became Chair of the LCRDA in September, 2012, took the bold step of becoming smaller and less bureaucratic by proposing that FSU and FAMU take control of a portion of land they could develop when needed and a number of buildings they could use to expand. The proposal is under review at the Department of Environmental Protection and approval is expected in weeks.

County Commissioner Kristin Dozier told Tallahassee Reports the new approach “will allow the Board to focus on the main mission of Innovation.”

Moving forward, the Board has adopted a three prong approach to putting Innovation Park back on the path to fulfilling its mission.First, Innovation Park will focus on specific research areas that are actively being pursued by the Park’s partners. These areas include Energy, Materials, Aerospace, Bio-Tech, and Bio-Med.

Second, the Park will contract with the EDC to more aggressively market the opportunities available in these research areas to private sector companies and public sector organizations.

And third, the Board will focus on creating a “campus feel” in and around Innovation Park so that the network of building are part of a structure that is connected and can provide

The changes implemented by the LCRDA come at a critical time in the economic development future of Leon County. The Blueprint Sales Tax extension, for the first time, is scheduled to include money for economic development projects and FSU has committed over $200 million for a project called the Madison Mile.

It is Chair Dozier’s hope that the changes will allow Innovation Park to begin to contribute, in a very meaningful way, to the economic development of our community.

However, as the chart shows, the growth from 2012 slowed dramatically from the previous growth from 2011 to 2012. During that period the passenger traffic increased by approximately 51,000 passengers or 8%.