Brevard's Economy

by J. Roger Shealy

Here are some charts on our local economy. The county’s fiscal year end is 09/30 and the audited financial report is generally not available until late February. The county government data I have will be a year old until the 2010 financial report is released.

After a brief spike in December, housing prices have continued their downward march. Prices are now off 62.5% from their August 2005 high watermark.

This is the chart that demonstrates the trend in taxable value.

This simply shows the number of homes and condos sold. You can see what the peak of the bubble looked like as we were turning over homes.

Here is the latest foreclosure filings data I have.

The above shows that economic activity is still stagnant and sits at levels not seen since the mid 90’s. The retailers in our County are hurting!

Notice the correlation between home values and consumer spending. Quite telling.

This puts the level of unemployment into perspective. This is, and will, have repercussions on societal behavior.

We really need the 2010 data and I’ll keep an eye out for the report.

Regards,

Roger