More than 5,000 New Orleans property owners have appealed their new assessments, turning what is normally a routine task for the City Council into a tall order that could take weeks or even months.

As a result, the council is seeking proposals, due today, for a firm that will manage the complex process and handle much of the work reviewing the 5,262 appeals. The plan is to have a contractor hired by the end of the week; the job could be worth in the neighborhood of $500,000, said the council chief of staff, Ron Pursell said.

Florida’s resale housing market continued to sputter in July, with sales down 24 percent from the same month a year ago, the Florida Association of Realtors said Monday.

The median price dipped 5 percent — to $237,500 — compared with a year ago.

Among the state’s major metro areas, Fort Myers turned in one of the worst year-over-year performances, with a 39 percent drop in sales, followed closely by Orlando at 35 percent.
Four metro regions had double-digit percentage declines in price: Melbourne-Titusville, off 11 percent, dipping below $200,000 to $195,800; Fort Pierce-Port St. Lucie, also down 11 percent; Sarasota-Bradenton, down 12 percent; and Punta Gorda, off 21 percent.

Three real estate industry groups that would dearly love to have good news instead issued a trio of reports on Monday that underscored the continued weakness in the housing market, both for California and the nation.

California sales: The California Association of Realtors said sales of existing homes in the state slumped 22.7 percent in July compared with July 2006. The 350,980 homes (seasonally adjusted) that closed escrow in July contrasted with 453,980 last year at this time.

The group said that both tighter standards for mortgage underwriting and “the adverse psychological impact” of ongoing bad news about foreclosures and subprime mortgages caused sales to decline.

U.S. home prices fell 3.2 percent in the second quarter, the steepest rate of decline since Standard & Poor’s began its nationwide housing index in 1987, the research group said Tuesday.

The decline in home prices around the nation shows no evidence of a market recovery anytime soon, one of the architects of the index said.

MacroMarkets LLC Chief Economist Robert Shiller said the declining residential real estate market “shows no signs of slowing down.”

Houses abandoned to foreclosure are beginning to breed trouble, adding neighbors to the growing ranks of victims.

Stagnant swimming pools spawn mosquitoes, which can carry the potentially deadly West Nile virus. Empty rooms lure squatters and vandals. And brown lawns and dead vegetation are creating eyesores in well-tended neighborhoods.
In Northridge, the house next door to Michael McKenna’s was put on the market, sold and then foreclosed on, all in the space of a few months last spring.

With the five-bedroom home now forsaken and deserted, McKenna has been reluctantly cutting the lawn and dumping chemicals in the pool to kill the bugs.