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Florida’s unemployment rate dropped one tenth of a percent in May, marking the lowest it has been since December 2008. The downtick in the joblessness is having a positive effect on state tax collections, and real estate transactions are leading the way.

Peter and Mary Ribaudo spent the last four years trying to sell their Bradenton home. They’d just about given up when out of the blue they got an offer.

” We were surprised when along came a buyer. Um, It seemed to come out of nowhere and we thought this is the time we might sell” says Peter.

Now the couple has made an offer on a home in Tallahassee. It wasn’t their first choice, but Mary says other homes they were considering were snapped up before they could make an offer.

“These houses are moving quickly, and and you’ve got more than one person, sometimes, on a house.”

The taxes from the sale of real estate is one of the brightest pictures in Florida. It’s seventeen million dollars over estimate in just May alone. One reason for the uptick is that banks are lending again. Since the beginning of the year, financial institutions have created 57 hundred new jobs. That accounts for one of every ten new jobs created in Florida since the first of the year.

John Sebree of the Florida Realators says the horizon looks promising. “And the fact that pending sales are up thirty five percent shows that people are back in the market, they’re ready” says Sebree.

And realtors like Steve Hourigas are counting on the trend continuing. “They are out there ready to buy…if they take too long, they may not be buying what they thought they were buying”.

One of every four homes being sold is being purchased by a foreign national.

While home sales are increasing, new construction remains one of the hardest hit areas in the state’s economy\, losing twenty two thousand jobs over the last year.