Manatee-Sarasota home prices growing, but not as fast as rest of state

Home prices across in the Manatee-Sarasota region continue to climb, jumping nearly 4 percent year-over-year in August.

Good news for homeowners, indeed.

Somewhat sobering: For the fourth straight month, home values in the two-county area trailed gains accumulated across Florida as well as the United States.

According to figures released Tuesday by real estate researcher CoreLogic, home prices in the Bradenton-Sarasota area jumped 3.9 percent in August, a healthy increase but well below gains enjoyed across Florida (6.2 percent) and the country (6.9 percent).

That CoreLogic numbers are in line with the Realtor Association of Sarasota and Manatee’s August report, which showed the median sales price for an existing single-family home in Manatee County was $286,855, a 6.2 percent jump from a year earlier. In Sarasota County, the median sales price in August was $258,000, a 1.5 percent year-over-year increase.

As prices continuing to surge in the region, state and nation, bolstering equity for homeowners, would-be buyers are forced to compete for a low inventory of properties.

“While growth in home sales has stalled due to a lack of inventory during the last few months, the tight inventory has actually helped stabilize price growth,” CoreLogic chief economist Frank Nothaft said in Tuesday’s report.

“Over the last three years, price growth in the CoreLogic national index has been between 5 percent and 7 percent per year, and CoreLogic expects home prices to increase about 5 percent by this time next year.”

Even more so in Florida, where prices are projected to increase by 6.6 percent during the next 12 months, outpacing the 4.7 percent forecast for the U.S. Florida is one of nine states with projected growth of more than 6 percent by August 2018.

Washington (13 percent) and Utan (11.2) were the only two states to see prices rise by double digits in August. Nineteen states, including Florida, experienced growth of 6 percent or better, while 42 had growth of 3 percent or better.

“Nearly half of the nation’s 50 (largest) markets are overvalued. The lack of real estate affordability has spread beyond the typically expensive coasts into the interior of the nation, hitting cities such as Denver, Nashville, Austin and Dallas,” CoreLogic president and CEO Frank Martell said.

West Virginia (1.7 percent) was the lone state where prices fell.

This story was originally published October 3, 2017 at 10:55 AM with the headline "Manatee-Sarasota home prices growing, but not as fast as rest of state."