Manatee County home prices continue to rise, with no end in sight

Good news for those who own a home in Manatee County: Prices continued to surge last month, extending a recent run that seemingly has no end in sight as would-be buyers compete for a low inventory of properties.

According to figures released Wednesday by the Realtor Association of Sarasota and Manatee, the median sales price for an existing single-family home in May was $299,000, a 7.8 percent year-over-year increase.

With growing but still tight inventories putting upward pressure on median prices, sellers are “in complete control and buyers (are) forced to contend with cutthroat competition and intense pressure to make a deal,” said Svenja Gudell, chief economist at the real estate firm Zillow.

Nowhere is that more evident than in Manatee County, where median prices have risen more than 53 percent since the end of 2012, as the market continues to rebound from the housing meltdown during the Great Recession.

The county has a 4.3-month supply of single-family homes, meaning that’s about how long it would take to sell all of the properties if no others came up for sale. A 5.5-month supply is considered the ideal balance between buyers and sellers in the Manatee-Sarasota region.

“With an increase in home prices, potential sellers are more interested in listing,” association president Xena Vallone said.

While Manatee County saw a significant year-over-year increase in median prices, Sarasota had a slight decrease. At $260,000 in May, that was a 1.1 percent drop from the same time last year.

The median sales price for an existing single-family home in Florida last month was $239,000, up 7.7 percent from the previous year and marking the 66th consecutive month that the statewide median increased.

“Buyer demand continues to fuel Florida’s housing market,” said 2017 Florida Realtors president Maria Wells. “In May, sellers of existing single-family homes received 96.4 percent (median percentage) of their original listing price.”

The news was just as good in the condo-townhouse market, with year-over-year prices jumping 11.7 percent in Manatee County to $186,250, and 3.1 percent in Sarasota to $255,700. The statewide median price for condo-townhouse properties in May was $178,000, up 8.1 percent over the year-ago figure.

Nationwide, the May sales report released by the National Association of Realtors shows sales edged up 1.1 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.62 million, a decent gain amid a relatively stable job market with a 4.3 percent unemployment rate.

But many possible buyers are finding their ambitions thwarted because there aren’t enough homes for sale. Listings have plummeted 8.4 percent during the past 12 months to 1.96 million. On an annual basis, the number of homes for sale has declined for the past 24 months.

Moreover, homes are staying on the market for a median of just 27 days, the briefest period since the National Association Realtors began tracking the measure in 2011.

The sales growth in these circumstances is a “testament to just how strong the draw of homeownership is right now,” Gudell said.

The lack of homes on the market has caused prices to rise at more than double the pace of wages. The median sales price has risen 5.8 percent from a year ago to $252,800.

This story was originally published June 21, 2017 at 2:22 PM with the headline "Manatee County home prices continue to rise, with no end in sight."