Home prices continue to surge across Manatee-Sarasota region

Home prices remained hot in the Manatee-Sarasota region in May, bolstering equity for homeowners and potentially keeping many would-be buyers out of an already tight market.

Prices in the two-county region surged 6.3 percent year-over-year, according to real estate researcher CoreLogic’s latest report, compared to 6.4 percent across Florida and 6.6 percent nationwide.

That’s in line with the Realtor Association of Sarasota and Manatee’s figures for May, which showed the median sales price for an existing single-family home in Manatee County was $299,000, a 7.8 percent jump from a year earlier. In Sarasota County, the median sales price in May was $260,000.

“The market remained robust with home sales and prices continuing to increase steadily in May,” CoreLogic chief economist Frank Nothaft said in the report. “While the market is consistently generating home price growth, sales activity is being hindered by a lack of inventory across many markets.”

That includes Manatee and Sarasota counties, which had 4.3- and 4.5-month supplies of single-family homes in May, 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.

“For current homeowners, the strong run-up in prices has boosted home equity and, in some cases, spending,” CoreLogic president and CEO Frank Martell said. “For renters and potential first-time homebuyers, it is not such a pretty picture. With price appreciation and rental inflation outstripping income growth, affordability is destined to become a bigger issue in most markets.”

Case in point: CoreLogic projects prices in Florida will increase by 6.8 percent by May 2018, compared with 5.3 percent for the country.

“This tight inventory is also impacting the rental market where overall single-family rent inflation was 3.1 percent on a year-over-year basis in May of this year compared with May of last year,” Nothaft said. “Rents in the affordable single-family rental segment – defined as properties with rents less than 75 percent of the regional median rent – increased 4.7 percent over the same time, well above the pace of overall inflation.”

Nine states had higher year-over-year price gains in May than Florida: Washington (12.6 percent), Utah (10.4), Colorado (9.7), Oregon (9.0), Idaho (8.4), New York (7.5), Nevada (7.3), Michigan (6.8) and Massachusetts (6.5).

Three states saw prices fall: Wyoming (2.2 percent), West Virginia (1.2) and Alaska (0.3).

This story was originally published July 5, 2017 at 2:23 PM with the headline "Home prices continue to surge across Manatee-Sarasota region."