No end in sight to soaring home values in Manatee-Sarasota

As prices continue to surge in the Manatee-Sarasota region and bolster equity for homeowners with seemingly no end in sight, would-be buyers are forced to compete for a low inventory of properties.

Prices in the two-county region surged nearly 6 percent year-over-year in July, according to real estate researcher CoreLogic’s latest report, compared to 6.2 percent across Florida and 6.7 percent nationwide.

That’s in line with the Realtor Association of Sarasota and Manatee’s July report, which showed the median sales price for an existing single-family home in Manatee County was $300,000, a 7.1 percent jump from a year earlier. In Sarasota County, the median sales price in July was $260,000, a 7.2 percent year-over-year increase.

“Home prices in July continued to rise at a solid pace with no signs of slowing down,” CoreLogic president and CEO Frank Martell said in Tuesday’s report. “The combination of steadily rising purchase demand along with very tight inventory of unsold homes should keep upward pressure on home prices for the remainder of the year.”

Those surging values come at a cost, with the dearth of homes on the market part of a nationwide shortage of houses for sale, particularly in metro areas.

That includes Manatee and Sarasota counties, which had 4.3- and 4.1-month supplies of single-family homes in July, 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 home-price appreciation and rental inflation far outpacing income growth, analysts worry that affordability is destined to become an increasing issue, especially locally.

Case in point: CoreLogic projects prices in Florida will increase by 6.5 percent by July 2018, compared with 5.0 percent for the country.

Fourteen states had higher year-over-year price gains in July than Florida, with Washington (12.7 percent) and Utah (10.8) enjoying double-digit growth. The others were Idaho (9.0), Colorado (8.3), Michigan (8.3), Oregon (8.3), Nevada (8.2), New York (7.3), Tennessee (7.0), California (6.9), Rhode Island (6.6), Massachusetts (6.5), Hawaii (6.4) and Wisconsin (6.3).

Only West Virginia (2.2 percent) saw prices fall.

This story was originally published September 5, 2017 at 4:03 PM with the headline "No end in sight to soaring home values in Manatee-Sarasota."