The median price for a Bradenton house is almost $550,000, but the market is shifting
While the median price for homes sold in the Bradenton area remained strong in October, there was also an undeniable shift in market dynamics.
The median price for an existing single-family house in Manatee County was $549,444, a 29.3% increase from the same month a year earlier, the Realtor Association of Sarasota and Manatee reported Friday.
Similarly, in Sarasota County the median was $537,500, a 31.1% percent increase from October 2021.
But the median price does not tell the full story.
Homes in both counties are taking longer to sell, sellers are not always getting their asking price, and there are more homes on the market.
For the Bradenton area, the median time to contract was 24 days, compared to six days a year ago. In Sarasota, the median time to contract was 20 days, compared to seven days a year ago.
During October, there was an inventory of 1,740 homes available for sale, compared to 577 a year earlier. Sarasota had 1,587 homes for sale, compared to 709 a year earlier.
“After a seasonal drop in closed sales in September, single-family home sales in October saw a very healthy bounce back,” Tony Veldkamp, 2022 president of the Realtor Association of Sarasota and Manatee, said in a press release.
“While closed sales are not at 2020 to 2021 levels, October 2022 is very comparable to 2018 to 2019 levels,” Veldkamp said.
Rob Sartore, a Realtor with Coldwell Banker Realty Downtown Sarasota, serves the two-county area and calls the run-up in prices during the pandemic an aberration. Since May, the market has shifted back more to what it was in 2019, he said.
Sellers might want to consider taking a little less than their original asking price and still come away with a healthy profit, Sartore said.
The strong housing demand in October could be due to many factors, including buyers coming from areas that were more heavily impacted by Hurricane Ian, the Realtor association said.
The townhouse and condo market also saw strong selling prices. In the Bradenton area, the median was $368,700, a 32.6% increase from a year ago. In Sarasota, the median was $386,580, a 16.1% increase from a year ago.
Even with the shift in the market, the advantage remains with buyers. Neither county has even a three-month supply of condos or single-family houses. Six months of inventory is considered a balanced market, favoring neither buyer nor seller.
When compared to September 2022, closed sales for both property types in the two-county region increased by 22.1% due in part to Hurricane Ian’s disruption at the end of September, pushing more sales into October.
Closed sales for single-family homes in Manatee County decreased year-over-year by 14.9% to 572 sales and in Sarasota County, single-family sales decreased by 34% to 520 sales.
For condos, Manatee closed sales decreased by 22.5% to 200 sales, and Sarasota sales decreased by 21.6% to 250 sales.
“The growth in sale prices continues to amaze us,” Veldkamp said. “There is no reduction in median prices this month and we continue to have a very strong market. With our good job market, we expect that trend to continue over the next few months and as interest rates begin to stabilize and even drop, 2023 will see an increase in activity in our real estate market. It remains a great time to sell.”
For more information on sales dating back to 2005, visit www.MyRASM.com/statistics.
This story was originally published November 18, 2022 at 2:25 PM.
