March – in like a lion, out like a lamb
March is typically the beginning of the end of the strong Florida selling season – in like a lion out like a lamb. Potential buyers have either made a decision, an offer and are getting ready to close on a property for next season or they are leaving with their real estate hand empty.
However, the real estate lamb has been more aggressive in recent years, encouraging buyers to make property decisions before prices go up again and before they encounter more buyer competition in the fall. Accordingly, the March sales and listing statistics for Manatee County are starting to lean in the direction of buyers, which may result in the lamb buyers sticking around a little longer.
The big news resulting from the March statistics compiled by the Manatee Association of Realtors is that inventory of available properties has increased. For a very long time, inventories were way down putting pressure on the marketplace and increasing prices, but we may be seeing a slight change in that dynamic.
Active single family home listings increased 5 percent from March last year and active condo listings have increased 21.5 percent from March last year. This results in a 4.8 month supply of single-family properties and a 5.2 month supply of condo properties. Generally a 6-month supply of available properties is considered balanced.
Similarly, active listings for both single family and condo also have increased in Sarasota County 5.6 percent and 22.1 percent, respectively. That said, we could be seeing a change based purely on inventory and price changes that do normally happen this time of year.
What about selling prices? March sales still reflect what was sold earlier during the busy winter season and for single family homes are up 3.6 percent for the average sale price of $342,722 for March this year. The condo average sale price is actually down 3.0 percent at $199,816 in March this year.
The number of closed sales for single family homes was also down 5.4 percent at 522, as were pending sales down 16.1 percent ending at 444 in March of this year. Closed sales for condos were up 11 percent at 273 for March this year and pending sales ended down in March by 4 percent at 242.
There are two other set of numbers that sometimes play a very import part when you analyze real estate sales, and that's the percentage of original list price compared to the price they actually sell for and the number of days it took to achieve that sale. For single- family homes, the median list to sale price in March was up slightly at .5 percent to a very substantial 95.6 percent, and the median time to sale was down slightly by 4 percent to 96 days for March. Condo median list to sale price was up 4 percent to another respectable number of 95.1 percent with the median time to sell down 11.6 percent to 76 days.
The good news obviously is fewer days on the market benefits sellers, and getting within 5 percent of asking price is also a very desirable position for sellers to be in. The other good news is the slight uptick in inventory, which really points to a healthy real estate market and more opportunity for first time buyers to get in.
Anna Maria is always a real estate market unto itself, but it's still important to track what is going on in the county as a whole since there is definitely a trickle down affect. If you see any of those March lambs around, tell them it looks like the time to jump in is upon them. Check back next month for the April numbers.