Sarasota Real Estate Market-One Of Top U.S. Cities Making A Rebound! Here's Why..

Here’s the latest news and statistics on the Sarasota Real Estate market provided by the Sarasota Association of Realtors.

How do you really know when is a good time to buy? The best indicator of what a market is doing is to compare the sales for the past month vs. the sales of the same month last year. Using this measure, Sarasota is doing very well. What goes up must come down, and what comes down must go up. It appears buyers are realizing the bottom has hit and that now is the time to buy!

A recent article in Realtor® Magazine Daily News noted that of the top 15 U.S. cities showing signs of year-over-year increases in list prices, ten are in Florida, and the Sarasota-Bradenton area came in 6th, with list prices up 15.9 percent. Listing price increases generally reflect optimism among sellers that a market is ready to head upwards.

September 2011 home and condo sales in Sarasota were ahead of last September, with 570 this year compared to only 547 at the same time last year.
The inventory of available homes for sale in Sarasota has been dropping for the past nine months, and was up only slightly in September to 4,430 after hitting a 10-year low of 4,408 the previous month.
September showed a median price of $165,000 for single family homes, the same as August, and $140,000 for condos. The condo figure has been fluctuating for several months, hitting $185,000 in June, then dropping to $145,000 in July before climbing back up to $165,000 in August. These variations can be explained by the fact that certain months have seen the buying public focusing on smaller, bargain priced units, while other months have seen a higher concentration of luxury condo sales.
The months of inventory were 6.7 months for single family homes and 11.1 months for condos. In September 2010, the figures were 9.9 months and 15.1 months, respectively. Both figures again remained far below the highs of 25.3 months for single family (in early 2009) and 41.7 months for condos (in late 2008).

These statistics represents the time it would take to sell the existing inventory at the current month’s rate of sales. The 6 month level is traditionally a point which represents equilibrium in the market between buyers and sellers.