Going into the final week of the year, local Realtors could set a record for home sales in 2015. Still, real estate agents complain that there aren’t enough houses for sale.
GALLERY: 33 OF OUR FAVORITE 2015 PHOTOS
River Wilderness Golf & Country Club located near Parrish in northeastern Manatee County, is a semi-private, member-owned Club. This gated community has a gorgeous golf course, designed by Ted McAnlis, and is situated on 150 acres of pristine landscape, a part of the Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary System. River Wilderness borders the North Shore of the Manatee River. (December 01, 2015; STAFF PHOTO / THOMAS BENDER)
They call this a “lack of inventory.” I call it a lack of houses to photograph for our weekly Market Snapshot series.
I would rather not photograph houses that are not for sale, but I do make exceptions for notable homes. Especially when there is not much for sale in the neighborhood of the week, other than “pendings.”
And that happens more often than you think.
In September, for example, local Realtors reported that inventory was down 7.6 percent year over year.
The supply of houses was just 3.2 months in Sarasota and 3.6 month, in Manatee. A six-month
supply is considered a market that favors neither buyers nor sellers.
Our reporter John Hielscher wrote, “The last time that happened, in 2013, more than 10,500 houses and condos were up for sale in the two counties.”
In September, that number was 5,908.
“We continue to note the lack of available inventory,” said Stafford Starcher, president of Sarasota Realtors. “Last year and the previous year, we saw the inventory rise through the winter months and peak in February.”
“The Florida real estate market continues to hum along,” said Florida Realtors chief economist John Tuccillo. “We’re seeing increases in both sales and prices in virtually every metropolitan statistical area, and in both single-family homes and townhouses and condos. Inventory continues to decline, and those declines have now reached homes at the $250,000 level.
“However, with pending sales down, mortgage accessibility increasing and interest rates due to rise, we think the market will even out as we go forward into 2016,” he said.
Tuccillo expects Florida sales to rise 8 to 10 percent next year.
“For most of 2015, the Florida real estate market has outperformed the nation as a whole,” Tuccillo said.
In recent months, however, the Florida market has been “catching its breath after a very hectic late summer and early fall,” said Tuccillo.
“For 2016, we expect this settling down to continue,” he continues.
“Against the backdrop of an expanding state economy with growing employment, home sales should increase by 8-10 percent over 2015 (numbers) and home prices (measured as actual value) should rise by about 5 percent.”
Tuccillo said there is a “growing shortage of workforce housing in the more populated areas of the state.
Florida is attracting jobs, and we need to do a better job creating housing options for the workers we are attracting from out of state.”
We found that during our travels during the year, too.
The accompanying photos represent a sample of what we saw, what sold, and what did not. In keeping with the tight inventory theme, you will see that several of them were listed as “sale pending” when we visited the neighborhood.
—The writer is real estate editor of the Herald-Tribune.
