Sarasota Realtors Like What They See

IT’S OFFICIAL: Sarasota wants to secede from the Sarasota-Bradenton Metropolitan Area.
At least as far as real estate statistics are concerned.

In a first-ever move, the group released Sarasota housing data in advance of the monthly release of data from the Florida Association of Realtors, which is scheduled to come out today.

The difference is quite significant, as the FAR data contains Manatee County results as well as information from Venice and Englewood.

On their own, Sarasota’s results are better than its immediate neighbors, and that’s the point of the analysis, said Kathy Roberts, chief executive of the Sarasota Association of Realtors.

“We’re trying to give our local slant. We want to differentiate ourselves,” she said.

Home prices and sales figures in Sarasota have “stabilized after three years of record appreciation and unusually high transaction levels,” the report boasts. The group said that total sales have returned to the “more normal figures of 2002 and prior years.”

Sarasota, as a wealthier community, seems to have weathered the Southwest Florida housing market weakness better than less affluent communities.

The result of the study shows that using only Sarasota multiple listing service data, the run-up in both sales and prices experienced in 2003, 2004 and 2005 is evident.

• Sales during the first nine months of 2002 were 6,202.
• That home sales figure jumped to 8,729 in the boom year of 2004, and then leveled off to 8,460 sales for the same period last year.
• Despite the Realtors’ contention, though, 2006 is still slower so far even than 2002 with 5,158 total home and condominium sales, a 16.8 percent decline from that year, when Florida mortgage rates were at record lows and spurred tremendous buying activity among speculators.
• The 2002 market median price was $182,000 for homes and condos. Today’s median price is $328,000 — still an appreciation of 80 percent in four years.

That is key, the association said.

“While total unit sales are down, this is still obviously a good market,” said Felix Power, the association’s president, in a statement.

“The number of properties sold in higher price ranges has buoyed the median price in our marketplace, both for single family homes and condos. Though price-reduced signs are evident in almost every neighborhood, market conditions are adjusting to a reality which no longer reflects the extraordinary price escalation of the last three years.”

Single-family home sales from January 1 to September 30 were 3,510, down nearly 37 percent from the 2005 total of 5,562.

Condos also dropped in 2006 to 1,648, from the 2,898 last year, a decline of 43 percent. But the median price of a single-family home was identical for the two time periods — $350,000 — and the median sale price of a condo was up to $307,000, from the 2005 year-to-date figure of $292,000.

For both homes and condos, the overall median price rose to $328,000 from last year’s $321,000. There are many contributing factors.

People are still moving here and are creating jobs, but the speculative “overhang” has yet to be bled from the market before Florida home mortgage activity returns to stronger levels, said John Tuccillo, a former National Association of Realtors economist and consultant with offices in Sarasota.

That accounts for the huge housing inventory increase from past years and the slower pace of absorption. A recent NAR analysis of the Sarasota area indicates job growth has been quite strong. The three-year job growth of 15.2 percent is nearly five times as fast as the U.S. pace.

The local unemployment rate of less than 4 percent implies full employment in the region, and job growth has brought more potential new buyers to the market. With continued migration of baby boomers to the region, any price decline will likely be short-lived, the report said.