Sarasota County is moving towards a balanced market in lockstep with Manatee. However, it has a longer way to go to reach that balance. At the current pace, it looks like Sarasota County is a few months behind Manatee in reaching an equilibrium. That said, conditions are very fluid. For now, sellers still hold most of the cards in SFH transactions in Sarasota.
Closed sales continued their YoY downward trend while new listings continued their YoY upward trend in Manatee in May. That is good news in terms of balancing the market. We still have significantly less inventory than we need to support the current sales volume, but the market is moving giving buyers some leverage.
Mortgage rates surged to their highest level since 2008 after the Fed’s rate hike. According to Freddie Mac, the 30-year fixed mortgage rate rose to 5.78% from 5.23% the previous week. In addition to increasing the amount buyers will pay to borrow for their mortgage, higher interest rates lower their purchasing power.
To our clients in Esplanade. They are in contract to sell their home.
The single-family home market in Manatee didn’t turn as much as Sarasota did in April. That said, there will be even more movement towards buyers in May. We still have a long way to go towards market balance, but there is more hope for buyers now than there has been in quite some time.
