Home prices may be leveling [Southwest Florida]
Southwest Florida’s sagging housing market showed signs of stabilization in November, with Sarasota-Bradenton agents selling twice as many existing single-family homes as Miami and with prices perking up from fall lows.
“Our area was inflated for so long,” said Garrick Newman, a Re/Max agent in Bradenton. “But over the last six months, people really came down hard with prices.”
The state and nation are suffering lower sales rates and lower realized prices. But the Sarasota-Bradenton market fell out of bed faster than most after the boom that ended in 2005 and seems to be finding a solid footing sooner.
During November, Sarasota-Bradenton Realtors closed on 556 houses — down 16 percent from the 664 of a year ago — but a far less painful situation than in South Florida. In Miami, Realtors closed on only 263 houses in November, a 59 percent drop from a year earlier. In neighboring Fort Lauderdale, Realtors sold just 401 houses, down 29 percent.