David Barr's Sarasota and Venice Real Estate Blog

Sarasota real estate statistics for 2nd Quarter 2019 are available.  The market continues to experience positive growth. Two categories are worth further analysis.  First, median time to contract increased 26% over last year.  I believe this is due to home buyers from up north cushioning or extending the closing date on their Florida property, so their current residence can sell.  This in return is affecting median time to sale. The second is median percent of original list price received.  There's a lot to dissect here.  Over priced listings aren't selling, and aren't reflected in this stat.  We call these expired listings.  If the property is priced according to the market, it's remained a steady 5% off list price for quite some time.  Every property is different, but use this number as a guide for what to expect. Contact me for expert pricing and marketing for your Sarasota area home for sale.

Harbor Acres is an upscale neighborhood, west of the Trail , close to downtown Sarasota , Lido Beach, and Siesta Key beaches.  Harbor Acres features a mix of new construction, waterfront homes and original ramblers and split level homes without water frontage. Harbor Acres, Sarasota FL map courtesy of Bing Maps The wide range of architecture and waterfront property versus non-waterfront property creates a wide range of prices in Harbor Acres.  As of this writing there are 3 homes in Harbor Acres actively listed for over $5 million.  However, since December 8, 2012, only 4 homes have sold in Harbor Acres, the most expensive being $1.1 million.  This property was at one time originally listed for sale for $1,885,000, a dramatic price reduction of 29%. See the report here by clicking here . Some interesting information comes out of this data.   One fact that jumps out is that a couple of brokerages control most of the listings.  The second is...

My last two blogs focused on national housing price trends and how they affect the local Sarasota real estate market. Some brokerages seem to think that all the lovely people filling our restaurants, hotels, and beaches in season signals a return to healthier days for Sarasota's real estate market.  This overly simplistic analysis does not take buyer psychology into account, and results in sellers overpricing homes in the false expectation that values are going to be on the upswing. Yesterday there was another article on Yahoo Finance from CNN Money showing that potential homebuyers lack confidence in the market.  This is significant because the vast marjority of home buyers in the Sarasota are come from out of state or overseas.  They read these articles and see that values in markets like Tampa made new lows in 2011. These buyers do not have to buy, and as I blogged earlier, they are motivated by what they deem are the "best deals", whether those deals are in Sa...