I remember the year well. It was September of 2007. I had gone to do some research for a client in the realtor's MLX system, a system that lets us track information about the number of listings that are on the market. It was a quiet morning until I hit the button that showed me how many total listings there were in Sarasota County. the search included all active listings of single family homes, vacant land, condos, etc. The number that appeared was so unbelievable that I started my search over again in the hopes that I had been tricked by the data I had inserted. Same data had the same results: 17,823 listings. The numbers were so staggering that I turned off my computer. At that rate, the time that it would take to sell all the inventory at the rate of absorption for 2007, it would have taken over 3 years to sell all the inventory. That would have to take into account that no other listing would come on the market during that same time.
Fast forward to September 2011. In Sarasota County, there are 6,305 homes for sale verses almost 9,000 last year at the same time. In Manatee County, there are 4,348 houses for sale versus 6,200 last year. In other words, the inventories in our area continue to drop. These numbers are starting to tell us that we are almost at a 6 month supply of homes, a level that is considered healthy. the biggest drops took place in Lakewood Ranch and Siesta Key.
I can;t speak to the number of houses that banks are holding back from the market, but one does get that feeling that housing is finding its footing in Sarasota.
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