The housing market in Tampa Bay is hot, hot, hot — and Pasco County is helping to turn up the heat.
In July, there were 963 closed sales of single-family homes in Pasco County, a whopping 38.4 percent increase over July 2014.
The median price of those homes was $157,000, up 4.8 percent over last year, according to the Greater Tampa Association of REALTORS Inc. (GTAR).
The association is the largest professional Tampa Bay-based group of licensed real estate brokers and sales associates. The monthly housing report compiles data from the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater area.
Even as Pasco’s housing prices climb, single-family homes in the county remain something of a bargain compared to the region as a whole, and to pricier counties to the south, including Hillsborough County.
The Tampa Bay region had more than 4,500 closed sales of single-family homes in July 2015, up 30 percent over July 2014. The median price of a single-family home was $176,000, up 4.7 percent over last year.
In Hillsborough, the median price of single-family homes increased more than 10 percent to $205,000 in July 2015, up from $186,000 in July 2014, the housing report showed.
During the past months, the trend has been toward a resurgent seller’s market with houses selling at or near asking prices.
Tampa Bay buyers, on average, matched or bettered the seller’s price more than 94 percent of the time, an increase of more than 1 percent over July 2014. In Pasco, that happened about 93 percent of the time, a 2 percent increase over July 2014.
With sales on a fast pace, month-to-month inventory is decreasing.
“It is certainly a seller’s market,” said Thomas O’ Bryant Jr., chief executive officer of GTAR. “When we get to 5.8 months of inventory, it’s kind of the tipping point.”
As of July, in the four-county Tampa Bay region, there was a 3.8 months supply of houses. That’s down more than 21 percent from July 2014. In Pasco, the supply was 3.9 months, down nearly 29 percent from July 2014.
With demand up and inventory down, O’ Bryant said, “It drives up median sales prices.”
Houses also are being sold more quickly in every price range.
The median days on the market for single-family homes less than $50,000 was 36 days, a 50 percent decrease from July 2014. Houses in the $250,000 to under $300,000 range hung around the longest at 54 median days, a 20 percent decrease since last year.
The largest increases in closed sales was seen in the pricier homes with a 300 percent jump in the sales of single-family homes ranging from $600,000 to just under $1 million.
Closed sales of homes selling from between $300,000 to just under $400,000 went up by nearly 83 percent from July 2014 to July 2015.
Closed sales of single-family homes of less than $50,000 dropped nearly 1 percent. That was the only category experiencing a decline in closed sales.
Published September 9, 2015
