July Home Sales Hit the Sweet Spot
Nabor Market Report – A Service of the Naples Area Board of Realtors® (Dominic Pallini, President and Marcia Albert, NABOR Director of Marketing)
“Naples, Fla. (August 25, 2017) – REALTORS® in Naples sold more existing homes in July (682) than they did in January (603) or February (613), a statistical reality that busts an old myth that home sales stall in the summer. In fact, overall closed sales in the market’s sweet spot (homes priced between $300,000 and $500,000) increased 32 percent in July. Broker analysts reviewing the July 2017 Market Report released by the Naples Area Board of REALTORS® (NABOR®), which track home listings and sales within Collier County (excluding Marco Island), said a 9 percent increase in closed sales during July was very good, but the continued reduction of inventory, especially in the single-family home market, is cause for concern as it limits choices for buyers.
One segment of the market that brokers are watching closely is the $300,000 and below single-family home market, which saw pending sales decrease 24 percent, closed sales decrease 19 percent, and inventory decrease 2 percent in July. In fact, the entire single-family home market is getting stretched thin as inventory tightens. In July, inventory rose just 3 percent overall, but single family home inventory decreased 1 percent.
Geographically, pending and closed sales activity in South Naples in July outperformed all other areas, showing a 36 and 35 percent increase, respectively. With respect to property type, single-family homes in North Naples saw the most impressive activity in its pending and closed sales (23 and 45 percent, respectively); possibly as a result of a 14 percent decrease in its median closed price and a 3 percent decrease in its inventory.
“Because inventory dropped 1 percent in the single-family home market in July, this may be the first sign that we are not far from a shift in the market,” said Cindy Carroll, SRA, with the real estate appraisal and consultancy firm Carroll & Carroll, Inc., who went on to add, “the housing market is cyclical, and the rate of inventory increase has been trending down since December. If this behavior continues and we go below our lowest inventory point (3,563), which was in July 2014, I predict we’ll shift from a buyer’s to a seller’s market and probably start to see prices increase again.”
View July 2017 Market Statistics
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