The housing market in Sarasota and Manatee counties continued its cooling trend in June, with sale prices dropping, inventory climbing and homes sitting longer before closing.
According to the latest data from the Realtor Association of Sarasota and Manatee, the shift marks a more favorable landscape for buyers than at any point in recent years—even as prices remain well above pre-pandemic norms.
Single-family home prices fell sharply in both counties year-over-year, with Manatee County posting the steepest decline. There, the median sale price dropped 15.2 percent, to $440,000, while in Sarasota County, it fell 8.1 percent, to $455,000. Despite the declines, both figures remain roughly 35 percent to 55 percent higher than in 2019—a year often considered a “healthy benchmark” before pandemic-era spikes took hold—when the median single-family price was $325,000 in Manatee County and $291,925 in Sarasota County.
The time to sale has stretched across both counties. In Sarasota, the median time to sale was 99 days; in Manatee, it was 109 days—both longer than the 90- to 105-day timelines typical in mid-2019, despite faster contract periods back then.
Inventory also continued its upward spiral. Sarasota’s single-family listings rose 23.2 percent year-over-year, to 3,955, and Manatee’s rose 27.4 percent, to 3,196 — nearly double the inventory levels seen in 2019. That growth pushed the months’ supply to 6.3 months for single-family homes and 8.3 months for condos in Sarasota, and to 5.2 and 7.4 months, respectively, in Manatee.
Sarasota’s single-family sales rose 1 percent, to 699, while Manatee’s dipped by 3.2 percent, to 705 year over year. Cash deals remained substantial—35.8 percent in Sarasota and 28.9 percent in Manatee—though both were down from a year earlier, when cash transactions made up 43.3 percent of sales in Sarasota County and 34.2 percent in Manatee County.
The condo and townhome market followed a similar, if slightly more tempered, path. In Sarasota, median prices declined 3.2 percent, to $371,750, while sales rose 2.5 percent. Manatee saw condo prices fall 9.2 percent, to $312,900, with sales down 5.3 percent.
August notes growing hesitancy among condo buyers due to post-Surfside collapse legislation and new requirements that have, in some cases, doubled monthly fees.
