Sarasota Home Prices – Look at the actual reason you are buying and decide whether it is worth waiting. Whether you want to have a great place for your children to grow up, you want your family to be safer, or you just want to have control over renovations, maybe now is the time to buy.

If the right thing for you and your family is to purchase a home this year, buying sooner rather than later could lead to substantial savings. Home-price increases in Southwest Florida continue to outpace the national rate, but analysts say the rapid rise should cool off a bit in the coming year.

• Single-family home prices rose by 8.2 percent in the Sarasota-Manatee region in May over the year, data provider CoreLogic reported Tuesday.
• Home prices in Charlotte County jumped at an even heartier 13.9 percent annual rate.
• Both metro areas topped the 7.3 percent increase for all of Florida, which was the sixth-highest rate in the United States, and the 5.9 percent gain in prices nationwide.

“Housing remained an oasis of stability in May, with home prices rising year over year between 5 percent and 6 percent for 22 consecutive months,” said Frank Nothaft, chief economist for CoreLogic. “The consistently solid growth in home prices has been driven by the highest resale activity in nine years and a still-tight housing inventory.”

But despite those steadily rising values, home prices in Florida remain 24.3 percent off their pre-recession peaks, the second-highest gap behind Nevada’s 32.7 percent.

Home price gains have eased in the past year. In May 2015, the year-over-year increases were reported at 8.6 percent in Sarasota-Manatee, 8.7 percent in Florida and 6.3 percent in the U.S.

CoreLogic expects U.S. home-price increases to slow to 5.3 percent in the next 12 months, with some regions like the Pacific Northwest remaining the hottest markets.

“The recent turbulence in financial markets should lead to modestly lower mortgage rates, which will provide even more support to the steadily improving real estate recovery,” said Anand Nallathambi, president/CEO of CoreLogic.

From April to May, home prices rose by 0.8 percent in Sarasota-Manatee and by 1 percent in Charlotte as the spring buying season reached its peak.

States with higher year-over-year home appreciations than Florida were Oregon, 11 percent; Washington, 10.1 percent; Colorado, 9.4 percent; Nevada, 7.8 percent; and Utah, 7.5 percent, CoreLogic said.

Three states had home prices that fell in May: Connecticut, down 0.9 percent; New Jersey, down 0.2 percent; and Pennsylvania, down 0.1 percent.

Herald Tribune, July 2016