Following the housing inventory decline nationwide, the number of Tampa homes for sale continued to drop in January over the month and over the year, based on data published by the Greater Tampa Association of Realtors (GTAR). Only 9,134 homes were listed for sale in the Tampa area in January, marking a sharp fall of 43.5 percent from the 16,161 units listed for sale in January 2011 and a drop of more than 10 percent from the previous month’s inventory.
A fall in inventory can be good for the market, as it will push home prices up and will prompt developers to build more homes. It can also trigger an increase in demand, as home buyers compete to buy what’s left on the market. In short, a housing inventory drop can be a good sign.
During the first month of 2008, the year the U.S. housing market posted its biggest price fall in history, there were 21,323 Tampa homes for sale – a 25-month supply of homes. Four years after – last January – the inventory was barely 43 percent of the former. The January inventory can be sold off in just a few months.
Nationally, according to deptofnumbers.com and its HousingTracker’s survey of 54 metro housing markets in the U.S., the number of available homes for sale had continued to fall month after month from its peak of 1,560,162 units in October 2007 to only 851,168 in February 2012. That’s a staggering drop of 45.44 percent, nearly falling by half.
If the declining inventory prompted sellers to raise their asking prices, it began in February 2011, based on HousingTracker’s data. During this month, the median asking price increased month-over-month from the lowest recorded asking price since April 2006 — $211,844 in January 2011 — to $212,698 in February 2011. Since then, it increased month-over-month, reaching its peak of $231,233 in June 2011, and leveling at $220,713 in February 2012.
In the Tampa area, the average sales price in January 2012 was $144,152, which marked an almost seven-percent increase from the average sales price of $134,856 in January 2011. It however was lower by 9.3 percent than the average price of $158,999 for sold homes in the previous month.
In Florida, the Tampa-St.Petersburg-Clearwater metro area, has been the most popular market for existing single-family homes for the past several months. In December, a total of 30,425 pre-owned units in the Greater Tampa area were sold, accounting for 16.4 percent of all single-family units sold in December by realtors in Florida.
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