By: Michael Saunders | April 10, 2015 | 

If you are among the many who believe that January through March is the best time to sell a home in Southwest Florida—because the period coincides with our region’s high season for tourism—you would only be half right.

Although the region’s most active tourist season does indeed run from January through March, its busiest season for home buying actually begins in April and runs through June; then is followed closely by the months of July, August and September.   In that sense, Southwest Florida is no different from the rest of the country, where spring and summer are typically the prime seasons for home buying.

2014—a year in which our region enjoyed record high levels of home buying—is a good example.  Of the 25,817 residential property transactions that took place in Sarasota, Manatee and Charlotte Counties during the year, 29% took place between April and June, while only 22% took place between January and March.  The summer months of July through September finished second with 25% of sales, while October through December finished a close third with 24% of sales.  (Source:  Trendgraphix).  2014 was not an anomaly, as these percentages conform closely to most years going back to 2001, when Trendgraphix first began keeping records.  Our high season for tourism actually turns out to be one of our slowest seasons for home sales.

We point this out because we have heard countless sellers say that they would prefer to list their homes late in the year in order to have them strategically on the market by January 1, the onset of the region’s prime tourist season.   Their presumption, of course, is that more tourists mean more buyers.

Instead—as it turns out—sellers who truly want their homes to reach the market during the most active season for home buying should not only list now and get their “For Sale” signs planted soon, but also make sure that their properties show up on the websites that have been proven to attract the most buyers browsing for properties in our region.   The upcoming summer months are also the time when the large annual contingent of international buyers is combing our market for properties.

Because property inventories are unusually low as our busiest home selling season is kicking in, the large gap between supply and demand has caused prices to rise at a pace that has exceeded the region’s normal level of annual appreciation, which is typically between 3 and 4%.   Home prices in the Sarasota-Manatee market rose 8.3% in February, compared with last year.  In Charlotte County, they rose 13.2%.   Statewide, they rose by 6.4%; and nationally by 5.6%. (Source:  Sarasota Herald-Tribune).

Fortunately, such sharp local rises are tempered by the fact that the region’s home prices remain more than 30% below their pre-recession highs.  But they may ultimately become a deterrent for many buyers when combined with the interest rate increases that are expected from the Federal Reserve during the second half of this year.

In the meantime, sellers will continue to benefit from the sheer numbers of buyers that are expected to ignite another season of record home sales.