Let’s take a look at how the local Pinellas County real estate market is responding to the changes in our community caused by Covid-19.

While sales have slowed, prices remain fairly stable. Inventory has been tight through most of 2019, and new listings coming onto the market in March were down 23.3% compared to March 2019. In March we showed a 2.2 month supply of inventory – strongly a seller’s market. As we moved forward into the slow down caused by Covid-19 that restricted supply may be what is keeping the market stable while demand has dropped.

Pending Sales

There are about half as many homes going under contract each day compared to a month ago.

The drop in pending sales comes from a combination of buyers and sellers pausing their plans for a variety of reasons. Some sellers don’t want people in their homes, some buyers are concerned for their jobs, credit is tightening up as banks make it harder to qualify for loans.

Another way to measure home values is to look at price per square foot.

The average list price per square foot for homes that went into a contract in the last month is displayed below. You can see it is running between $200 – $180 and dropped slightly over the month.

Prices around Tampa Bay

Comparing this week to a year before, we see that while sales volume is down in Tampa Bau, prices are still up by 7.9%