With better supply of homes for sale, is Bay County inching toward healthy housing market?
This story has been updated to correct a mistake that appeared in the original version. The median sales price of newly constructed homes has climbed about $100,000 since 2020.
PANAMA CITY — Bay County continues to inch toward a healthy housing market, real estate experts say.
According to Susan West, president of the Central Panhandle Association of Realtors, Bay's housing market had an approximately three-month absorption rate as of Thursday, meaning it would take about three months for all available homes in the area to be purchased if no new listings were added.
While this is lower than that of a "healthy market," which West described as having a five-month to seven-month rate, it still is higher than the two-and-a-half-month rate of July and the one-month rate of March.
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Absorption rates are used to determine the housing supply and demand for an area. The higher the rate, the more homes there are for sale.
"It means that more sellers are putting their homes up for sale, and it's taking a little bit longer for them to go under contract," West said. "Buyers (now) have more to choose from, (and) with more to choose from, they don't have to hop on the first thing they find."
Bay County has 1,000 properties for sale than at start of 2022
Bay County currently has about 1,700 properties for sale, split between single-family homes, condos, townhomes and manufactured homes, according to information from CPAR.
This is about 1,000 more than it had at the beginning of the year.
This availability creates cheaper prices, and sellers no longer receive an avalanche of offers like they did in 2021, when it was common for a home to garner a dozen or more offers and be purchased within about 50 days of hitting the market.
It should be noted the median sales price of newly constructed local homes has climbed about $100,000 since 2020. The surge was sparked by demand, along with inflated supply costs created by the COVID-19 pandemic.
"We're (in) a more normal and realistic market where we're not having the 15% to 20% or 25% increase in value that we saw in the past year," West said. "We don't have sellers who are able to increase the value of their properties so significantly."
She also said a traditional "buyer's market" has an absorption rate higher than seven months. Because of this, she did not think the local market has shifted yet, but that it is just headed in that direction.
While many factors can affect the housing market, Charlie Commander, manager of Century 21 Commander Realty, said he believes the ongoing trend in Bay County to favor buyers will continue for at least the next couple of years.
Commander also said he expects for more sellers and builders to offer incentives for buyers as the market continues to shift.
This might include covering closing costs or buying down interest rates.
"We've been in a ... rising market since around 2013 or 2014, (and that) can only run for so long," Commander said. "It's going to be an incentive-laden market for the foreseeable future."
This article originally appeared on The News Herald: Bay County, Florida, housing market improves with more homes for sale
