Nassau County Board of Relators
July 14, 2020
Housing Market Highlights for Nassau County Florida – May 2020
Nationally – pending US home sales increased by 44.3% in May 2020, registering the highest month-over-month gain in the index since the National Association of Realtors (NAR) started tracking this metric in January 2001. Why is rebound felt to be so important? According to Lawrence Yun, Chief Economist for NAR, “This…goes to show the resiliency of American consumers and their evergreen desire for homeownership…This bounce back also speaks to how the housing sector could lead the way for a broader economic recovery”.
In Nassau County for May 2020, there were 119 single family residential homes sold. This represents a decrease of 25.6 8% from May of 2019. Only 21 of the closed sales were for cash which was also down by 34% year over year. None of this is surprising with the shut downs in place here and elsewhere. The number of new listings taken in May was only 159 which represents a decrease of 30%. This caused inventory to be lower by 17% with only 482 residential properties available county wide. Not surprisingly, the local month’s supply of inventory was down locally to 3.6 months; a full month less than 2019. The benchmark for a neutral market (not favoring buyers or sellers) is 5.5 months worth of inventory. We are definitely in a seller’s market for single family homes.
The median sales price in our county in May was $310,000 which is up an additional 1.6% from last year. The average sales price of a home was just slightly higher as well topping out at $407,686 which was up 13.9% from this same time last year.
Homes in Nassau County sold for 98% of their original list price. The average number of days on the market for homes in our county was 20 which was about half of the prior month of April 2020 and about half the time on market compared with May of 2019. The number of homes that went under contract during April 2020 was down sharply by 31% year over year and coincided with the previous sharp decrease in the number of homes being put on the market. In May of this year, things softened a bit with 191 homes going pending. In May of 2020, there were still no closings reported as short sales or foreclosures for the $48.5 million dollars of single family homes that changed hands here in Nassau County. The vast majority of transactions, 75 homes of the total 113 homes sold, involved properties priced between $200,000 and $399,999.
Editor’s Note: We thank Elizabeth Huben for providing this information from the Amelia Island Nassau County Association of Realtors.