Sales of single-family homes in the Tampa Bay area rose slightly in August though median sales prices remained flat.
Bay area buyers closed on 3,596 homes last month, a 3.7 percent increase over the same period last year. And while the median price stalled at $160,000, that's not necessarily bad news.
A big, rapid rise "would probably crash our economy again,'' said Dwight McDonald of International Realty Plus Tampa Bay. "The housing market did pick up and now it seems to be stabilizing. It's to everyone's advantage to stay steady, especially for working people.''
According to figures released Monday by Florida Realtors, the bay area's residential market lagged slightly behind other parts of Florida in August. Statewide, single-family home sales rose 4.2 percent and the median price hit $181,000, a 3.4 percent gain over the same month last year.
Townhomes and condos, meanwhile, presented a paradox. While sales dipped both in the bay area and throughout Florida, the median price shot up 15 percent locally, to $115,000, and statewide by almost 4 percent, to $135,000.
Price gains in all types of residential housing are "a trend we've been seeing for 33 months in a row,'' Florida Realtors president Sherri Meadows said in a statement.
While the Pinellas Realtor Organization had yet to release August sales data, "We're gaining,'' said Jill Long, a broker in Indian Rocks Beach. "Especially along the beaches we're doing really well, and in downtown St. Petersburg, those numbers are rising.''
Still, she added, "There's room for growth, absolutely there is. I'd say we've only gained back about 20 percent whereas we have another 35 percent to get back to what we were" before the housing bust.
For Tampa and Hillsborough County in August, figures released Monday by the Greater Tampa Association of Realtors also showed an improving market:
• The average number of days from listing to sale was 74, a few days longer than in July but more than a month shorter than in August 2011. Homes in the $900,000 to $1 million range took the most time to find a buyer — 277 days — while homes in the $70,000 to $79,999 range sold in just 51 days on average.
• Homes in all price ranges sold for at least 92 percent of list price, with those priced from $700,0000 to $800,000 going for 99 percent on average of what the sellers asked.
• Current inventory in Tampa's residential market stands at 9,487, less than half the supply at the peak of the housing bust in September 2010 when nearly 20,000 homes were up for sale. The smallest inventory -— 2.6 months — is of homes under $50,000.
Florida sales fared better in August than for the nation as a whole, where sales of existing homes, townhomes and condos slipped as investors paying in cash began to close their wallets.
After four months of gains, sales dipped 1.8 percent though the median sales price was 4.8 percent higher than at the same time last year, according to the National Association of Realtors.
All-cash sales were 23 percent of transactions, dropping for the second consecutive month and representing the lowest overall share since December 2009.
NAR president Steve Brown, a Realtor in Dayton, Ohio, hailed the slow-down in investor activity as good for buyers who rely on financing to buy a home.
Susan Taylor Martin can be contacted at smartin@tampabay.com and at (727) 893-8642. Follow @susanskate