Today we have a quick status update on Florida’s real estate market with real sales data as reported by the Florida Realtors Association.
Overall, we’ve got good news here as we are continuing to see signs of recovery. The biggest sign we see of recovery is the increase in pending home sales this year VS May of 2019. In the single family home category, pending home sales are up 2.3% over last May. This is a big change from what we saw in April when pending sales were down 35%.This will likely convert to an increase in sales in June 2020 vs 2019 as the typical sales cycle is about 30 to 40 days from contract to close.
Pending sales of condos and townhouses haven’t quite caught up to last years numbers, they’re actually down about 17% versus May of 2019 so there is still some weakness in the condo/townhome market but this is still a huge improvement over Aprils’s 57% decline. So condo and townhouse sales are improving, but they are definitely being outpaced by single family home sales. I think this makes sense as we’ve both seen something similar in our businesses. After months of quarantine, many people are ready to get out of their cramped apartment and have a little more room to stretch their legs, or a backyard for the kids to play in, etc.
As far as new listings, condos and townhomes actually saw an increase vs May of 2019, with about 2% more listings coming onto the market. These were down 39% in April so the increase could just be due to people who were going to list in March or April but waited, going ahead and deciding to list.
New listings of single family homes coming on the market in May were down 8.7% versus last year, but this is still an improvement over Aprils 27% decline. If you look at a few of these figures together, the increase in pending sales and the decrease in new listings, you can see most of Florida is still in a big sellers market which is why we haven’t see any drop in home values. If we reflect back on Aprils dramatic drop in pending sales, it’s no surprise to see completed sales are down in May.
Single family closings were down 36% vs last year and condo/townhome sales were down 50%. The good news is, based on pending data for May we should see this trend reverse in June and July’s sales. As far as home values are concerned, they have continued to hold strong with a little bit of continued appreciation.
The median sales price for single family homes was up 1.5% to $270,000 and the condo/townhouse median price was up 3.3% to $200,000.Housing demand in Florida is still very strong. Florida is an amazing state to live in, we still have lot’s of people moving in from out of state, plus we’ve got pent up demand after months of quarantine. We’ve also got record low mortgage rates right now and it doesn’t look like they’ll be increasing any time soon.
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