South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Inventory jumps as area housing market slows after two busy years
The days of intense bidding wars, and few homes for buyers to choose from in South Florida, are coming to a slow end.
The South Florida real estate market is becoming a different market than the one buyers (and sellers) have been used to over the past two years.
Homes are taking longer to sell, buyers have more options, and fewer sales are taking place.
“I think the slowdown is becoming more apparent,” said Patty DaSilva, broker with Green Realty Properties in Cooper City. “We are having several open houses and people are attending, but the offers just aren’t coming in.”
Here is the state of the South Florida housing market in terms of sale prices, how many homes are on the market and where rents might be headed:
Median sale prices hold strong
The median sale price in the tri-county area still reported double-digit increases from the year before for the month of September, according to numbers from the Broward, Palm Beaches and St. Lucie Realtors.
The median sale price of a single-family home in Palm Beach County jumped 23.4% to $580,000.
The median sale price of a single-family home in Broward County jumped 13% to $565,000.
The median sale price of a single-family home in Miami-Dade County jumped 17% to $568,000.
However, the percentage that a seller is getting of their original list price has gone down slightly.
Palm Beach County’s median percent of original list price received decreased almost 4% compared to the year before, while Broward County’s percent of the original list price decreased 3%. Miami-Dade’s was similar: It decreased about 2%.
It can be attributed to a few things, noted Da Silva. Sellers might be adjusting their original list price down if it was priced too high, or sellers could be taking a lower offer than what they wanted.
“Some sellers will say that it’s the only offer they have and the home has been on the market long enough,” she said.
Inventory jumps, homes stay on the market longer
Inventory levels are up across South Florida, a stark change from the pandemic housing boom when there was only one month’s supply at a given time.
Not only does it give buyers more options, but it also signals that the frenzy of the past two years is on the downturn.
In Palm Beach County, the supply of homes on the market shot up 107% to almost three months’ worth of supply. For Broward County, the supply of homes increased 80% to about 2.7 months of supply. For Miami-Dade County, it jumped nearly 60% to 3.5 months of supply.
It’s also taking longer for homes to go under contract.
Palm Beach County median day to
contract increased 57% to 22 days.
■ Broward County median day to contract increased 69% to 22 days.
■ Miami-Dade County median day to contract increased 33% to 24 days.
“In a declining market, you have to be careful not to overprice your home and chase a home down to the bottom, losing money every month the home sits. When the market was increasing, pricing a home above what it was worth was less important. More time on the market could literally catch up to a once-stale overpriced listing,” said Whitney Dutton, with the Whitney Dutton Group in Fort Lauderdale.
Closed sales are down
Closed sales for single-family homes continue to plummet as many buyers face recordhigh interest rates, combined with higher prices.
“After the last rate hike to 7%, buyers got sticker shock,” said Dutton. “They slowly stopped looking, writing offers and putting homes under contract.”
■ Closed sales decreased by 30% in Broward County compared to the year before.
■ Closed sales decreased by 19% in Palm Beach County compared to the year before.
■ Closed sales decreased by 30% in Miami-Dade County compared to the year before.
Rents growing, but at a slower pace
Rents are on the rise, but their pace of growth is slowing down from the record increases over the past year.
According to a rental report from Zumper, both Miami and Fort Lauderdale saw month-over-month decreases in their median rents for a two-bedroom apartment.
Fort Lauderdale saw a yearly increase 19% for a two-bedroom apartment to
$2,950. It was a .7% decrease from the month before. In Miami, a two-bedroom apartment median rent increased by about 30% to
$3,400.
It was a .3% decrease from the month before.
West Palm Beach reported a more modest rental increase from the year before for a two-bedroom apartment of 10% to
$2,200.
There are signs that the rental market is heading back to more moderate growth, Zumper CEO Anthemos Georgiades wrote in the report.
“Occupancy rates and the pace of rent increases are now falling in many major metros as renter demand softens and fear of recession kicks in, with many renters deciding to stay put or trade down on the most expensive options,” Georgiades noted.