S. Florida home prices rise in 2016

Some buyers are feeling the squeeze

If you owned a South Florida home in 2016, chances are good you saw a modest increase in value.

A shortage of move-in-ready homes for sale helped push prices higher in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties, even as the housing market showed signs of cooling, industry observers say.

Palm Beach County’s year-end median price for existing, singlefamily homes was $306,953, 8 percent higher than 2015, the Realtors Association of the Palm Beaches said Thursday.

Broward County’s median reached $310,000, a 7 percent increase from the prior year, according to the Greater Fort Lauderdale Realtors. The median price in Miami-Dade County finished 2016 at $295,000, up 11 percent, the Miami Association of Realtors said.

Prices in each county have soared since 2012, when the housing market started to recover from the historic meltdown.

Broward’s median has increased 51 percent over the past four years, while Palm Beach County has seen a 47 percent bump. The median in MiamiDade is up 59 percent since 2012.

“Even though we’ve seen some big price gains in the last four years, prices are still not as high as they were 11 years ago,” said Jack McCabe, a housing analyst in Deerfield Beach. “The prices got so low, so there was still a lot of room to come back up.”

The median means half the homes sold for more and half for less. An increase in the median price doesn’t necessarily mean all homes in the county rose in value.

Terry Story of Coldwell Banker in Boca Raton said the higher prices and rising interest rates are pushing the limits of affordability for first-time buyers.

“Some of my young couples have X amount of dollars to spend, and they’re getting squeezed out of the market,” Story said. “They’re eager to buy, but affordability is their biggest concern.”

Home sales, meanwhile, were mixed last year.

Broward was the only one of the three counties to post higher single-family sales in 2016. The county had 17,170 homes trade hands last year, a 2 percent increase from 2015.

Sales dropped 3 percent in Palm Beach County and 5 percent in Miami-Dade.

Sellers have largely been in control of the housing market over the past few years, but buyers have wrestled away some of the negotiating power, analysts say.

Real estate agents say buyers