A problem with ‘price point’
More Orlando buyers seek condos, townhomes
When Orlando native Garret Fields set out to buy a home in his hometown last year, he quickly discovered his options were limited.
“First, it was the price point,” said Fields, 27, a financial planner. He saw that single-family homes in the city were out of his budget. “Most of the family homes I was looking at were well in the [$300,000 range].”
While homebuyers around Central Florida were battling through bidding wars, Fields settled on a three-bedroom, one-bath townhome in College Park for $240,000.
In Orlando’s scorching housing market of the past two years, many buyers shut out of the fight for single-family homes turned to townhomes, condos and duplexes, according to a new study of residential real estate sales last year.
Though metro Orlando was one of the top markets in the country, single-family homes made up 69.7% of all owner-occupied home purchases in 2021, according to a study from home inspection software company Inspection Support Network.
Nationally, single-family sales trended downward, from 78% in 2019 to 75.9% last year.
Tansey Soderstrom, president of the Orlando Regional Realtor Association, says that a lack of available single-family homes for sale has helped drive buyers into multifamily housing.
“Remember the frenzy we were in,” she said. “If a house went on the market, you thought the open house was a block party. There would be 60 cars for one home.”
Supply of single-family homes has been down nationally since the Great Recession of 2008. The collapse of the real estate market led to thousands of unsold homes, making developers wary of building more of them.
The popularity of single-family homes shot through the roof during the pandemic as big city dwellers from across the nation, free to work from home, opted for more space in less crowded areas, with Florida a particularly hot target.
In Orlando, housing inventory hit an all-time low with less than a one-month supply of homes for sale beginning last March, according to Soderstrom’s association. Experts say that six months of supply is necessary for a balanced market.
Adding to that crunch was the concur
rent rise of more Millennials entering the market, Soderstrom notes.
The largest generation in American history, Millennials made up 43% of homebuyers in 2021, according to a survey from the National Association of Realtors.
“The Millennials are really buying,” she said. “They will buy big single-family, but it depends on the lifestyle. Some want that condo, some want the townhome.”
“A lot of young professionals would prefer a townhome or a condo because the maintenance [involved with a standalone home] isn’t there for them,” Soderstrom said.
An avid griller, Fields says part of the reason he chose a townhome over a condo was because it gave him some outdoor space a carport. “Every condo I talked to, I couldn’t grill on the balcony,” he said. “That just wasn’t for me.”
Abby Stassen, 36, bought a condo just south of downtown in February. A Chicago native who says she typically prefers “the freedom of renting,” Stassen decided to buy when rising rents started eating more of her income.
“It was going to be cheaper to have a mortgage than to rent,” she said.
A writer at FullSail University, she says staying close to the city was more important to her than the square footage she could have bought in an outlying town.
“If I couldn’t live in [a downtown neighborhood], I wouldn’t even want to live in Florida,” she said.
Fields says he enjoys being able to bike around Orlando and not have to take a car everywhere. “If you want those amenities and you don’t want to live
“The Millennials are really buying. They will buy big singlefamily, but it depends on the lifestyle. Some want that condo, some want the townhome.”
— Tansey Soderstrom, president of the Orlando Regional Realtor Association
in, like, Winter Garden, having to drive all the way over here … you’re going to pay for that,” he said.
Stassen also didn’t want to have to deal with the maintenance of a home. “I do not have a green thumb,” she said. “I don’t like lawns.”
Condos and townhouses also carry HOA fees. Fields said his is about $300 per month.
Inventory has climbed back up for the last eight months to 2.6 months of supply, and home prices have started to moderate, according to the latest housing report from Soderstrom’s association.
Soderstrom says she believes single-family home sales will start picking up once people can find homes closer to the city center again.
“[Inventory] is still low, but it’s a lot higher than it was,” she said. “People who were buying houses in Polk County ... now they won’t have to.”
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