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 MiamiDade 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.

CARLINE JEAN/SOUTH FLORIDA SUN SENTINEL Potential homebuyers view a three-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath townhome during an open house in Plantation last year.