S. Florida home values hit $773 billion in 2015
Prices are expected to rise this year, analysts say
Not a bad year in South Florida real estate: The total value of all residential properties grew by $61.4 billion in 2015, according to Zillow.com.
The cumulative value of all homes, townhomes and condominiums in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties reached $773 billion, a 9 percent jump from 2014.
South Florida’s total value has increased steadily in each year since 2011, when it was about $523 billion, Zillow said. Home prices hit bottom in 2012, leading to a wave of investor spending that helped the market recover from the six-year collapse.
Seattle-based Zillow releases estimated cumulative values for housing markets once a year but monitors median home values on a monthly basis.
South Florida’s median home value for November, the most recent data available, was $224,900, up about 11 percent from a year ago. Denver had the highest annual increase at about 16 percent.
Prices in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties are expected to rise this year, but that doesn’t mean sellers will be able to ask whatever they want, real estate agents and analysts say. A shortage of properties generally favors sellers, though buyers are as discriminating as ever.
“For people putting their homes on the market, I’m able to give them more optimism, not necessarily over the price, but on the saleability,” said Beverly Rothstein, an agent for Berkshire Hathaway Home Sales in Broward and Palm Beach counties. “There’s just not a heck of a lot of homes for sale.”
Meanwhile, the November median rent for all properties in the three counties was $1,817, a 4 percent increase from November 2014.
Skylar Olsen, a senior economist for Zillow, said rental demand will stay strong in 2016, though the pace of rental increases will slow as more apartment buildings open.
“People under 35 are delaying marriage and baby more and more, and those are the major life events that precipitate home ownership,” Olsen said.
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