On the home front
Home prices are still rising, but sales are slowing.
July wasn’t so hot when it came to home sales in South Florida, but prices kept climbing despite predictions of a looming slowdown.
Sales of existing, single-family homes fell 2 percent last month from a year earlier in Broward and Palm Beach counties, local Realtor boards said Thursday. Miami-Dade sales dipped 1 percent.
But all three counties saw median prices increase from July 2016. Broward’s median rose 9 percent to $350,000, while Palm Beach County’s inched up 6 percent to $336,000. Miami-Dade’s median jumped 12 percent to $335,000.
The median means half the homes sold for more and half for less.
Buyers have been waiting for prices to cool after five years of steady gains, but so far that hasn’t happened.
“Home prices are still rising above incomes and way too fast in many markets,” Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors, said in a statement.
Across South Florida, a dearth of homes for sale at the low end and midpoint of the market is holding back sales and continuing to drive prices higher, real estate observers say.
In Broward, for instance, there was a 9 percent decline in available homes priced from $250,000 to $299,999, the Greater Fort Lauderdale Realtors said. But the number of homes priced from $600,000 to $999,999 increased 16 percent. Listings at $1 million and over rose 7 percent.
Ron Shuffield, president of EWM Realty International in Broward and Miami-Dade counties, said there isn’t enough inventory of low- and mid-priced homes to satisfy demand from firsttime buyers and young families.
“It can be very frustrating because those homes don’t stay on the market for very long,” he said. “We tell people that if we call you at the office at 2 (p.m.) about a house and you can’t get there until 5, let us make an offer contingent on you getting there at 5.
“If those homes are priced properly, they will sell in a matter of days, not months.”
Statewide, the median price for single-family homes in July was $240,000, 7 percent higher than a year earlier, according to Florida Realtors. Sales rose 2 percent.
Meanwhile, in South Florida’s existing condominium sector, Broward’s median price increased 9 percent to $158,000, while Palm Beach County’s median rose 2 percent to $170,000. Miami-Dade’s median remained flat at $225,000.
Even though sellers still have leverage in negotiations, many buyers are showing patience and not overpaying, said Adam Gurewicz, of Re/Max Advisors in Fort Lauderdale.
Gurewicz said buyers are willing to wait, preferring to keep renting if they don’t find suitable properties.
He said unrealistic sellers who obviously overprice homes with the intention of reducing the prices later are likely to see their listings grow stale as savvy buyers look elsewhere.
“I see the same listings sitting,” Gurewicz said. “You have to price it right from the beginning.”