The Lamacchia Realty South Florida Housing Report presents overall home sale statistics and highlights the average sale prices for single families, condominiums/townhomes in Broward County, Miami-Dade County, and Palm Beach County for November 2021 compared to November 2020. It also looks at other metrics like New Listings and New Pending Sales as they are often the best indicators for predicting future trends in the market. 2019 will be examined in some areas to highlight the lingering impact of COVID in real estate.
COVID-19 shutdowns were put in place in late spring last year, which subsequently negatively impacted closed sales in mid-summer of 2020 which in turn caused a delayed increase in demand in fall of 2020. That is part of the reason that we go back to 2019, so that we can get a better comparison.
The inventory crisis last year caused demand to spike higher than ever by fall into winter, which in turn caused prices to continue to increase significantly. This rise has continued to present day without reason to expect they’ll decrease any time soon, though the hope is that the rate of increase will slow down.
Broward County
Broward County single family sales decreased, but average price increased along with new listings and pending sales which increased slightly year over year for single families. Sales, average price and pending sales increased, but new listings decreased year over year for condos/townhomes.
Miami-Dade & Palm Beach Counties
In November of 2021, Miami-Dade saw increases in closed sales, average price, listings and pending sales year over year for single family homes as well as condos/townhomes. On the other hand, Palm Beach County single family sales, listings and pending sales decreased, but prices are up. Condos/townhomes in Palm-Beach County saw an increase in new listings, average price and pending sales, but a decrease in new listings.
What’s Ahead?
Competition lessened for buyers in the Fall giving them a slight advantage in the market and a break from the intense competition they have been facing in earlier months. Overall, inventory has been shrinking and, in turn, prices have gone up at a sharper rate than previous months with several Floridian cities having outranked the top national average house price in Q3. Mortgage rates are still on the rise, climbing to just over 3%. However, this increasing rate is still lower than pre-pandemic rates, which means that it’s better to secure financing as soon as possible to keep home buying costs from increasing, especially given that rates are expected to continue increasing well into 2022.
Even with the new threat on the omicron variant, COVID-19 travel restrictions have remained limited, which brings increased competition from international buyers to the South Florida housing marketing. Specifically, international buyers from South America and Canada have historically been two very popular transplant locations for those relocating full-time or those looking to snowbird in the warm weather. With inventory levels squeezed, any current buyers considering making an offer would be well advised to move fast as the market is already starting to see the resurgence of aggressive competition, bidding wars and all-cash offers from this new influx of buyers.
As we head into the winter months, local buyers are going to have to prepare to compete with yet another group of buyers reentering the market: seasoned snowbirds who are returning to the area in full force after having to brave the winter last year due to pandemic related travel restrictions.
*Data provided by Florida Realtors® SunStats