May Update

New listings of existing single-family homes for sale were down 20% year-over-year in April, as many potential sellers continue to find it hard to justify listing their homes when they’d have to face a much higher mortgage rate on their next purchase. As a result, single-family inventory fell on a month-over-month basis for the fifth straight time in April. It still remains over 80% higher than it was at this time a year ago, but is also still well short of pre-pandemic inventory levels. The median price for existing Florida single-family homes in April, meanwhile, was $410,000, which is exactly what it was last April. This brings an end to a very remarkable more than 11-year stretch – that’s 135 months, to be exact – where the monthly median single-family home sale price in Florida was up on a year-over-year basis. The impact of the higher mortgage rate environment we’re in and the scarcity of homes on the market has led to this moderation in home price growth, but the major detrimental impact of this type of environment remains the decline in listings and sales.
The streak of consecutive months of median price growth is, on the other hand, still very much alive over in the townhouse and condo category. In April, the median price in this category was $325,000, a year-over-year increase of almost 5%. Closed sales for this property type category, meanwhile, were down by almost 27% year-over-year, while new listings declined by 13.5% on the same basis. Townhouse and condo inventory has remained relatively flat so far this year, but just as the case has been on the single-family side, it’s much higher than a year ago and yet, still much lower than it was before the pandemic, as well.