Florida Realtors®
Market Update for May 2019
With Brad OConnor, Ph.D. 

Brad OConnor, Ph.D., directly addresses camera:  According to the latest statewide resale housing market statistics from Florida Realtors, May turned out to be one of the strongest months we’ve seen in a long time for single-family homes in the Sunshine State.  

On the heels of a strong April, over 30,000 existing single-family home sales closed in Florida this May.  That’s a 9.6 percent increase from the number of sales in May of last year, and it turns out to be our highest monthly total for any single month over the past ten years.  What’s more, this growth was widespread, with sales increasing in 21 of the state’s 22 metropolitan areas.

This resurgence in single-family home sales is largely being driven by a single factor, which is that mortgage interest rates have been declining sharply since late last year.  It’s worth noting, for instance, that all-cash single-family home sales were actually only up 1.5 percent in May, whereas transactions involving financing were up over 12 percent.

Another effect of the recent decline in mortgage rates is that it’s given prices a little more room to rise.  The median sale price for single-family properties in May rose a robust 4.3 percent year-over-year, up to $266,000.  While this rate of growth is still lower than what we saw most of last year in this property category, it’s still easily the highest rate we’ve seen so far in 2019.

As of the end of May, the number of active single-family listings remained above where we were at the same point in time last year.  But this margin has been closing in recent months.  At the end of January, single-family inventory was up nearly 14 percent year-over-year, whereas by the end of May, the 12-month difference was just down to 4 percent.  It’s too early to tell if this is going to be a longer-term trend, but it’s worth keeping an eye on.

Over in the condo and townhouse category, meanwhile, sales were also up in May, but only by 1.6 percent.  However, the median sale price in this category did rise 3.7 percent year-over-year, up to $195,000.  Inventory in this category continues to be much more abundant in many markets around the state, relative to single-family homes.  Might this be the case in your market?  Well, it’s certainly easy to check—just visit floridarealtors.org/research and you’ll have all the statewide and local market statistics you need right at your fingertips.