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These sellers have to compete with inventory of new houses that in the South is now above Housing Bust highs.
By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.
Inventory is piling up in Florida. Active listings jumped by 5.9% in March from February, and by 34% year-over-year to 177,006 homes, the highest in the data from realtor.com going back to 2016.
The month-to-month surges in February (+7.3%) and March were particularly spectacular as sellers were beginning to lose their patience, even as buyers were still on strike.
In Tampa metro (Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater), active listings jumped by 5.8% in March, after having jumped by 6.8% in February, to 18,003 homes, the highest in the data from realtor.com going back to 2016, and up 29% year-over-year:
In the Miami metro (Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach), active listings jumped by 4.4% in March, after having jumped by 6.3% in February, to 50,841 homes, the fifth highest in the data, behind only the brief period from January through April 2019:
In the Orlando metro (Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford), active listings rose by 3.9% in March, after the 5.2% jump in February, to 13,287 homes, by far the highest in the data from realtor.com going back to 2016, and up 46% year-over-year:
Sellers are climbing off their high-price horse and listing prices have been sagging, both per square foot, and per home.
On a per-square foot basis, the median listing price has fallen by 11% from the high in May 2023, to $367 per square foot. On a per-home basis, the median listing price has fallen by 17% from the high in June 2022. It shows how sellers are grappling with reality.
Listing prices are not sales prices. They reflect prices that sellers hope to get. I will post the sales prices of Miami and Tampa for March, among the 33 most splendid housing bubbles, when the data comes out later this month, but here are the selling prices in February, which have been declining for months for both metros).
New single-family houses for sale in the South, where Florida is by far the largest housing market, have ballooned past the Housing-Bust high since mid-2024 to a range between 290,000 to 304,000 houses for sale, with 296,000 new houses for sale in February, up by 72% from February 2019, according to Census Bureau data, which doesn’t provide state-level data, only regional data.
Those new houses are adding large amounts of additional supply to the surging inventories of existing homes. Homebuilders are the pros in this business, they know how to move the inventory: price cuts, building at lower price points, large-scale mortgage-rate buydowns, and incentives. And homeowners wishing to sell have to compete with this supply of new houses and increasingly aggressive builders.
Buyers are still on strike: In the South, pending sales of existing homes rose month-to-month in February, seasonally adjusted, but were down by 3.4% from the collapsed levels February last year, and booked the worst February in the data from the National Association of Realtors. Compared to 2019, pending sales plunged by 29%.
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The post Inventories of Existing Homes in Florida Spike in March to Highest since at Least 2016, Massive Jumps in Tampa, Miami, Orlando, as Buyers Are on Strike appeared first on Energy News Beat.
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