FL Real Estate Market Bounces Back From Pandemic: Report
A report from Redfin showed Florida home prices are up and growth in prices is back to where it was before the pandemic.
TAMPA, FL — The Florida housing market is returning to pre-pandemic normals in many parts of the state, although it is still soft in the Tampa metro, according to a report from Redfin, a digital real estate company.
The Redfin Home Price Index ranks the 50 largest metros for which full data is available on how quickly demand and competition cooled from February 2023 to February 2024. It takes into account year-over-year changes in home prices, price drops, supply, pending sales, sale-to-list price ratio and the share of homes that sell within two weeks.
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Here are the home price increases from 2023 to 2024 and the change in sale prices from January to February of this year, for several Florida metros:
- Tampa: 1.5% (yearly change) and -0.5% (monthly change)
- Orlando: 4.9% (yearly) and 0.2% (monthly)
- Miami: 9.9% (yearly) and 0.3% (monthly)
- Jacksonville: 3.8% (yearly) and 0.4% (monthly)
- Fort Lauderdale: 10.0% (yearly) and 0.7% (monthly)
- West Palm Beach: 8.2% (yearly) and 1.3% (monthly)
Home prices fell from a month earlier in Tampa and five other of the 50 most populous U.S. metropolitan areas, many of which were pandemic boomtowns that have since seen their housing markets cool.
Reddin said prices are likely soft in Texas and Florida in part because those two states have been building a lot of homes, which means supply has increased (rising supply often puts downward pressure on prices). In Florida, condo listings in particular are contributing to the jump in supply amid a surge in HOA and insurance fees.
U.S. home prices climbed 6.7 percent from February 2023 to February 2024, similar to the 6.9 percent average annual gain in the years leading up to the pandemic. In February, U.S. prices climbed 0.6 percent from a month earlier, on par with the 0.6 percent average monthly gain during the roughly eight years leading up to the pandemic.
The housing market saw wild swings during the pandemic, with a month-over-month rise as high as 2 percent in January 2022 and a slide of 0.2 percent in August of that year.
Redfin said home price growth “is finally back to where it was before the pandemic following a three-year rollercoaster ride in which prices soared when ultra-low mortgage rates fueled a home buying frenzy and cooled when rates jumped” imposed by the Federal Reserve to tame inflation.
While interest rates remain high, they are not as volatile as they were early on in the Fed’s strategy, and that has helped stabilize home price growth, the report said, adding:
“And while elevated mortgage rates have taken a bite out of homebuyer demand, that’s not translating into lower home prices today because there still aren’t enough homes for sale — even as new listings rebound.”
Listings rose to the highest level in about 18 months in February, but the housing supply remained far below pre-pandemic levels.
The Redfin index methodology is based on sale prices of homes that sold during a given period, and how prices have changed since the last the same houses sold.
