South Florida Housing Market Update - September 2021

Hey, it's Andy with the Mandel team at RE/MAX and I'm here to bring you your September, 2021 Housing Market Update. As always, for the purposes of this video, we're gonna be talking about single family homes only, no condos, no townhouses in Boca, Parkland, and Coral Springs. Those are the areas where our team does the predominant amount of our business and we're not talking about any 55 and overs or any country clubs here in Boca. So let's get into it.

As always, we're gonna give you the leading indicators to show you where the real estate market is headed in the next 30, 60 days, not where it's been. So these are forward-looking stats.

The first stat we like to look at is the number of new homes hitting the market. In August of 2021, compared to August of 2020, that was down 23%. So we saw fewer homes hitting the market. As a supply and demand thing, with less supply, you can obviously understand where that's gonna take it if demand remains the same.

We did see fewer homes come off the market. So we saw 19% fewer homes go pending last month, compared to the same time last year. August is usually one of the slowest months in our area, at least in our experience. People are taking their final vacations of the summer, they're getting the kids ready to go back to school. Then the kids are getting back to school. So everyone's getting back into a routine. So normally, August is a little bit slower, and then it picks back up in September and October for those people who really wanna get into a house before the end of the year. So I'm expecting things to pick up in the next two to three months, just to get everything wrapped up for all the people who wanna move by the end of 2020. But we did see fewer homes go off the market and go pending.

Normally, when I see this, what we've been feeling is a little bit of buyer fatigue. So there's less homes on the market, so it's harder to sell them, but a lot of buyers are getting buyer fatigue, they're tired of this market. They know prices are a little bit higher and they're tired of getting beaten out. So a lot of buyers are starting to put the pause button on things. So this could be a sign of what's to come. Let's keep an eye on that stat.

The next stat we like to look at is the number of days on market. So how long did it take from when property was listed to when a property went under contract? So how long did it take to sell? That's at 10 days, so that's crept up a day or two over the last couple months, really nothing significant. One extra day on the market isn't doing much for most people. But that is starting to creep up, it's starting to take an extra day or so for these properties to actually sell.

The next stat we like to look at is the closed sales price to list price. So this is actually a back looking stat because anything that's sold in August really went under contract 30, 60 days ago. But in August, that number was 99.8%, so that's a little bit less than the month before. So what we saw is the buyers who closed then August, maybe they wanted a contract in June or July, they didn't have to have as high of a crazy bidding war, bidding the price above the list price. This is the first month that I've seen, in a while, that it hasn't been at least at a hundred percent or higher. So 99.8%, it's really not a significant decrease, but every dollar counts in this market. So the 99.8% of list price is the stat.

The last that we like to look at, in my opinion, is one of the most, if not the most important. That's the number months supply of inventory. So what that means, six months is considered a balanced market. Anything less than six months is considered a seller's market, anything more than six months, is a buyer's market. So this stat shows how many months it would take if no more homes hit the market, at the current pace of sale, how long would it take for every home to be off the market? In August of 2021, that number was 1.02 months. So really, even though the number of homes have been selling and the number of new listings have come down, if buyer demand stays the same, in the just one month there would be zero homes on the market. So what that shows me is that there is still such a lack of supply, even if demand dropped a little bit, we are still in a crazy, crazy seller's market. We haven't seen any big shift as of yet, as far as inventory or a decrease, a serious decrease in demand. So we are still predicting a very strong seller's market for the foreseeable future.

So let's talk about what this means for you if you're a buyer or if you're a seller. If you're a seller, let's start with you. We are seeing a little bit of a slow down. Where we were in the first quarter, seeing 25 offers on every listing, right now we're getting three to maybe 11. And these are for our listings personally, so this is our experience, so three to 11. Realistically, there's nothing that we're not doing with seven offers that we couldn't do with 25. It's the same thing, we're still getting really, really good terms, really good prices for our sellers.

Buyers, it's slightly less competitive for you. So some of the things that you had to do to get your offer accepted and call it January or February, you might not have to do right now. We're talking about, you know, paying way above the list price, waving appraisal contingencies, waving financing contingencies, all the crazy stuff that people were doing, we're not seeing as much of it. So it is getting a little bit easier for buyers. At the same, time for sellers, we're still getting really, really good prices and the terms are very, very similar to what we were getting a few months ago. It's still a really, really good time to be a seller. But if this trend continues and we start to get back to something a little bit more normal then, you know, sellers, you might still get a good price, but you might not be able to negotiate the same kind of terms that we were getting back in January or February. So, you know, the lease back and, you know, very short inspection periods, no financing contingency, I'm predicting that some of that stuff is gonna go away as it gets slightly less competitive for buyers out there. So this is a great time if you're gonna be a seller, put your home on the market, take advantage of what's still going on in this market. It's an excellent time to sell and we can still get you a very good price. You can rent the property back from the next buyer to find time to find the next property. So we can still do that for you as a seller.

As a buyer, what does this mean? Well, you don't have to do a lot of the crazy things you were doing, it's getting less competitive. If you had put off the home search for a couple of months, this is the time get back in. Interest rates are still crazy, crazy, low. It is still much more affordable than you think even with prices where there are, to buy a house right now. Don't let this market pass you up. As interest rates creep up and as prices continue to go up and you're going to be out priced in this market, it is still a better time to buy now than it will be probably, in six to eight months. Think about getting back in this market and taking advantage of what's going on. If you have any questions about how this affects you, give us a call, shoot us a text, send us an email. We got your back, we're moving to South Florida.