South Florida Housing Market Update [April 2021]

 Hey, it's Andy with The Mandel Team at RE/MAX and we're here to bring you your April 2021 housing market update. As always, for the purposes of these videos we're going to be talking about single family homes only in Boca, Parkland and Coral Springs. Those are the areas where our team does the predominant amount of our business. We're not going to be talking about any country clubs or any 55 and over communities. Those are a separate market entirely.

So, you have to remember for these next two months the stats are going to be a little bit skewed. On March 16th of 2020 was when the economy down here shut down, everyone was forced to stay in, everything was basically shut down. So some of these stats are going to be a little bit skewed because we only had half of a month last year but the trends remain the same. So let's go into the numbers.

The first stat we like to look at is the number of new homes coming onto the market. On average, that's up 18% compared to March of 2020. Again, keep in mind, March of 2020 we only had half of a month before there was a pandemic and everything shut down. At the same time, we're seeing 85 percent increase in the number of new homes going pending and coming off the market. That's a huge increase, so even if these numbers were great and we saw a big supply increase, the amount of homes coming off the market and going pending, it's been shooting up three times as much. So it's just a crazy amount of demand, homes are flying off the market.

So that takes us to our next statistic which is the number of days on market. And on average, that is about eleven days. That's basically what we've been seeing for the last couple of months. But in reality, that's just way too long. That probably incorporates some agents who didn't move their home pending or, you know, they didn't put it into a pending or backup status, even though it was under contract already for whatever reason. What we're really seeing in this market is in 24 to 48 hours, listings are getting multiple offers. I know on one of our recent listings, in just 24 hours we got 21 offers on one property. So there's a crazy amount of demand. Homes are literally selling in 24 to 48 hours. It's incredible, which takes us to our next stat which is the sales price to list price ratio. So on average in our area, the average sales price to list price is 99.1 percent. So homes are getting almost a hundred percent of what they're asking price is, on average. Keep in mind, that's an average. That means some are selling for less but that means some are selling for over list price. A lot of our listings, every one of our listings within the last month has sold for above the asking price. Some, you know, a couple hundred, some a couple thousand, some 35 thousand dollars above the asking price. So crazy, crazy time to be in this market.

The last stat we like to look at is the number of months supply of inventory. So what this stat tells us is, if no more homes were to come on the market at the current pace of sales, how long would it take for every home that's currently listed to go under contract? And that is at .93 months. So in just under one month, there would be no homes on the market. In Coral Springs specifically, it's .57 months. So, half a month worth of inventory. It's just absolutely bananas how quickly these homes are selling, how little supply there is. So what does this mean for you? If you're a buyer, you absolutely need to be fully pre-approved upfront. The offers that are getting accepted right now are the ones that have very short inspection periods very short loan approval periods and who are willing to pay, potentially above appraised value. If the appraisal misses and the most likely at-list price or above, there's really not a lot of room for negotiation as far as prices go right now. It is a super sellers market. You really have to be ready to go. Very strong offers from day one because you're not getting a chance, you're not getting counter offers, it's just not what's happening in this market. You come in with your absolute, highest and best offer first, and you have to be fully pre-approved, otherwise sellers are not even going to consider the offer. What does this mean if you're a seller? Well, we've been saying this for months now, but there hasn't literally never been a better time to be a seller. Name your price and it's almost guaranteed if that price is somewhat in the realm of reality, you're going to get it. Maybe even more, it's insane what's going on. So it's a great time to be a seller, multiple offers to choose from. If you're thinking about selling in this market and you're like, wait, hold on, I don't want to be homeless, The whole process happened so quickly, reach out to us. We have so many buyers in our database who are looking for homes just like yours. I can almost guarantee we have someone who would buy your house and because the market's competitive, they will give you whatever flexibility you need to close on your timeframe so you could find the next house.

If you're thinking about selling, call us, tell us about your house, we can line you up with a buyer and prevent this crazy situation from leaving you homeless and still capitalize on what's going on in the market to make sure you're getting top, top dollar. So thanks for tuning in to this month's episode of How's the Market. If you have any questions, call me, text me, email me. We'd love to be your realtor of choice if you're moving to South Florida.