South Florida Housing Market Update [August 2021] - Is The Market Shifting?

Hey, it's Andy with the Mandel Team at RE/MAX and I'm here to bring you your August, 2021 Housing Market Update. As always, for the purposes of these videos, we're gonna be talking about single family homes only in Boca, Parkland and Coral Springs. That's the area where our team does the predominant amount of our business and we're not talking about country clubs or 55 and over communities. When we give you these stats, we wanna give you the leading indicators to show you where the housing market is headed, not where it's been.

The first step we like to look at is the number of new homes that came on the market last month, compared to the same month in 2020. In Boca and Parkland that was down. Boca was down 11%, Parkland was down 34% as far as the new listings hitting the market. Coral Springs is actually up 13%. So we're starting to see a divergence in some of the cities, where we still have really low inventory, and in some of the cities where more people are getting comfortable and putting their homes on the market. So more homes are hitting the market in Coral Springs. If you're looking for, you know, more options, I would be looking in Coral Springs. At the same time, we are seeing in Boca and Parkland, fewer homes go pending. That, in my opinion, is because we have less homes for sale so there's fewer of them that can sell. In Boca and Parkland, new pending sales were down 22% compared to last year. In Coral Springs, it was up 4.4%, because there are more homes hitting the market, more of them can sell. As you can imagine, with very few homes on the market, if you've heard anything about the real estate market these days, the days on market, the number of days for a home to sell, is dramatically decreased from last year and what we would consider normal for 2018 and 2019. Last month, the average days on market was just 10 days. Now, I personally think that that's a very, very high. I think there's some homes that were sitting on the market for a long time that are skewing that. The homes, if you've been in this market, you know the homes that are priced well, they're getting multiple offers in one, two days. So, you know, that it says 10 days, realistically, if you're in this market, a day or two, and all of these properties are getting multiple offers, there's such high demand out there for single family homes right now.

Another stat you like to look at is the closed sales price to list price, so what percentage of the asking price are sellers getting? On average, it's 100.1%, so sellers are getting a little bit more, on average, than their asking price. So prices are continuing to be pushed up. Sellers are getting really, really good prices, consistently setting records in their neighborhood. If this is... if you're looking to, you know, lowball offer and get a deal, this really just is not the market for that, you got to come in with a very, very strong offer first, the average sales price to list price is 100.1%.

Now, the last step we like to look at is the number of months supply of inventory. That means how many months would it take for all the homes on the market to sell at the current pace of sales. A balanced market is six months, anything more than that is a buyer's market, anything less is a seller's market. We are, on average, at 1.13 months, which is really where we've been the whole year. In Coral Springs, it's 0.86 months of inventory, so less than one month of inventory in Coral Springs. So even though more homes are hitting the market in Coral Springs, they're selling just as quickly, they're flying off the market. Same thing in Boca and Parkland, we're just over one month of inventory there. Nothing is sitting on the market if it's priced well, in good condition and in a good neighborhood, that's just the reality of what we got going on right now. So what does this mean if you're a buyer? If you're a buyer you need to come in, be pre-approved upfront, get fully underwritten so hopefully you can even waive your financing contingency. You can still make a contingent on appraisal if you want, but you got to be ready to come in with your strongest offer first. Buyers of today are doing things like waiving appraisals, agreeing to pay above appraise value, agreeing to pay a certain dollar amount above the other highest offer that the seller might receive.

That's what's going on in this market. So you've got to be ready to write a competitive offer if you wanna buy a house today. What does this mean if you're a seller? It is still an unbelievable time to be a seller. There's news on, you know, the main news channels that the market's slowing down. We're seeing fewer offers on all of our properties but we're still getting multiple offers on our listings and that's really what's happening around the board.So, if you're still considering selling this year, it is an excellent time to put your home on the market. You will get multiple offers, you'll be able to get a record sales price, and we can even negotiate you a lease batch and you can stay in your property for up to 90 days to find the next property.

That's what we are doing to help our sellers succeed in this market. It truly is a great time to be a seller. It's a great time to be a buyer too because interest rates are still so low, below 3%. It's still affordable, even with prices on the rise, to buy a home. A lot of times it's cheaper to buy than it is to rent, when you look at what rent prices are doing. So it's a good time for both buyer and seller. You just really gotta be prepared to write a competitive offer if you're a buyer. There are certain things that you just gonna have to do to get a house right now and if that's not something you're willing to do, this just isn't a market for you. But there's a great opportunity out there, more homes are starting to hit the market in certain areas. If you have any questions about how this affects you, feel free to give us a call, shoot us a text, send us an email. We look forward to helping you.