South Florida Housing Market Update [December 2021]

Hey, it's Andy with the Mandel Team at RE/MAX and I'm here to bring you your December 2021 Housing Market Update. As always, for the purposes of these videos, we're gonna be talking about single family homes only, no condos, no townhouses, and all age communities, no country clubs. We're gonna be talking about Boca, Parkland and Coral Springs because that's where we do the predominant amount of our business. No country clubs, no 55 and overs. When we give you these stats, we're gonna give you the leading indicators to show you where the real estate market is headed in the next couple months, not where it's been. So we're not gonna talk about closed sales price because that's really indicative of what happened in the market 30, 60, sometimes even 90 days ago. So we're giving you what's going on in the market now to show you what's going to be happening in the next few months.

The first stat we like to talk about is the number of new homes hitting the market, the supply. In Boca, that's actually down 26% from November of 2021 compared to November of 2020. In Parkland, it's down 30% in November of 2021 compared to last year, while in Coral Springs, it's only down 9%. So on the whole, we're seeing less supply than we had last year.

The next stat we like to look at is the demand, how many homes are going under contract and coming off the market. In Boca, that's down 18.5%. In Parkland, it's down 15.5%, but in Coral Springs, it's up actually 25% compared to this time last year. So let's talk about that. What does it mean? We're seeing way less supply but demand isn't going down at the same rate. So demand is still higher than supply. When you have demand higher than supply, that's gonna naturally lead to an increase in prices, so we are predicting that over the next 30, 60 days, home prices are going to be a little bit higher than they were in the previous months. They're going to continue to go up.

The next stat we like to look at is the number of days on market, how long it took for a property to be listed to when it goes under contract, and that on average across all three cities has been about 10 days. So that's a little higher than we were seeing earlier in the year in the summer when it was down to five or six days, but that's still really, really quick. I can speak from experience when we're saying on our listings and for our buyers, we're seeing the good homes and good neighborhoods that are well-priced and marketed correctly, we're seeing those still sell in a matter of one or two days with multiple offers, so if you're a buyer, you really gotta be ready when you do see the right property, you gotta be ready to write an offer right away, you can't sit on it and wait. You still have to write a strong offer because those properties are selling still very quickly.

The next stat we like to look at is the closed sales price to list price. What percentage of the sellers asking prices are they getting, and on average, it is 100% on the dot across all three cities. So that means some properties are selling for less than the asking price. A lot of properties are selling for more than asking price, but on average, sellers are getting 100% of their asking price. So there's not a lot of deals and bargains where buyers are getting way off the asking price. That's the average. So sellers, it's a great time to be getting a very good price. There's not a lot of negotiating that's going on on the buyer side because it is still very competitive.

Finally, the last stat we like to look at is the number of months of inventory. So what this stat shows is if no more homes were to hit the market, how many months would it take for all of the properties that are currently on the market to go under contract and sell? They say a balanced market is six months worth of inventory. Anything more than six months is considered a buyers market. Anything less than six months is a sellers market. Right now, on average, we're at .88 months. In Boca, it's 1.06 months. In Parkland, it's .82 months, and in Coral Springs, we're at .58 months, which is the lowest that we've seen it all year, so still very, very little inventory. We're in a super sellers market. The number of homes hitting the market has not really increased, and if it has this year, they're still selling just as quickly that it doesn't have time for the market to really react and to adjust into a buyers market. We are still in a super strong sellers market, even here at the end of 2021.

So let's talk about what this means for you. Again, if you're a buyer, there's really not a lot to choose from and you gotta be ready to write an offer right away when you do see the right property. Our buyers are still winning in this market. We're getting our offers accepted. Yes, it is competitive. It is difficult. It's a stressful process, and I want to preface the buyers, if you're looking right now, our buyers are writing three, four, sometimes five or even six offers before getting their offer accepted, but we are getting our offers accepted, At the end of the day, we are finding our buyers houses. It's a challenging market, but we can do it. We can walk you through the process if you follow our advice on how to get your offer at the front of the pack to make it stand out. A lot of our clients are getting their offers accepted on the first or second try, but sometimes it takes a little longer in this market, especially if we're not writing the strongest offer that we can right out of the bat.

We got to remove all of our contingencies, so hopefully, you have your loan formally approved, you're pre-approved and underwritten upfront, we're putting strong escrow deposits, short inspection periods, short loan approval periods, working with a good, reputable local lender. All of these things are extremely important, and this is how we are getting our buyers offers accepted over the five or six other offers that properties are getting these days. Now, if you're a seller, what does this mean for you? We are still generating multiple offers on all of our listings. Almost every home is selling very quickly for a very, very good price, on average, like we said, 100% of sales price to list price in our area. So it's still a great time to be a seller. We're seeing fewer offers on every home, so five or six on average right now in our experience compared to 25 that we were getting in the first quarter of 2021, but five offers is a lot of offers. We're getting good terms, buyers with short inspection periods, willing to pay above appraise value, all that stuff that we were seeing a couple months ago, we're still seeing, just fewer offers, but it only takes one. You can only sell the property to one person.

It's a great time to be a seller, so if you're thinking about buying or selling, especially in this holiday season, how do you navigate this? Do you have to sell in order to buy? We can walk you through that process. We'd love to be your guide in this journey. If you have any questions about the real estate market here in South Florida, make sure you give us a call, shoot us a text or send us an email, and make sure you like, follow and subscribe to our channels on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. We'll see you next month.