Fort Lauderdale Real Estate Market Insights January 2024

I hope everyone had a great holiday season, and New Years.  We’ve returned from a great adventure at Disney!

If you’ll remember the end of last year I kept saying that the true driver of the velocity, or lack thereof, in real estate sales was interest rates.  To give some context, January of 2022 rates were around 3.5%. January of 2023 they were around 5.5%. Going into October of last year they were above 7.5%. The thesis was as rates drop, buyers will come back into the market.  We’ve moved down to around 6.5% recently. Did this spur the market on? Well it’s not going to really show you in the data I give as it runs roughly 30 days behind. However, anecdotally, I can tell you I’ve been very busy.  A lot of Buyers that were waiting called to say they’re ready to go.  Should rates hold, or even fall, I expect a busy first quarter.  That may lead to increased competition for Buyers, which of course, is good news for Sellers. 

A quick side note.  I received a few emails from you guys asking if I thought rates would pull back down to the levels of 2 years ago.  My opinion, no they won’t. That being said, there are ways now for Buyers and Sellers to structure deals to create win win scenarios.  Most commonly that’s having a Seller offer to give a buyer credit to buy down their rate.  Why would you want to do this? The answer is math.  If I tell you that 1% less in a Buyers mortgage rate (costing the Seller a hypothetical $15k) would result in you as a Seller being able to receive $100k more in proceeds, would you take that deal? Most would.  If you’re listing a property with me we will go through this scenario in detail to see if it is something that would benefit you.

Ok so onto the data:

Starting with single family home data in Fort Lauderdale

Median home pricing. You guys are in for a treat this month as I’ll do the sales brackets so you can see where the market is actually moving.  So we will glaze over this one. This will get my attention if it drops below $500k.

Number of properties sold, this is the one that matters most. Is a lower number of properties sold in December a surprise? If you said yes you haven’t paid attention to the data on the slowest sales months of the year. If you’ve been paying attention, this flat month was no surprise. Year over year it was actually up by 26 sales. Let’s see what January data looks like next month.

List to sales headed back down.  Again what this really means is how accurately Sellers judged the market, and how much buyers were able to negotiate off listing price. Again, it was December so don’t put too much stock in this, but seems like Buyers got the better of the deals here.

Median days to sales rose, not great news for sellers, but again, December. Down from 37 days year over year, but let’s not get too excited yet.  That being said it looks like there was some relief for buyers, remember how I said its good to be a buyer in December, not so great to be a seller, case in point.

We can glaze over price per square foot, clearly the overall trend is up, which continues to make sense. I’ve said many times, buyers want properties in nice, renovated, turn key condition.  These are going to carry higher price per square foot. That’s what I see anyways.

Total dollar volume continues to be a non surprise for me, and hopefully you.  The bulk of sales are taking place at lower price points, so it’s going to take a lot more sales to get the total volume way up until the high end market starts to participate at a meaningful level.

Finally the other stat near and dear to my heart, months of supply. Looks like we’re backing off that 6 months number, good news for Sellers.  December of 2023 there were 4.43 months of supply, now up to 5.12, so it would have been better to be a seller last year, and a buyer this year, but again, it was December so let’s see what January data looks like before reading too much into it.

Ladies and gentlemen, here is the sales data by bracket.  Once again, where’s the volume of sales actually happening? Just over 42% of sales took place below $1 million. The highest number of sales is taking place in the lowest price bracket.  Where’s the most competition for Buyers? The lowest price bracket.  Where’s it easiest to be a Seller? Below $1 million.  Month after month this is what we’re seeing right.  Don’t let the headlines of luxury fool you. That being said, is it a good time to be a Buyer on the higher end? Yup.  Why? Not a lot of sales means a lot of these higher dollar properties aren’t seeing offers. I have a 6 bedroom that I’m brining to market in Davie that sits in one of the higher price brackets. This is the same data I’ve reviewed with the Seller to get a realistic expectation of time on market, despite the appeal of the property.

Let’s switch over to Condos and Townhomes

Median pricing rose year over year from $410k to $532,500 which is a monster sized move statistically. To get a better understanding of this in a contextual basis lets see how the rest of the data feeds in. And yes of course, we will look for clues in the price bracketing.

Well prices may be up, but transactions, wow this is ugly. If median prices are up and sales are down its telling me that buyers are willing to pay for quality, but still within a budget. We’re up against 5 year low on total sales numbers.  Of course, this is December data which we knew would be weak. Something to really keep an eye on here. Distinct Buyer advantage on this one.

List to sales just tanking. What’s that say? Sellers are having to negotiate. So if you’re a Seller be prepared.  And of course, price correctly from the start.

Median days on market possibly leveling off here. Double the days on market from December of 2022. Of course more days on market can mean a number of things from too few buyers, to overpriced properties on the market. If you’re a seller listing with me, what I’m going to tell you, be prepared for a longer time to contract. That’s just the reality.

Price per square foot still on the high side. Again to me that just saying people are paying for quality, but on a budget. I just keep hearing this from Buyers, and seeing it play through. So if you’re listing something junky and outdated, you’ve been warned.

Total dollar volume, just wow.  I do want to take a moment here and address something that does not show up.  Pre construction condo’s are being sold along the beach at a relatively strong pace. Those sales don’t get loaded into the MLS very often. These are high dollar sales.  If you’re a buyer looking for that product, which is what a number of the buyers I work with are in the market for, throw this all out the window. This is really just resale data. If all the sales pre market at Selene had been loaded in here the last handful of months would have shown a volume bump.  I digress. Existing sales condo and townhome data, brutal here. We will see what January brings.

I know a lot of you that follow me also follow the stock market.  This months of supply chart, well if it’s a stock you owned you’d be thinking we’re looking good with room to run.  Above 6 months of supply favors Buyers. We’re through that level and then some.  If new listings hit the market, and buyers don’t pick up their pace, expect this to get worse. Better for Buyers, tougher for Sellers.

Let’s take a look at the bracket data.  Who wants to be a Seller below $750k? Half the market activity is taking place there. Thankfully I have a couple of listings coming up in this bracket so I’m a happy camper! But let’s be fair here, it’s also better to be a seller of a condo or townhome above $1 million than it is to be a seller in the same brackets of single family homes.  Kind of wild right? But that’s what the data says!

So that’s it.  As always please feel free to call, text, or email me if you’re looking to buy or sell some real estate or around Fort Lauderdale, whether you’re timeline is a week or a year from now, I’d love to chat.