Florida Realtors® Market Update for January 2020
With Brad O’Connor Ph.D.
TRT: 3:06
Transcription


Brad O’Connor Directly addresses Camera:  It’s hard to imagine the Florida housing market getting off to a better start than it did in January. To show you what I mean, let’s take a dive into the latest market statistics from Florida Realtors.
If you follow us regularly, you know that last month’s figures for December 2019 were very impressive, led by a year-over-year rise in closed single-family home sales of over 20 percent. But you *also* know that part of that rise is explained by December *2018* being a very slow month for sales, so that skewed our year-over-year number upward a bit. Still, market conditions—particularly interest rates—have been very favorable for home sales over the past several months. As a result, the figures for January 2020 aren’t all that much different than what we saw in December 2019. Which, I think we can all agree, is a good thing. 
Closed sales were up almost 18 percent year-over-year for single-family homes, and they were up 14-and-a-half percent in our condo and townhouse category. As we saw with the December figures, though, part of these January year-over-year increases is due to January 2019 being fairly weak in terms of sales. Remember, back then the stock market had been undergoing some major fluctuations and we were in the midst of a federal government shutdown. Mortgage rates were only really beginning to fall at that point, so they were not yet benefiting buyers who were closing at that time.
The median sale price for single-family homes in January was $265,000, a 6 percent increase over last January’s median of just under $250,000.  The median sale price for condos and townhouses, meanwhile, was up 9.6 percent, from $182,500 to $200,000.  Along with what we saw in December, this is some of the hottest price growth we’ve seen in either property type category in quite a while.
Statewide inventory levels are up a bit from last month, which is normal for January, but they continue to trend downward overall. Single-family inventory at the end of January was down 16.4 percent year-over-year, while condo and townhouse inventory was down 11.7 percent.
Now that you’re up to speed on the statewide trends, be sure to take a look at the statistics for your local market to see how they compare!  As always, you can find these statistics at floridarealtors.org. And coming up on Monday, February 24, you’ll also be able to find them in our brand new interactive web app for Florida Realtors members—SunStats! With SunStats, you’ll be able to view and use our market data like never before, so we urge you to visit sunstats.floridarealtors.org when it goes live to check it out!