Market Update with Brad O’Connor Ph.D. TRT: 5 minutes 7 secoonds Video Transcription Brad O'Connor directly addresses camera: Existing home sales continued to rebound strongly throughout Florida in July, based on the latest data release from Florida Realtors. Closed sales of previously owned single-family homes were up almost 12 percent year-over-year, the best monthly performance we've seen for this property type since January's nearly 18 percent increase. New pending sales of single-family homes were also up big, by about 22 percent compared to July of last year. Coupled with the over 23 percent year-over-year increase in new pendings that we saw in June, all indications are that this wave of closed sales will continue on through the end of the summer and perhaps beyond. Year-to-date through July, we are only down by about 4 percent compared to last year for closings of pre-owned single-family properties, so it's quite likely that by the end of August, we will be in positive territory overall for 2020. Over in our other major property type category, condos and townhouses, closings were up by 6-and-a-half percent in July, marking the first year-over-year increase in this category since March. We expect we'll continue to see growth in closed sales in this category as well in the coming months, since new pending sales were up 19 percent this July compared to last, and they were similarly up by about 20 percent year-over-year in June. So as is the case over in the single-family home category, we'll be seeing a lot of these under-contract condos and townhouses reach their scheduled closing dates over the next couple of months, putting us in great shape going into the fall. Year-over-year growth in median sale prices was up soundly for both property type categories in July, as well. The typical single-family home in Florida sold for $295,000, a more than 10 percent increase compared to July of 2019. And over in the condo and townhouse category, we saw a solid increase of nearly 12 percent in the median sale price, to $210,000. Now, I should say that these year-over-year percentage increases are slightly overstated, in that many higher-priced market areas that are normally cooling down this time of year are unusually active since their peak seasons were pushed back. But most of these increases truly can be attributed to home price appreciation being driven by lower mortgage interest rates inducing greater demand. When rates go down, you can afford a higher-priced homeÑbut then again, so can competing buyers, so we're definitely seeing prices getting bid upward. With closed sales and sale prices rising across all property types, it's no surprise that the dollar volume of pre-owned Florida properties that moved in July was up in a big way. Statewide, total single-family home sales amounted to nearly $13 billionÑa more than 28 percent increase compared to last July. Condo and townhouse dollar volume, meanwhile was up over 20 percent, in excess of $3 billion. Through the end of July, condo and townhouse dollar volume was still down 7.3 percent year-to-date compared to the same time period in 2019. Sales in this category, after all, were hit pretty hard in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. But single-family dollar volume is now up for the year by over 3 percent. While both property type markets performed well in July, there remains one stark difference between them, which is that we continue to face a serious shortage of single-family homes. Single-family inventory continued to plunge throughout July, although this net decline of about 5,000 active listings over the course of the month was a stark improvement over the approximately 11,000 listing drop that occurred in June. One major reason for this deceleration is that the rate of new listings coming on to the market continues to improve little-by-little. We're still not seeing as many new listings as we'd like to, but it is notable that they were up year-over-year by just a bit over 1 percent in JulyÑthe first time they've increased since December. Still, we're currently down to about 2-and-a-half months supply for single-family homes, so we remain in one of the strongest seller's markets in recent memory. Condos and townhouses are more balanced at 5.6 months supply, statewide. As always, it's important to remember that market conditions can vary substantially at the local level. So to get the latest info on your market, be sure to go check out sunstats.floridarealtors.org, our new market data service exclusively for Florida Realtors members. You'll find our whole array of local-area statistics available there to explore. Thanks for watchingÑsee you next month!