Market Update With Brad O’Connor Ph.D. TRT 5 minutes 15 seconds Video Transcription Brad O'Connor Directly Addresses Camera: August in Florida is typically known more for hot weather than a hot housing market, but the latest data from Florida Realtors shows that existing home sales continued to surge throughout the dog days of summer. Closed sales of existing single-family homes were up about 9 percent in August compared to August of 2019, with sales in the upper price tiers leading the way. Sales of single-family homes of a million or more dollars were up nearly 82 percent year-over-year, while sales in the 600 thousand to a million-dollar range were up almost 72 percent. Only sales in price tiers below $250,000 were down on a year-over-year basis, and this is somewhat due to the levels of price appreciation we're seeing in the face of our broadening shortage of single-family home listings. As of the end of August, the statewide inventory of single-family homes was down 35-and-a-half percent from a year ago. The silver lining, I suppose, is that the rate at which single-family inventory is falling has been slowing since June, but we are still moving in the wrong direction here and as a result many prospective buyers could eventually be priced out of certain markets, despite the record-low mortgage rates we're experiencing. Florida's median sale price for closed sales of single-family homes reached $300,000 for the first time in August, a more than 13 percent increase from a year ago. The market for condos and townhouses, which was hit much harder in the initial stages of the pandemic, continued its dramatic resurgence in August, as well. So it appears, at least for now, that the demise of attached housing that was proclaimed by many early on in the pandemic has not really materialized throughout most of the Sunshine State. Closed sales in this category were up over 10 percent year-over-year in August; and as was the case in the single-family category, it was the upper-tier class of properties that led the way, with condo and townhouse sales of a million dollars and above increasing by 63-and-a-half percent from last August, and sales in the 600 thousand to a million-dollar range rising by over 71 percent. Only sales in price tiers below $150,000 dollars were down year-over-year among condo and townhouse properties. The statewide inventory of condos and townhouses continues to be much healthier than what we're seeing on the single-family side of the market. By the end of August, it was only down 5.6 percent compared to a year ago. That puts us at 5.3 months supply of inventory, which indicates a much more balanced market than we are seeing with the 2.3 months of supply over in the single-family market. Notably, new listings were up year-over-year in both property type categories, rising by 2 percent in the single-family category and over 15 percent in the condo and townhouse category, but this hasn't been enough to push our inventory growth into positive territory. This is simply an issue that isn't going to go away overnight. The median sale price among condos and townhouses was up big compared to last year, rising by 14-and-a-half-percent to $217,500. This may be somewhat surprising given that there's some slack in condo and townhouse inventory right now, but I suspect much of this increase has more to do with the mix of types and locations of properties that are selling in this category right now as opposed to the same point in time last year. The fact that upper-tier properties are leading the resurgence of the housing market at this early stage shouldn't really be a surprise to any student of economic history. In most recessions, the stock market is one of the first things to recover, and that's certainly been the trend this time around, just as it was during the Great Recession. Of course, there's no guarantee that the stock market will continue to trend in its current direction, as there remains a great deal of uncertainty out there, but at least for now, stock holders have recovered a substantial amount of asset wealth that they lost during the drop earlier this year and are now financially in a good position to reallocate their assets - including into and out of real estate as they see fit. And since stocks are disproportionately held by the wealthier individuals among us, that translates into a lot more real estate sales activity among the upper tier of properties. As always, we encourage you to analyze the numbers for your area to help your buyers and sellers understand what's going on locally. And to find statistics for your local market, all you have to do is visit floridarealtors.org/research. And of course, don't forget to check out our new interactive market data tool, SunStats, which is exclusively for use by Florida Realtors members. You can access SunStats directly at sunstats.floridarealtors.org. Take care, everyone. We'll see you next month.