Market Update October 2020
With Brad O'Connor Ph.D.
TRT 2minutes 59 seconds
Video Transcription

Brad O'Connor directly addresses camera: The 2020 Florida housing market continued to amaze in October. According to the latest figures from Florida Realtors, there were almost 30,000 closings of existing single-family home sales during the month across the state. That's more closed sales than we saw in September and it resulted in a year-over-year increase of nearly 27 percent. In the condo and townhouse category, meanwhile, we saw in excess of 12,000 sales statewide, marking an increase of over 30 percent compared to October of 2019.
Active listings of single-family homes continued to fall throughout October, although the rate of decline was not as steep as we've seen in previous months, going back to April. Still, at the end of October, the statewide inventory of single-family homes was sitting at a multi-year low, close to 40 percent below where it was at the same point in time last year. Condo and townhouse inventory, by contrast, was only down by about 12 percent year-over-year at the end of the month.
The strong and persistent level of demand we've seen throughout the state coupled with the worsening inventory shortages continued to drive up home values in October. The median price for closed sales of single-family homes was up 15.6 percent year-over-year, to $305,000, while over in the condo and townhouse category, the median price rose to $221,000 Ñ an increase of 15.9 percent.
This is probably a good time to remember, however, that while rising median sale prices are almost always indicative of general home price appreciation, they can also be driven upward by a change in the mix of homes that are selling. For example, if starter homes made up a larger share of the homes that sold last year, while this year, luxury homes made up a larger share instead, then of course we'd expect the median Ñ or middle Ñ sale price out of those sales to be pulled upward from last year to this year. And something like this is definitely happening this year, as luxury homes have been selling in abundance relative to last year. Still, this is only responsible for part of the rise in median prices. A good share of these increases are still being driven by good, old-fashioned price appreciation Ñ especially among single-family starter homes, which are increasingly difficult to find on the market.
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 watching. I will see you in December!