Market Update – July 2021 With Brad O’Connor Ph.D. TRT: 3 minutes 44 seconds Video Transcription Brad O’Connor directly addresses camera: The latest residential market statistics from Florida Realtors have been released, and this edition—which covers resale activity during July 2021—is showing multiple signs that the housing market in the Sunshine State is now firmly set on a steady path toward normalcy. Well, in some respects, anyway. Closed sales of single-family homes were down very slightly on a year-over-year basis in July, by just over 2 percent. Still, that marks the first time sales in this property type category have been down year-over-year at the statewide level since May of 2020, near the beginning of the pandemic. That said, coming up short of *last* July’s sales total is not anything to be ashamed of! Because the 2020 Spring Buying Season was effectively postponed until the summer and fall by the pandemic, the second half of 2020 ended up being the strongest second half for sales in at least 15 years. *This year*, though, we actually *had* a spring buying season, and a great one at that! So we really shouldn’t be too surprised if sales counts over the next few months fail to surpass their totals from one year ago. We should, however, still expect sales to be at or above the levels where we were in 2019—the last full year where we had anything resembling a normal market. So if we compare this July to July *2019*, we find that sales were over 9 percent higher this year. Closed sales of condos and townhouses continued to outperform their counterparts in the single-family category in July. Sales in this category were up over 21 percent year-over-year, and were up close to 29 percent compared to July 2019. Active listings of single-family homes continued to rise throughout July. This rebound in inventory is going to be slow and it will take a long while to get back to the levels we had pre-pandemic. So buyers will continue to be frustrated for the time being, but maybe just a little less so. We will increasingly be seeing fewer properties receiving multiple bids over the coming months. At the end of July, there were still almost 39 percent fewer single-family listings than the year prior, and almost 59 percent fewer listings than at this point in 2019. There was finally an uptick in condo and townhouse inventory in July, as well. Compared to a year ago, however, inventory in this category is still down by almost 54%. So in summary, sales rates are trending back to what we might consider a normal level of growth. Inventory has started a trend back toward normalcy, as well, but in this case the road will be quite long. For now, we’re still firmly entrenched in seller’s market territory. With inventory rising again, price growth will begin to slow over the coming months. However, for the time being, it remains red-hot. The median price for closed sales of single-family homes was up 20.3 percent year-over-year, to $355,000, while over in the condo and townhouse category, the median price rose to $253,000—and increase of 20.5 percent. 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. You’ll find our whole array of local-area statistics available there to explore. Thanks for watching!