Market Update
January 2022
With Erica Plemmons


Erica Plemmons directly addresses camera:  Ready for our first dose of statistics for 2022? I'm Erica Plemmons, an economist and the director of housing statistics at Florida Realtors, and I'm going to walk you through our newly released numbers for January 2022. Let's begin with one of the most popular metrics - closed sales.
Single-family home closed sales in January 2022 eked past last January's number by 1.4 percent. Over on the townhouse and condo side, closed sales were above 10,000, a 6.7 percent increase from January 2021.
Looking ahead though, pending sales are showing a different picture. New pending sales, which typically occur 30-60 days before closing, were down 9.4 percent for single-family homes. Condo and townhome pending sales were also down this January compared to last year, by 7.3 percent.
The strong uptick in the 30-year fixed mortgage rate, means John and Jane Doe need to cross their t's and dot their i's before signing on the dotted line. A home price that they could afford at 3 percent, may not be as comfortable at 3.5 or 4 percent. Still, there's a strong incentive to purchase a home as rents are also rising. Both single-family home and townhouse/condo pending sales are higher than their 2020 and 2019 levels. As we get more data for 2022, we will have a better understanding of how much of Florida's demand will move to the sidelines as interest rates increase to levels homebuyers haven't seen in three years. 
Home sales are still eating into supply. Single-family active inventory was down to about 28,000 homes at the end of January. That's 31% lower than last year. The phenomenal spring buying season and entire 2021 for condos and townhomes last year pushed inventory to extremely low levels. In January, it dropped even further, to around 16,500 units.
Prices unsurprisingly continued to climb. The median sale price for single-family home sales closing in January was $375,000, which is $70,000 more than January 2021. In the condo and townhouse category, the median price was $55,000 higher, rising to $285,000.
Of course, Florida is a big and diverse state. Realtors should check out their local area statistics to have the best information available for their clients. You can get the latest reports on floridarealtors.org/research or use SunStats, our interactive market data tool, at sunstats.floridarealtors.org to create an infographic to share the January 2022 metrics on social media. Thanks for watching!