Here’s the thing with spring: It’s prime time for selling homes.
Palm Beach County totaled 1,687 sales of existing single-family homes last month, a 38 percent increase from March 2014, the Realtors Association of the Palm Beaches said Wednesday. It was the most homes sold countywide in a single month in 11 years.
Broward County posted 1,399 sales, a 16 percent increase from a year earlier, the Greater Fort Lauderdale Realtors said.
Broward’s median price was $290,000, 8 percent higher than a year ago. But Palm Beach County‘s median price fell 3 percent to $279,000. The county’s median has been flat or down year over year in seven of the past eight months.
The March-through-May period often is the strongest of the year for the housing market because buyers are eager to find homes and move in before school starts in the fall.
Even though the housing recovery is more than 2 years old, some buyers have been reluctant to jump into the market until recently, said Douglas Rill, a longtime broker in Palm Beach and Broward counties.
“I think people are finally comfortable that the worst part of the worst housing market in the last 50 years is over,” Rill said. “They’re just getting over the fear that the sky is falling.”
Rill and other real estate agents said demand is particularly strong for homes in the $200,000 to $400,000 range. Still, buyers are discriminating and showing little interest in overpriced homes.
“A lot of sellers are living in a fantasy world,” said Terry Story, an agent for Coldwell Banker in South Florida. “Buyers are savvy; they know the values. They won’t even come look at it if it’s overpriced.”
In the existing condominium market, March sales and median prices rose in both counties from a year earlier. Broward’s median condo price was $129,900, up 8 percent, while Palm Beach County‘s median was $143,000, a 19 percent increase.
The median means half the properties sold for more and half for less. The rising or falling of the median price does not necessarily reflect values of all properties countywide.
Meanwhile, real estate website Zillow.com issued a report Wednesday that ranked the South Florida metro area as the fourth best for buyers nationwide.
Only Philadelphia, Chicago and Cleveland topped the tri-county region of Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties on the list. Buyers’ markets tend to have more homes that stay on the market longer and sell for less than the asking price, Zillow said.
“In general, while the market remains more in sellers’ favor, it is slowly tilting toward buyers this year, thanks to more inventory, slower home value gains and less competition from investors,” Zillow Chief Economist Stan Humphries said in a statement.
Also Wednesday, mortgage company Freddie Mac said South Florida’s housing market continues to improve and is moving closer to a stable rating.
The tri-county area scored 75.1 on Freddie’s Multi-Indicator Market Index for February, a 2 percent increase from a year ago.
The index measures home loan applications, payment-to-income ratios, mortgage loan delinquencies and employment in 50 metro areas across the nation. A score of at least 80 is favorable. A perfect score is 100.
Florida’s housing market is expected to remain strong, in part due to demand from “boomerang buyers” — people who lost homes during the housing crisis but now are buying again.
From 2006 through 2014, more than 196,000 Floridians who had to give up their homes qualified to buy again, the National Association of Realtors said this week. By 2023, 277,000 more Florida residents will be in line to own again, according to the trade group.
