2025 RE Trends: What’s Next for Fla. Housing? By Marla Martin

   Could Fla. be on the cusp of a buyer's market? Yes, in some local areas, Florida Realtors chief economist said at Friday's Mid-Winter Meetings' RE Trends event. ORLANDO, Fla. – Is Florida's housing sector on the cusp of transitioning to a buyer's market? The answer could be yes, especially in some local areas, according to Florida Realtors® Chief Economist Dr. Brad O'Connor, who spoke to a room crowd of Realtors® at the 2025 Florida Real Estate Trends summit last week during Florida Realtors annual Mid-Winter Business Meetings. Photo of Dr. Brad O'Connor Dr. Brad O'Connor "If we go by the general rule of thumb that five to six months of supply is a balanced market, single-family homes ended 2024 still just barely in a seller's market at 4.7 months of supply, while condos and townhouses are now firmly in buyer's market territory, at 8.2 months' supply," O'Connor said. At the end of the year at the county level, one-year growth in single-family inventory levels was fairly uniform across the state, with most counties falling in the 25 to 35% range. One-year growth in active listings of condos and townhouses was strongly positive across the state as of the end of 2024, but some areas have seen more of an increase than others. "In 2024, several challenges weakened demand for housing in Florida, including the fact that mortgage rates remained elevated along with property insurance rates," O'Connor said. Florida's housing market was disrupted by several hurricanes during the year, from Hurricane Debby to the almost back-to-back devastation of Hurricanes Helene and Milton. Other challenges that impacted the state's residential real estate market last year were: • Domestic in-migration still above the long-term trend but is slowing down • Statewide job growth slowed but remained quite strong • International buyer demand remained tepid • Issues impacting the condo market, specifically reserve requirements and insurability Looking back at the year, December was a good month for existing single-family home sales, and that strong performance put the statewide total at nearly 253,000 statewide single-family closed sales for the year, 1.9% below 2023's total of nearly 258,000 sales, but also the fewest annual sales since 2014. According to O'Connor, there was little variation across the state in 2024, as most counties only saw small year-over-year declines. Annual closed sales in the condo and townhouse category came in at more than 94,000 for 2024, a 10.5% decline compared to the prior year. "Multiple factors were responsible for the underperformance of this category throughout the year, including concerns about insurance coverage and reserve requirement compliance giving some prospective buyers cold feet," he said. "The result was the lowest number of condo and townhouse sales we've seen for any year in Florida since 2010. "Declines were most prominent in coastal counties along the Atlantic and the Gulf. The lone bright spot was in the I-4 Corridor in the exurban areas between Tampa and Orlando and further north into The Villages and Ocala. These areas saw condo and townhouse sales grow in 2024 compared to 2023." Looking at new listings, over 360,000 single-family homes came onto the market in 2024, a 9.5% increase compared to 2023. However, the chief economist noted that 2023 was characterized by abnormally low new listings relative to recent years. The number of new single-family listings in 2024 was more comparable to those from 2018 to 2022. O'Connor added, "As with closed sales, county-level changes in the number of new listings were fairly uniform across the state in 2024, with the key difference being that new listings were on the rise while closed sales were mostly on the decline." Year-over-year growth in new listings of condos and townhouses slowed in the second half of 2024, especially when compared to the first half of the year, he said, noting that because of the surge of new listings that occurred in the early months of 2024, the annual count of new condo and townhouse listings came in more than 11% higher than 2023's count. "That increase is not much larger than the 9.5% increase we saw for single-family homes, though, and it suggests that the narrative of panicked condo owners across the state scrambling to sell in the face of the new state-mandated reserve requirements has been a bit overblown," O'Connor said. "We think the requirements are impacting the market, but this impact is being felt more so on the buyer than on the seller side." With new listings growing and sales declining, inventory levels for both the single-family category and the condo and townhouse category ended the year slightly above the typical levels reported during the pre-pandemic period of 2014 to 2019. "Inventory is still largely moving along an upward trajectory, so we should continue to watch it as we move into the spring buying season here in Florida," he said. The monthly median price for closed sales of single-family homes did not change much over the past eight months, reflecting the balance in the market for this property type; it was $420,000 at the end of 2024, up 2.4% from the previous year. The median price for condos and townhouses, which was $320,000 at the end of 2024 (down 0.8% from 2023), was lower than a year ago in each of the last six months – which tracks with what months' supply says about this property type being in buyer's market territory. Still, throughout the year, the median price for this category remained above 2022 levels. According to O'Connor, "It will take significantly more inventory to threaten the large gains in price appreciation between 2020 and 2022. Overall, the 2024 Florida housing market saw mostly modest declines in sales and little change in home prices. Even though there were some fluctuations in mortgage rates, they remained in the high range relative to recent years. The most significant changes occurring in 2024 were the widening performance gap between the single-family and condo and townhouse markets and the overall rise in inventory levels." Going into 2025, interest rates will still dictate how the market performs, but he said the challenges from 2024 are still factors facing Florida's housing sector over the coming months. © 2025 Florida Realtors®

Report Finds Single Women Outpace Single Men in Homeownership

  According to a new report from LendingTree, single women are likelier than single men to be homeowners. The report found this was likely to be the case among younger women with better educational pedigree than their older counterparts. Even though women's median take-home pay is 83.6% that of men (per the report), the demographic shift from younger women makes single women more likely to be homeowners than single men. The report found that across the nation, single women own 11.14 million homes, compared with 8.42 million for single men—a difference of 2,719,923. As a total share of the homeownership market, single women comprise 13.01%, while single men account for 9.83%. The report also found that the gap between single women and single men homeowners had slowly expanded since 2022, when single women owned 10.95 million homes, compared with 8.24 million for men (a difference of 2.71 million homes). That represents an increase of 14,780 housing units in the gap between single women and single men. The report noted that the reasons for this gap are still unclear but offers "a few possible explanations." One is that single women are more willing to make sacrifices to achieve homeownership than single men, though the evidence for this is "sparse," the report admitted. Another possible explanation is that women live longer and are more likely to be widowed compared to men, meaning the gap could be at least partially explained by women who outlived their spouses. On the other hand, there is little indication that single women are beating single men in homeownership due to "disproportionately" benefiting from divorces or through closing the earnings gap, according to the report. The homeownership gap was most pronounced in Delaware and Connecticut. Although neither state has the highest number of single women homeowners, they were the two states with the highest gender disparity. Delaware had a 5.23% difference in the total share of single homeowners, while Connecticut's figure was 5.06%. As far as the states in which single women saw their highest percentage of overall homeownership, New Mexico, Mississippi, and West Virginia led the way, according to LendingTree, with 15.26% of the share of homeowners being single women in New Mexico, compared with 15.07% in Mississippi and 14.73% in West Virginia. States with single women homeowners as higher percentage shares of overall homeownership tended to be in the Southern and Midwestern regions, with New Mexico being the geographic outlier and rounding out the top 10 states after West Virginia were Louisiana, South Carolina, Florida, Alabama, Kentucky, Ohio, and Maryland. Single men comprised the highest percentage of homeowners in North Dakota, South Dakota, and Alaska. The share of single male homeowners in North Dakota is 13.52%, with South Dakota at 13.10% and Alaska at 12.79%. In addition to being the states with the highest proportion of single male homeowners, these were the only three states where single men homeowners outnumbered single women homeowners. States with the highest percentage of single male homeowners tended to be clustered in the Northern region of the U.S. After Alaska, the rest of the top 10 states with the highest share of single male homeowners were West Virginia, New Mexico, Montana, Wyoming, Louisiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin. LendingTree also found that the states with the highest gaps between single women's and men's homeownership were mainly located along the Eastern coast of the U.S. After Connecticut, these were Maryland, North Carolina, New Jersey, South Carolina, Florida, New York, Massachusetts, and Mississippi. Regarding practical advice, the report recommends that women carefully vet different lenders to find the best deals and understand that it is illegal for lenders to discriminate against them based on gender. "While single women may be more likely to be homeowners than single men, that doesn't mean buying a house is easy," the report said.

FCC Postpones New Robocall Consent Rules

  Due to a pending case, the FCC delayed new robocall and Robotech consent rules, initially set for Jan. 27. Join the NAR webinar today at 2 p.m. for updates. ORLANDO, Fla. — The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) released an order Friday postponing enforcement of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act's (TCPA) one-to-one written consumer consent to redefine the meaning of “prior express written consent.”The new consent rules for robocalls and robotexts were expected to begin Monday (Jan. 27). A pending case under judicial review in the 11th Circuit triggered the delay. Additional updates are expected shortly. The TCPA was signed into law in 1991 to limit unwanted telemarketing calls and faxes. In 2003, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) established a national Do-Not-Call registry. Over the years, amendments have been made to update the act. Under the new consent rules, businesses that want to call, text, or drop a prerecorded message using an auto-dialer must obtain one-to-one written consumer consent, called the one-to-one consent rule.

Seller Profit Margins Fall for Second Year in a Row

  ATTOM Data's Year End 2024 Home Sales Report found that home sellers made a $122,500 profit on typical sales in 2024, a return on investment of 53.8%. Although both numbers soared to near-record levels, the profit margin for median-priced home sales nationwide receded from 56.9% to 53.8%. This decline in profit margin marked the second annual decrease, a pattern that has not been seen since the aftermath of the great recession of the late 2000s. Even though gross profit on median single-family homes and condo sales rose by about $2,000 from 2023, the margins within those gross profits took a relatively steep cut: 8% below a peak from 2022, according to the report. "(T)he U.S. housing market mostly rebounded nicely in 2024," said Rob Barber, ATTOM CEO. "Prices went back up at a healthy clip, and homeowners continued to make some of the best profits on sales in the past 25 years. The renewed shine, however, didn't come without a bit of tarnish as margins took another turn for the worse. Amid the generally good news, that's something worth following closely in 2025." ATTOM's data also showed that the median national home price rose 5% to a record $350,000 marker. ATTOM measured return on investment for 127 metropolitan statistical areas with a population north of 200,000 and sufficient sales data, finding that the country's Northeast, South, and Western regions had nearly all of the highest ROI metros, with 29 out of 30. San Jose, California, led the way with a 105.8% return on investment. This was followed by Knoxville, Tennessee (94.3%), Ocala, Florida (87.1%), Seattle, Washington (85.6%) and Scranton, Pennsylvania (85%). The Midwest and Northeast were home to metros with the most significant increases in profit margin from 2023 to 2024, with Syracuse and Rochester, New York, seeing seller margins rise by double digits (13.3% and 10.4%, respectively). Industry analysts have recently identified Rochester as a "hot" housing market in recent years. It has also been highly rated for its affordability compared to the rest of the country. On the other side of the profitability coin was the Southern region of the U.S., which contained the 10 most significant decreases in investment. This was led by Fayetteville, Arkansas, which experienced a decline in ROI from 71.9% to 51.3% yearly. This was followed by Ocala, Florida (105.7% to 87.1%), Sarasota, Florida (80.6% to 64.6%), Chattanooga, Tennessee (80.6% to 65.9%), and Crestview-Fort Walton Beach, Florida (60.1% to 45.9%). ATTOM found that profit margins on typical home sales declined from 2023 to 2024 in 73% of the 127 metros with sufficient data to analyze for investment returns, or 93 of such metros expressed as a raw number. According to Barber, Home prices are stretching household budgets more and more, and mortgage rates have been increasing in recent months even as other forces put more upward pressure on prices. So, significant factors undoubtedly could propel the market up or settle it back down. Either will have a substantial effect on seller returns.”