The Single Family Home Market in January

Several regular readers have suggested to post the monthly market data for home sales also on my blog. I'd be happy to: Starting this month, they will appear here as well as on http://www.themodernistangle.com

To business: January mostly continued the December trend – a dwindling number of houses on the market, increased asking prices overall but softer asking and selling prices for those homes that actually closed. 

Are sellers asleep at the wheel? Because why would anyone increase the asking price, when in actuality prices are giving in (4.5% month-over-month and 6.8% year-ver-year)? Doesn't make much sense.

What I suspect is typified by a modernist seller in North Broward: the property is on the market with different four agents since 2008, so they just raised the price again by $100k. Clever; they must know something no one else knows ("my property is so much better than the rest"). Too bad buyers are too dumb to see the light. I don't see it, either.

In general, the market is far from homogeneous: trophy properties as well as those sectors most in demand – say $200,000 to $500,000 – are rapidly disappearing, and there is no sign this will change. In modern architecture, the availabilities are even tighter (as regular readers know, I compile but do not publish monthly market data for modern home sales anymore. They are available for clients and appraisers on request).

There is also a distinct incline heading north from Dade to Broward to Palm Beach, both in regards to asking as well as to selling prices, absolut and per square foot.

The January numbers:

Single family home data per month’s end for Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade (Florida) counties.


And the matching chart:

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Single family home data Feb 2011 to Jan 2012. Red: median list price, green: median selling price, blue: inventory in months. – Data compiled from SEF-MLS


If you have any questions, or would like more detailed data pertaining to a purchase or sale you consider, please let me know – I look forward to hearing from you.

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