BREAKING! Florida Housing Market Collapses: Is Orlando Next?

We have major changes unfolding here in Florida where top real estate economist, data watcher, Redfin points out that as they've watched the top 50 markets across the U.S., the top five markets that have absolutely seen pending volume, buyer activity, absorption of active unsold inventory has fallen off of cliff in five marketplaces. And guess what? All five of those marketplaces happen to find themselves in Florida. Now, the swing of these numbers is absolutely shocking. And what the larger narrative is that's coming from this data is that buyers in the cumulative cost of owning a home in Florida are coming to the market, possibly getting pre-qualified, figuring out that interest rates are now 7%. And on top of that, HOAs themselves are mounting insurance costs incredibly high depending on what you're purchasing. The early evidence that this article admits is that we are likely in for a very cold start for 2025 as we come in off of a 2024 with very anemic resale activity, talking about existing homes. And that is pointing to a lot of factors that we're now starting to see in the market. We have situations across Florida where people moved here, thought they were going to live here for a long time, work remotely to someplace up north or someplace out west, are now being in a situation where many of them are being forced to sell. And ultimately, we find ourselves in a situation where buyers are somewhat in shock for one reason or another. And that's happening across all price ranges now because the numbers that I'm going to show you from the article are stunning when compared to what is happening in Florida versus the rest of the nation. Now, beyond just sharing the story and talking about the implications for these top five cities, we're going to drill down because the heart of this channel is really to pay attention to what's going on here in central Florida. How is Orlando doing? How is the metro areas of Seminole, Orange Lake, and Osceola panning out in comparison with the news? Is it affecting us in the same way? Without further ado, let me show you the article. All right, here's the story. Redfin, home sales sink across Florida amid hurricane recovery, surging HOA, and insurance costs. Any of this true? Some of it is for sure. The five US areas where pending sales are falling the most are in Florida, though the declines are easing in some of the metros following a destructive hurricane season. Notice, climate disaster is cited. We're staying on that path, right? Look at this. In Fort Lauderdale, was Fort Lauderdale near any of the last hurricanes? Pending sales dropped 15%. It's a big drop. Wait till you understand that you're not just looking at a surface level 15%. The national average is up 4.7. So the nation's going up in its sell-off, buyers engaging the market at this time, and all of these markets are a net difference of 20%, 18, 15. Just watch. Hey, it's me interrupting myself. Ready to make a move? Just one call, no hassle, put 23 years of experience and nearly 4,000 satisfied home sales to work for you. Look at this. Fort Lauderdale pending dropped 15% during the four weeks ending November 10. This is recent data. The biggest declines among US metro areas in Redfin analyzed. Next came Miami, negative 14. West Palm Beach, negative 14. Jacksonville, negative 9.5. Tampa, negative 7.2. Here's the thing. It's not a negative 7.2. It's a difference of the rest of the nation up 4.7. If the country's up nearly 5 and you're down 8, that's a spread of 13%. If you're down 15% in sales and the country's up 4.7, you're down a spread of 20%. It's not a panic sign. But when you look through the data and you see a lot of stories where everything in one area is negative, okay, you have to scratch your head and say, what's going on right now? Why is the Sunbelt making the headlines? Why is it just in Florida? Because we don't even see Texas in here, Louisiana or Colorado or any of the other Sunbelt states that are struggling to keep their sales on par. And one of the things I have to tell you, the backstory of all of this is when you're not tracing and you're negative against last year and last year was an incredibly anemic year. It was like, remember we were making headlines that the end of 23 was a 28, 30 year low and how much turnover. Couple that with all over Florida and in all of these metro markets, you are seeing a situation where there is an absolute increase in supply coming to the market this year. So whatever reasons, and we're also seeing that coupled with hardship type sales. This is also true across central Florida. So central Florida, you're starting to see the amount of short sale activity starting to increase. It is still very low. It is not a large percentage of all the inventory, but I'll give you an example. The entire last year in the multiple listing service, we saw 125 short sales close. So that means people in a short sale situation, if you're not aware of what that means, that doesn't mean the sale is short and goes a lot faster than another one. It means that in that situation, the bar we're selling the house has a position where they do not have enough money to close and they would have to bring money to the closing table, a degree of which they do not have. And here's the deal right now, there are more pending and active homes on the market. There's about triple the amount that were actually closed all of last year. Okay. We closed more homes in short sale capacity in the last six months than we closed all last year. And again, listen, it is not a, Oh my God, foreclosures on the way. It is not that it is not that, but we are seeing signs of this. This is a pullback in buyers. This is a fact of people that have bought homes in the last couple of years where you have a pretty stable price. If they didn't put a lot of money down when they bought in this environment across Florida with a stable price, Florida, when you have these kinds of numbers is not going to have a rapidly appreciating price. Okay. Which is why I tell all of my buyers, if you want to stop renting and buy, go do it, but do not have a short-term plan because you are going to be in a stable price environment for a couple more years. Stable price environment means if you sell your house a year later, you might not have enough equity to sell and yet, and have a profit, but digressing, take a look at this. Okay. Notice who is mentioned on this list because you know what we got to point out natural climate issues created this problem in Florida. What's funny is none of these markets, except for Tampa had anywhere near of a front row seat for this situation. So Fort Lauderdale is on the East Coast. Jacksonville, what didn't even knock over a lawn chair in any of these storms. And the reality is like, think about this. Miami is negative 14%. What in the world is going on in Miami and Miami is the bellwether of Florida housing markets. Miami was the golden child of the entire U S over the past couple of years, meaning everywhere else in America, you would have a softening appreciation level. The price themselves stopped growing at this rapid pace. Miami was flying and it never slowed down. Even as the fed chairman in 2022 started raising interest rates, the, uh, the price acceleration of Miami was the last to go. And you know what else is interesting? Miami just had two months in a row of negative dollar volume closing to last year. Okay. Dollar volume for the entire metro area of Miami metro area. Miami includes like three counties. It's like Broward, Miami Dade, it's multiple counties along the Southeast side of the state. They have been the golden child just produced negative total sales dollar volume at all the sales up. It's like the GDP of their real estate economy. When it goes negative, it's a sign of big time, decelerative growth. You're having less transactions. You're having transactions at This is not a call to freak out. This is not a note to the buyers and say, you're going to go find properties that have price. It's not that I will tell you the chips in a lot of these markets right now are on the buyer's side. Let's just see if we can find some breadcrumbs real quick on exactly what might be happening with price. I'm going to walk you through two major factors that give us a clear indication. Is there a price stability happening in Florida? This is important because nothing else can be stabilized other than price. If you're going to buy a house, you can't negotiate down what's your insurance cost. You can't negotiate down what's your HOA cost. At the end of the day, if you as a buyer, which we have a problem with this, if you as a buyer fall back away because it is not an attractive proposition to purchase, price is the only thing to give legs. Now look at price across the market through two lenses. I'm going to show you all the markets based on how high the asking prices are right now against last year. Huge factor shows you are the sellers bringing homes to market in this month? Are they cutting them drastically against what they were asking a year ago? And how are the price cut percentages? Are we seeing rapid cuts in these major markets? Let's walk through them really quick. Look at this Jacksonville, for instance, let me show you a chart. Monthly breakdown. You just see, look at the yearly view of this. This is the zero line. Everything above this is a year where they asked more than prior year. You can see in 2021, they're asking a lot more than prior year, but look what just happened. This also happened back in 2018 in Jacksonville. If I flip to a monthly view, this is a way messier chart. Look at this zero. This happened, by the way, just this summer here in Jacksonville, right here in summer, it was posting. Okay. I'm bringing my home to the market in March. It's over the asking price of what would have been a year ago, but look where it is now. It's slammed down. It's about 6% negative. It is a rare, rare indicator. You just saw an eight-year chart. It's rarely an indicator that goes negative below zero. All these markets, the entire state is blue. The deeper the blue, which are the higher dense metro areas, the more the price are going down in terms of what sellers are asking. It just means you have a more cognizant owner. They're looking around. They know they have to put the price down. Look at Tampa. Tampa St. Pete is down six, nine against last year. Miami is down 12.2%. Incredible. This is what you're seeing in more affluent markets. In affluent markets, you're seeing big shift in percentages. If I were to take and pull up some of the counties, I watch Orlando closely for this channel, by the way. Subscribe if you want more data and knowledge on exactly what's going on in real estate all across the Orlando Metro, particularly central Florida. This is it. But look at this. Orlando is showing a five. Volusia is negative two. So here you see all of the most populous areas are seeing changes. Now let's look at the price cut percentages. Look at Jacksonville. One in three homes in Jacksonville has got a price cut. Nearly 4,000 of 11,000 listings probably entered the market negative to last year and have since reduced the price. It's a downward trend. This means buyers are seeing a sign. This means that sellers are seeing the pendings softening. They're seeing that issue with affordability. This will not relate in sold data immediately. So many of you, your next question, Jared, what's the median sell price right now? What's the closing numbers right now? It's not going to happen overnight. It takes time. These are very much slow indicators. But what this tells me now is as a buyer through the coldest seasonally lowest part where I can possibly get the best price of all time in the market, any given year seasonally down. This tells me that in all of these markets, chips are in the buyer side a little bit. Look at this Orlando, 28%. So nearly 30% of all homes in Orlando on a price cut trying to sell. By the way, Jared, what is a big number in the price cut? Over 30, like over 27, over 26, 27% more than one in four homes is an elevated price cut percentage. Tampa is at 27.7%. Daytona Volusia is up here at 27.5%. Look at Miami. Miami is at 20.9%. There's a correlation between how much you cut at the beginning. So you notice they dropped their entry price negative 12. They're not necessarily cutting as predominantly once they're already on the market. So this is a sign that there's not aggressive price cutting. Will that last? Will they stay at 20%? And 20% most likely is one of the highest numbers this market has seen in a very long time because it's been one of the hottest markets in the country. So you can see Lakeland, by the way, Winter Haven, almost 30%. So you see accelerated price cuts across the state. And by the way, let me point out one more thing that I would be remiss because most of you are watching me from Orlando. Look at this. This, my friends, is the orange line. This is the pending sales data. You'll remember that little Redfin article that said, hey, everybody's pendings are falling off a cliff and Orlando wasn't on the list. Like, yes, but if that list were just slightly longer, Orlando would be next one down because at that time, Orlando was off around four to 5%. You'll remember the lowest of the five was Tampa at negative seven. Orlando was about negative four, seven, four, six. If that article would have been written later, Orlando slipped to last week to around negative 13%. They're actually making a comeback. If they'd have written that article within a week of time different, Orlando would have been in the frying pan side of that list, but it's bounced back a little bit. But this, my friends, look at this. These are the prior years. This is 2021, one of the hottest years on record. These are both 2022 and the blue line is 2023. The current line this year is showing that even here in Orlando, this is all the markets, all the markets across central Florida. It's becoming a fascinating event because what you're seeing happen right now is a lot of homes are hitting the market and there's a ton of quits. There's a ton of listings. This is the only thing I think that has kept inventory kind of stabilized because inventory is elevated. It's high versus history. It passed pre-pandemic levels. You know, we're at points in the Orlando market that haven't elevated inventory levels through different markets here that we haven't seen in seven years, eight years. Now there's factors to consider when looking at those kinds of things. My point is this, there's just factors where I personally believe a lot of the active inventory that you see, you need to almost look at them. Like half of them, the seller doesn't have to sell and it's probably not priced correctly. Okay. And so as a buyer, buyers are now, and this is what you really need to know. I'm going to talk to everybody here because you shouldn't wait to buy. I'm trying to buy houses myself. You shouldn't wait to sell. If you need to sell, sell your house. Your backdrop is always to go and rent, which is never a pretty picture. But I would say if you're a buyer in this market, you need to pay attention to the half of the inventory that's for sale. Okay. You really have to. The FOMO notion, depending on where you're looking, there's some places in Florida right now, they're still hot. There's still very competitive pieces of the market, upper scale price, lower scale price didn't matter. But most of the marketplace, you do not have time against you. When you buy, you don't have a marketplace rapidly appreciating to a degree where you have to stress out. It doesn't mean you need to wait, but it means you need to get a grasp of what true price is in the market. And it matters because you then be able to throw out half the stuff where sellers are dreaming. Sellers are sitting. They're never going to sell. Okay. And they're okay with that. They're like, if you don't pay my price, I will sit here forever or eventually fire my realtor. And there's a lot of inventory doing that. So the only reason we haven't seen inventory spout worse is because we're still in a pattern where most of the people on the market, many of them are not need to sell sellers. They're not highly motivated. There isn't a factor in their life that is forcing the issue to the degree that they will take what the market will give them today. You need to be aware of that because you do not need to buy that house. Unless you see some serious intrinsic value, that's going to redeem the price you pay over time. Let me know what you think in the comments. If you're in the central Florida area and you're looking for a great church, I'd love for you to join me at the grove Bible chapel. Just visit, join me at the grove.com for full details. By the way, when you're buying or selling a home, the process itself can feel overwhelming. That's why you need a great real estate expert to turn it around for you. That's why you need to make one call. That's all and put my 23 years of experience in nearly 4,000 homes sold to work for you.