Orlando Housing Market: The Big Shift Coming In 2026

We are witnessing a pivotal moment in the housing market across the country. You know, the ones that we're talking about with all the headlines talking about slowing housing prices. Some areas we're seeing rising inventory and even market pullbacks. Prices actually dropping in certain areas of the country. And in all reality, many of the parts of the U.S. that you're just starting to hear these stories about, they're finally catching up to a story that's been unfolding in the state of Florida for the past 36 months. This is the absolute worst time in history to buy a house. The biggest mortgage collapse in U.S. history just got even worse here in September 2025. In literally five years, home prices have shot up to ridiculous levels. But a new undeniable force has now entered the chat as the Federal Reserve has come out and announced that it is time to start cutting rates again, and possibly a series of cuts. And the ripples of that announcement have already begun. Borrowing costs are already starting to as we head into the slower winter season, and this could be a game changer. So my friends, as we pull back today, I'm going to do something I haven't done in a while. I'm going to give you a thorough update on the national economy compared with the state of Florida. But I'm going to use Orlando as the centerpiece for the discussion and show you exactly what you can expect coming into 2026 as we take a look at how the housing market is going to affect a home that you own now, or maybe your potential of buying one very soon. So if you're all for that, drop down below, smash the thumbs up, and let's get into the update. Let's get a context on the situation, and let's zoom out. Because for months, we've been talking about a great divergence at the national level. This is the fact that the new home market, fueled by builders who are desperate to move inventory, have been actively cutting prices, and on top of that, have been dropping big incentives, talking $30,000 to $60,000 per house to get major mortgage rate buydowns just to stay afloat. Now, at the same time, the home market has remained stubbornly resilient, right? So it's not like there's been this deluge of inventory because homeowners are financially shackled to their ultra low 2.5%, 3%, 4%, 30-year mortgages. Now, as a result, for the first time in recent history, new homes are on average less expensive than existing ones. And again, this is case by case. It can be more prevalent in certain areas more than others, but that's the statistic across the board right now. Now, here in Florida, we've seen this play out in our own way. Our market has been going through a necessary rebalancing after the extreme froth of the pandemic boom, with a steady inching down, kind of a stabilizing price for several months now. Now, for condos and townhomes in our market, the drop has even been more pronounced. With the headwinds of new laws, there have been major issues increasing HOA costs, and that ultimately trickles down to what you can sell your property for. And any honest onlooker at this point looking at the data cannot call this a crash, but there's definitely been a natural rebalancing taking place across the state of Florida. The key nemesis, obviously affordability across the country, as you've seen interest rates sustain close to 7% for a very long time. Now, you stack on that the fact that we had crazy insurance issues here in Florida, where the average premium you would find for a home when you're purchasing here, floating between $4,000 and as high as nearly $20,000 a year. Now, that is completely in the rear view mirror, and I don't have time to talk about that now, but if you are particularly moving to the more safer inland areas in the Orlando market, your insurance is much, much lower now than you would expect. I personally have not seen a policy in the past year higher than about $3,500 a month, and that property was worth well over a million dollars. And most of the policies I see now are anywhere from $1,400 to around $2,300 per year. Let's talk about the U.S. housing data. We saw July pick up over June, so there was actually an increase in sales, and the underlying theme is still the same. If you see home prices across the country stable or even softening in some areas, while you also see mortgage rates fall, there tends to be a moving in of the buyers, and this is the case here. But here's the deal. We're trending towards 4 million sales annually. That is far off of a normal pace. It indicates that our marketplace across the country is still very small. To give you an understanding of just how small that is, we're less homes in 2025 than we were in 2008 and 2009 with a much smaller population. So clearly we are a long way from the frenzied pace that we saw in terms of how many homes were selling back in just 2021. The other headline that we saw prevail throughout the summer was the record number of buyers canceling on contracts. That is, they're putting homes under contract, going into the inspection phase, and not falling through with the sale. In fact, the number was the highest on record for any July, according to Redfin's reporting. It was like 53,000 cancellations. Now obviously, why does this happen? Buyers get panicky, or they just feel like the prices are high versus the mortgage rates, or maybe they feel they just have more negotiating power. Maybe there's a sense of, you know what, if your home has little hidden issues and you don't want to work on them, I'm going to go across the street and buy someone else's house. So my friends, it appears the era of across-the-board home price increases is over. You have some areas across the country, they're still seeing some gains and many seeing losses, but there is definitely a flattening effect as it relates to what homes are going for in the marketplace across the country right now. Now on the inventory front, it's rising, especially in the South and the West. And one big reason prices have cooled is that inventory has finally started to build up. Nationally, the number of homes for sale in July was around 15 to 18% higher than a year ago. According to realtor.com, active listings have now risen year over year for 21 straight months. And as a result, homes are now sitting on the market for longer. Average time to sell is one week slower than it was last year. And of course, this will give buyers more choice at any given time. Now, regionally, this trend is very pronounced in the South and the West. These were the regions that saw the biggest building booms. And now these areas are shifting sharply in favor of buyers with rising inventory, deeper price cuts, and longer time on market, according to realtor.com's chief economist. Now, by contrast, the Northeast and the Midwest markets are still relatively tight with fewer homes for sale. And here in the South region, we simply have more new homes and listings coming online. In fact, Florida and Texas have been building more new homes than anywhere else in the country. And this just means that buyers are going to have more homes to choose from. And that's not a bad thing. More supply equals less upward pressure on prices. You found all these statistics interesting. Wait till you hear what's going on in Orlando this past summer. It's going to blow your mind. But first, we have to bring up the fact of what's going on in the mortgage market. On the back of all the job news coming out slower than expected, the Federal Reserve is in a corner. They've come out and said, you know what? We have to cut interest rates. And market suspicion is that it's an 80 to 90% chance that on the next Fed meeting, they're going to lower prices. Now, the funny thing is that everybody thinks that we got to wait till the price cut happens before we feel that in the mortgage market. And that's not correct. The Federal Reserve has often said that simple announcements they make is enough to affect and move the marketplace. And that, my friends, has already happened. Because what you have to understand is that for the large part of the past year and large part of the last 36 months, we've had interest rates in the 6.8 to around 7% range. And according to Mortgage News Daily, over the past 30 days, you started to see the mortgage rates drift from 6.6 to 6.5. This last Friday, they dropped to 6.29% for a 30-year fix. Government loans, FHA, VA, things of that nature are even lower. So Jared, are 5% interest rates around the corner? You know, my crystal ball is in the car. But I will tell you, if you ask me and press me on it, I'd say that we are in for a 6 to 18-month run of declining mortgage rates. And on the back of that, many people postulate that it's going to take around a 5.5% interest rate or lower for a 30-year for there to be enough of an enticement to lure a lot of these sellers back into the market with their ultra-low interest rates. And my friends, we will have to see what unfolds when all that takes place. Hey, it's me interrupting myself. Are you looking to buy or sell? One call does it all, and you'll put 23 years of experience and nearly 4,000 satisfied home sales to work for you. All right, team, let's bring it all back home to the data that this is the data that comes directly from our local MLS in the Orlando Metro 4-County area. And it tells a powerful story about our specific market. Now, as you can imagine, inventory in Orlando, it's up. This is the most significant number in all of our data. We have active listings at 9,642 units as of the end of last month. And this is a pretty decent jump. We are at 7,482 units in August of 2019. And obviously what this means, inventory is continually inching up. Buyers finally have options again. And we've been telling you for months that inventory is increasing and these numbers prove that it is an undeniable trend. It's not going crazy. It's not way elevated over any time in history, but it's up and buyers will benefit from it. And the real question becomes of these listings, will you get it at the right price? Will the sellers actually work with you and let go of their 3% mortgage? That's obviously been the underpinning frustration of many of you. Now, the next metric months of supply, this metric confirms our inventory story because we're nearing 4.3 months of supply and we're not in a balanced market yet. Most people say the balanced market is five to six months, but we're on our way. And we've made incredible progress from the 3.8 month of supply last year and the incredibly 2.7% month of supply in 2019. Now, for many of you that just glazed over, when I gave you that stat month of supply means if you stop listing all homes in the marketplace, how much time would it take the buyers that you have in the marketplace to absorb all the stock off the store shelves to buy all of the homes. Now you'll remember pandemic timeframes. We were very low. You would sell all the inventory in mere weeks. If you stop bringing more to the market right now, we're over a four month supply, which is high pre pandemic times. You'd sell the entire inventory in under three months, which was very common back then. Now let's talk about the money because the median home price in Orlando right now is approaching $443,000. It was $440,000 a year ago. Keep in mind month over month, one month, it bumps above last year, one month, it bumps down. If I were to pull back and show you an entire price chart for 36 months, it literally looks like a straight line and not much is really changing. Now let's talk price cuts because this is an interesting data point. You have nearly one third of all the homes in Orlando, 31.5% saw a price reduction in August in order to sell. Now this is essentially flat against a year ago, but it's a big jump from where we were in 2019 pre pandemic times. You'd see around one in four homes seeing a price reduction or sell around 23%. This tells us that sellers are having to get real with their expectations. They can't just slap a listing price on a house and think maybe it's going to work. And they're learning this the hard way. A lot of people are having to reduce multiple times in order to sell. And as we talked about this in the national narrative, it's the same in Orlando with days on market and the time it takes to sell a home kind of drifting out a little bit. Sellers are having to do what it takes if they are going to move the house that they own and sell it to someone else. Now with inventory rising, are sellers still pushing big numbers of homes in the market? Are we going to see going into the fall and winter, a big deluge of even more listings being dumped on the market? To answer that question, let's take a look at the most recent snapshot of how many new listings are hitting the market. And equally as important is how many homes are actually closing. Now closed sales are up year over year in July, just like the rest of the country, there was an improvement in sell through, which shows that people are still buying and selling homes. But new listings, sellers bringing homes to the market are down, which points to that lock-in effect that we talked about earlier. Homeowners with a low rate are choosing not to sell. And it's a dynamic that keeps a lid on new supply, even as existing inventory builds up by sitting longer on the market. And again, I keep saying that as much as we want prices to collapse, one major curb and block for that is the sellers can just pull home right back off the market. And we do see that around 12% of all listings actually just bring it back. They can do what they want. And the grand underlying question that you really want to ask me is Jared, is the housing market going to crash in Orlando? And here's the reality. The news hasn't changed. We are one of the top growing metros and still are 1500 people are still moving here. According to our mayor, Eddie Dyer, about a week or two ago. On top of that, while there is a big balance of all those folks moving here, going into rental situations and many of them buying as well, you have to understand that we are now going to a marketplace where you are going to see interest rates coming down. And I've been telling you for a long time, when you look at our median sale price, it is flat for now, 36 months. If you look at any time, there are droughts in the housing markets. They're always followed by booms. I could point to six other instances in history where this has taken place. And what follows is generally a really healthy improvement in selloff. So many people are saying, you know what a boom is around the corner. Now, whether that happens or not be realistic. Okay. Here's what I want you to understand about Florida. If you look back 50 years, we've grown by 5% per year on an annualized basis, 5%. So if we go three years, dead flat, and we're not gaining that 5% that we historically gain, that's a 15% correction on its own. Now we already know wages could be better, but they're still growing by approximately 3% per year. So people are catching up. And ultimately, if prices stay flat, even soften a little, then people that have been renting for a long time, maybe soon finding themselves at the front of the line to finally get into the game. Now I'm not selling FOMO. Okay. I'm not here to say, Oh, you got to buy right now because three years from now it'll be worse. And you should front load your purchase and move it up. If you can. I'm not saying that don't do that. I'm saying if it's right for you, if you're financially stable, if you're emotionally sound, and if you're encouraged and want to be out of a rental situation and want to buy a home, and if you can do it measured without high risk and, and you want to buy that home for the longterm, you're not thinking, I'm going to drop this house and possibly sell in a year and a half or two years. Do your thing, shoot your shot. And if that's not you, I'm actually saying don't buy the house. That's the answer to your question that you're inevitably going to ask me in the comments. Do with it what you will. Now, by the way, if you're like me and you like to stay on top of housing market, there's a bunch of charts and data and commentary that I have on the state of the Florida housing market that I did not have room for in this video. If you go down to the pen comment below or in the description, there's going to be a link there for you to get a copy of that report. When the housing market feels complicated, you need an expert by your side to make it simple and easy. Make one call. That's all. And put my 23 years of experience in nearly 4,000 homes sold to work for you. 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.