Multimillion-Dollar Home Buyers Were Busy Last Month in a Few Key Cities

The highest echelons of the U.S. housing market appeared to buck a slowdown in sales activity in August, according to data released Thursday by brokerage Douglas Elliman.

That was the case at least across major cities in New York, Florida and California. One of the more extreme examples was in the area around Naples, on Florida’s Gulf Coast, where overall new signed contracts sank more than 15% compared to a year ago, while deals for homes asking $5 million or more rose 120%.

On the other side of the Florida panhandle, Miami-Dade County recorded an overall decline in new signed contracts for single-family homes, which slipped more than 9%. Still, luxury deals surged, with houses asking at least $5 million rising from just six deals last August to 23 this year, according to the Douglas Elliman data.

Jonathan Miller, president of appraisal firm Miller Samuel and author of the reports, said the overall slowdown in deals reflects sharply rising interest rates and a lack of inventory for sale in. “New listings declined annually for the 12th consecutive month, keeping the current market pace brisk,” he said in the report.

In Palm Beach County—the state’s epicenter of luxury housing—overall new signed contracts slipped 7%, even as luxury home sales rose. Deals for condos and single-family homes asking at least $5 million rose from 11 to 13.

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Up north in New York City, Manhattan dealmaking declined across almost all price points, with the exception being co-ops priced between $4 million and $20 million—which saw sales rise from eight a year ago to 13 last month.

Tight inventory caused home sales in the Hamptons to plummet, though there was one more $20 million-plus house deal than a year ago.

And on the West Coast, the latest data could assuage worries that a new mansion tax placed on $5 million-plus homes in April would stifle Los Angeles’s luxury market.

Los Angeles County saw overall deals plummet in August, with only one exception: single-family homes asking $5 million or more. Deals for such houses ticked up 5%.