Florida Housing Market Faces ‘Huge Influx’ of Sellers

The number of homes for sale in Florida is growing as owners are pushed by rising housing costs to sell off their properties and a flood of new construction reaches the market, according to local realtors and real estate experts.

Newsweek contacted Florida Realtors, Miami Realtors, and Broward, Palm Beaches & St. Lucie Realtors for comment by email on Friday morning, outside of standard working hours.

Why It Matters

Real-estate broker Alexandra DuPont told CBC Canada this week that Broward County, where she is based in the Sunshine State, is seeing “a huge influx with sellers.” Buyers, on the other hand, “are quite rare,” she said, as prices remain high despite dwindling demand.

Florida’s housing market blossomed during the pandemic years, but these former boomtowns have seen the highest number of homes sitting unsold on the market in recent months, as markets are rebalancing. The growth in inventory across the state, which is the result of so many building projects being approved in the past few years, is contributing to keeping price growth down—and in some metros areas, experts expect prices to fall through 2025.

What To Know

In December, according to Miami Realtors data, the number of active listings for single-family homes in Broward County rose by 33.2 percent year-over-year, climbing from 3,543 in December 2023 to 4,719. The total number of homes for sale in the same month was 10,669, reflecting a 7.4 percent increase from November 2024, Butler Title reported.

Buyers remain reluctant to buy even now that they have more options, DuPont observed. While single-family home sales in the county rose 8.4 percent year-over-year in December, from 876 to 950, total sales declined by 8 percent, from 1,901 to 1,886, Miami Realtors reported.

In the same month, according to Redfin data, 2,033 homes were sold in Broward County, down from 2,062 last year. Home prices, on the other hand, were up 7.1 percent year-over-year a surge that is likely putting off buyers.

“Broward County, or Fort Lauderdale specifically, is one of the hottest places to move in the country right now,” 2025 Broward-Miami board of realtors president Larry Singh said in a statement accompanying the December report.

“Because of the lack of supply in Miami-Dade County, the overflow is pouring into Broward County. That is pushing up the sale price because there is so much demand right now for South Florida.”

The Big Picture

The trends observed in Broward County can be seen in other Florida counties where prices are still climbing even as inventory is growing and sales are shrinking.

In Palm Beach County, for example, inventory was up 23.2 percent in December compared to a year earlier, according to Miami Realtors data, with the number of new listings up 3.7 percent.

While Miami Realtors reported that the number of closed sales for single-family homes in the county was up 6.5 percent year-over-year, Redfin data for all home types showed that a total of 1,772 homes were sold in December, down from 1,917 the previous year. The fact that prices were 8 percent higher than a year before might have had something to do with this decline.

Statewide data show a similar situation across Florida. In December, there were 196,965 homes for sale in the Sunshine State, up 22.7 percent compared to a year earlier, according to Redfin latest data. That is nearly double the national level, which increased by 12.7 percent year-over-year in December, with a total of 1,542,277 homes for sale.

While prices are still rising in Florida, they have been pretty flat in the past few months of growing inventory. Last month, the median sale price of a home in Florida was up 1.8 percent compared to a year earlier, while the U.S. average was up 6.2 percent year-over-year. The median sale price of a home in the Sunshine State, at $411,100, remained lower than the national average of $427,430.

Why Is Inventory Growing in Florida?

Part of the reason why inventory is growing across Florida is because the state, together with Texas, has built more than any other in the past few years. The number of newly listed homes in the state in December, according to Redfin, was up 9 percent compared to a year earlier.

But the growth in the number of homes for sale, especially in South Florida, has also to do with other factors. As DuPont mentioned, growing costs—including rising homeowners’ insurance premiums and homeowners’ association fees—might be pushing sellers to put their property on the market.

“Everything’s gone up,” DuPont told CBC Canada. “The insurance, the monthly condo dues, pretty much everything that has to do with condominiums,” she said.

Homeowners association, or HOA, fees rose by 56 percent between 2019 and 2023 in Broward County, according to Florida Realty Marketplace. In the same five years, homeowners’ insurance premiums surged nearly 60 percent, Reuters reported.

New legislation requiring regular inspections on aging condos and forcing condo associations to set aside reserve funds for repairs and maintenance has also triggered an explosion of sales in South Florida as owners fear they won’t be able to shoulder the necessary costs.

What’s Next

Several experts think that Florida will see home prices soften this year as a result of the growing inventory. Redfin economist Chen Zhao previously told Newsweek that she expects Florida and Texas to be the best markets for U.S. homebuyers this year.

“Buyers in the weaker Sun Belt markets such as Florida and Texas may be able to negotiate the best deal and have the most selection,” she said. “In other markets, inventory will be lower and there will be less room to negotiate.”

In a recent report, Norada Real Estate Investment said it expected home prices parts of Florida to drop by as much as 15 percent in Gainesville, Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville (what’s known as the Space Coast), and Lakeland-Winter this year as a result of growing inventory and past overvaluation.