2022 Real Estate Trends for Florida

We learned some interesting Real Estate Statistics from the Florida Realtors Mid-Winter Business Meetings held in Orlando earlier this year.

Florida's top buying and selling groups include the millenials, who are the largest groups, in their mid-30's.  Don't count out the Gen Xers and in Florida, the retirees are always a part of the equation.

Top factors that need to be considered this year are the inflation numbers and how it will affect every day Floridians and their resiliency.  We've enjoyed a long run of historically low interest rates, but with the inflation fears the Federal Exchange is expected to raise the rates, some say as many as 6 times in 2022, some expecting it to begin in March.

A qualifier this year, and for the past two years, is the Pandemic and how it affects our economy for 2022.  Due to vaccine mandates, businesses have had no choice but to close, while most of their employees have contracted the Omicron variant of COVID and required to isolate themselves leaving businesses struggling to keep open.

While the Pandemic has run rampant throughout the world, from the first variant and morphing through at least 2 other variants, it is no secret that businesses have ran out of day to day supplies that they've needed to stay open.  With many products being made in China and other foreign countries, these problems have only compounded these past two years.  These issues are being seen in our grocery stores and anytime we order or need new products.  The supply chain has been disrupted so much, many employees not being able to work, our goods are sitting on container ships a few miles from their destination.  In the meantime we haven't seen the shelves this bare in a few decades.

As far as Real Estate, supplies that are in stock are seeing a dramatic rise in prices which, in the long run, means the price of new housing is going higher and higher and will soon be out of reach for some of those who haven't been able to buy quite yet.  Tighter regulations compound the problems, making it harder and harder to build.

The housing market is just beginning to feel the heat.  In 2021 Florida's housing market had more than 528,000 sales of all types of existing homes, making it UP by 19% year over year.  Other statistics from 2021 include a 34% increase in sales of condominiums from 2020.  Single family homes saw an increase, although not quite so high, but at 13% increase over 2020 it was still a number that, given the Pandemic, was a lot higher than anticipated.

Florida's housing inventory is very low in every category from Single Family Homes, Condominiums and even Homesites. 2021 started with a 1.6 month's supply of existing Single Family homes but by the end of the year that inventory is down to just 1 month's supply.  In some areas of the state it's down to just one-half a month's supply.  By the end of 2021Condominiums and townhomes' inventories are about at the same level of Single family homes, at 1.3 month's supply.

More updates on Florida's Real Estate Trends to follow.  Stay tuned to our future Blog Posts.