Home and condo values have begun to decrease in many parts of South Florida as inventory rises and homebuyers gain more options, according to an analysis of data from Zillow.
Just don’t call it a buyer’s market quite yet.
Zillow analyzes home values in condominiums and single-family homes, and data from March indicates an overall price decline in much of Palm Beach and Broward counties but an overall increase in much of Miami-Dade County.
Native Realty residential sales director Whitney Dutton attributes the diverging difference in home values across the region — particularly in the condo market — to more new construction in the Miami-Dade area.
This could help explain why condo prices rose more in pockets of Miami-Dade County than in Palm Beach and Broward counties. In a post-Champlain Tower collapse world, prospective condo buyers have never been more wary as new state laws shed light on where condominiums may be lacking in reserve funds and much-needed repairs.
“Buyers are absolutely gravitating toward newer construction condo sales,” Dutton said. “The older condominiums that have a high risk for assessment are already under assessment, they have structural integrity issues, potential for large assessments coming up, those condos people are actually staying away from. The condominiums that are closing and actually selling are the newer construction condos, which by and large are going to be way more expensive.”
In the Miami-Dade County 33187 ZIP code, for example, condos and co-ops rose in value by more than 5%. This is a stark contrast to the 33446 ZIP code in Palm Beach County where condo and co-op values dropped by more than 18%.
Palm Beach County Property Appraiser Dorothy Jacks recently gave an account of the county’s market to county commissioners during a public meeting, saying that prospective buyers are looking at condos “with a different eye.”
“They are asking more about reserves, they’re asking about insurance, they’re asking about factors that could impact their future costs in that condominium and maybe requesting price reductions based on that information,” Jacks said.
Jacks also stated that the number of home sales in Palm Beach County declined from 2023 to 2024 by about 3%. When fewer homes are selling, prices typically begin to drop.
There’s another factor at play that’s sending housing values in Miami-Dade County higher while the rest of the region begins to slump, Dutton says: different migration patterns.
“Miami-Dade shines so much brighter on an international level,” Dutton said. “Everybody around the country, they just know Miami-Dade so much more.”
And though Palm Beach County has seen an increase in job relocations in the financial sector, Miami-Dade’s focus on technology, such as the cryptocurrency and other alternative forms of investing, placed the county even more on the global map, Dutton said.
“Palm Beach sees more domestic migration, and Miami sees more international migration,” he said.
Meanwhile Broward County — especially in eastern areas — is experiencing fallout from many properties being converted to vacation rentals, especially from 2021 to 2023 when tourism was skyrocketing in South Florida, Dutton said.
“That brings the price down in this market because the Airbnb’s are not making money,” he said, referring to residences that were listed as short-term rentals. “People are selling them. They’re actually willing to take a loss on their asset. If you bought a house in 2023 or 2024 and you’re trying to sell it today in one of these eastern Broward County ZIP codes, you’re absolutely losing money.”
There is a significant outlier in Palm Beach County, though: A portion of northwestern Palm Beach County saw a rise in home values, with the 33493 ZIP code seeing growth of more than 8%. Dutton attributes this to more recent interest from developers in that area.
“There was a huge migration of new construction that went into these (areas) that never existed before,” Dutton said.
Most of Palm Beach County’s single-family home prices still dropped, though, anywhere from a little more than 0.6% to more than 5%. Nearly the exact opposite trend was true in Miami-Dade County: Single-family home prices rose anywhere from about 0.25% to nearly 6%.
Regardless of the differences among Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties, the data indicates — and real experts confirm — what has and might always be true: Prices are still high.
“The trend is prices are going up across the board. That’s what we’re seeing here, and that’s what we’ve seen for the last three years,” said Daniel Rascon, an agent at the Keyes real estate company’s Miami Beach office.
Because multimillion-dollar luxury home sales often drive the market, Rascon said prospective buyers might not realize that deals still may be found, though very few and far between.
“You can still find that home in the neighborhood that you want, I think they just have to be a little bit more creative about the property,” he said. “Maybe it might be an older home, maybe it might need a newer kitchen, maybe it might need, you know, whatever it is, I think if buyers are willing to be a little bit more creative, they can definitely get what they want.
“Because right now, all we see are these fabulous headlines of this house selling, that fancy house selling and it makes me feel like, ‘Oh my God, I’m poor, I could never move to Miami, much less vacation there.’ And I think, yes, that is one sector of the market, that’s not the entire sector of the market.”
Still, real estate experts would not necessarily call South Florida a buyers’ market just yet.
“I wouldn’t say it’s a good buyers market because things are very expensive. Taxes are expensive, insurance is expensive, interest rates are expensive, so it’s not like the buyers are getting a big win but they are getting a little bit more fair negotiations, they’re getting a little bit more of a fair transaction,” Dutton said. “They’re absolutely getting more options. They’re getting more to look at when they go out to look at property.”