Florida is home to the five U.S. metropolitan areas where pending home sales are falling the fastest, according to a new report from real estate platform Redfin.
The Sunshine state’s housing market has been slowing for months as residents grapple with frequent natural disasters, a surge in home insurance costs and HOA fees fueled by intensifying climate risk.
Pending sales dropped 15.2 percent year over year in Fort Lauderdale during the four weeks ending November 10. It’s the biggest decline among U.S. metropolitan areas Redfin analyzed.
Miami (-14 percent), West Palm Beach (-13.8 percent), Jacksonville (-9.5 percent) and Tampa (-7.2 percent) rounded out the top five.
Nationwide, pending sales rose 4.7 percent over the same period.
“There’s still some demand for vacation homes, but in general, the market is very slow. Buyers have been grappling with persistently high housing costs and uncertainty around the election. First-time buyers are especially skittish,” said Lindsay Garcia, a Redfin Premier real estate agent in Fort Lauderdale. “The condo market is really struggling because of high HOA fees and homeowner’s insurance costs, and on top of that, many condo owners are seeing special assessments due to new rules implemented after the Surfside condo collapse. Some condos are sitting on the market for over a year.”
In Tampa, pending home sales fell as much as 32.2 percent during the four weeks ending October 20, a time period that encompasses the impact of both hurricanes. Now they’re only down 7.2 percent year over year, indicating that the worst of the decline is over, Redfin stated.
The drop in pending sales has also eased in other Florida metros. In Orlando, for example, pending sales fell as much as 14.1 percent during the four weeks ending November 3, and are now down just 5.1 percent.
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