Will low interest rates/inventory rekindle Boca Raton’s housing market?
Palm Beach County on Monday will start a return to normal life, after Florida Governor Ron DeSantis allowed the county to split from Broward and Dade over the pandemic lockdown.
And as people come out of their homes, will they continue to buy into a local real estate market that was off to a solid 2020 start?
If they do, several experts believe that pent-up demand, coupled with low interest rates and a shrinking inventory should help sellers.
Brad O’Connor, Florida Realtors’ Chief Economist, said in a recent interview with WUSF News that conditions are different now during the Coronavirus epidemic than they were in the 2008 to 2012 housing collapse.
“When we went into the great recession builders … all across the United States had massively overbuilt homes,” O’Connor says. “So let’s say the demand for housing falls, houses will still be scarce.
“So, the prices won’t fall as much as they did last time when there were so many houses to choose from.
When it comes to inventory, Boca Raton’s count in both single family and townhouse/condo categories continues to dwindle.
The most recent month-over-month market update from the Realtors of Broward, Palm Beach and St. Lucie’s counties showed inventory for Boca Raton’s single family homes was down 31.2 percent in March, compared to the same month in 2019. For townhomes/condos, it was off 18.9 percent.
New listings all across the city in the March report were also diminished – single family down 25.4 percent, 23 percent for townhome/condos.
Before the shutdown, the year was off to a promising start, as buyers were quite active. March single family home closed sales were up 10.9 percent, the average sales price increased 37.9 percent and the overall dollar volume shot up 52.3 percent when compared to March of 2019.
And despite a nearly two-month pause in life as we know it, those sales prices should remain steady, according to a Zillow report released earlier this week.
Skylar Olsen, a senior principal economist for Zillow, said that home prices should drop only 2 to 3 percent until the end of 2020.
“We’re pretty confident we’re actually hitting that bottom right now that we’re experiencing,” Olsen said in an interview with Housing Wire. “We can’t confirm that quite yet because wholesales are reported at a lag.
“But, when we look at our pending sales numbers, it seems to align right, so pending in terms of active listings switching to in contract.”
For more information on single family, townhouse/condo housing and commercial properties in Palm Beach and Broward counties, contact Petruzzelli Real Estate at their 2325 N. Ocean Blvd. (A1A) office in Boca Raton or call 561.362.8413.
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