“If we go by the general rule of thumb that five to six months of supply is a balanced market, single-family homes ended 2024 still just barely in a seller’s market at 4.7 months of supply, while condos and townhouses are now firmly in buyer’s market territory, at 8.2 months’ supply,” O’Connor said.

At the end of the year at the county level, one-year growth in single-family inventory levels was fairly uniform across the state, with most counties falling in the 25 to 35% range. One-year growth in active listings of condos and townhouses was strongly positive across the state as of the end of 2024, but some areas have seen more of an increase than others.

“In 2024, several challenges weakened demand for housing in Florida, including the fact that mortgage rates remained elevated along with property insurance rates,” O’Connor said.

Florida’s housing market was disrupted by several hurricanes during the year, from Hurricane Debby to the almost back-to-back devastation of Hurricanes Helene and Milton.

Other challenges that impacted the state’s residential real estate market last year were:

• Domestic in-migration still above the long-term trend, but is slowing down
• Statewide job growth slowed, but remained quite strong
• International buyer demand remained tepid
• Issues impacting the condo market, specifically reserve requirements and insurability

Looking back at the year, December was a good month for existing single-family home sales, and that strong performance put the statewide total at nearly 253,000 statewide single-family closed sales for the year, 1.9% below 2023’s total of nearly 258,000 sales, but also the fewest annual sales since 2014. According to O’Connor, there was little variation across the state in 2024, as most counties only saw small year-over-year declines.

Annual closed sales in the condo and townhouse category came in at more than 94,000 for 2024, a 10.5% decline compared to the prior year.

“Multiple factors were responsible for the underperformance of this category throughout the year, including concerns about insurance coverage and reserve requirement compliance giving some prospective buyers cold feet,” he said. “The result was the lowest number of condo and townhouse sales we’ve seen for any year in Florida since 2010. 

“Declines were most prominent in coastal counties along both the Atlantic and the Gulf. The lone bright spot was in the I-4 Corridor in the exurban areas between Tampa and Orlando, and further north into The Villages and Ocala. These areas actually saw condo and townhouse sales grow in 2024 compared to 2023.”

Looking at new listings, over 360,000 single-family homes came onto the market in 2024, a 9.5% increase compared to 2023. However, the chief economist noted that 2023 was characterized by abnormally low levels of new listings relative to recent years. The number of single-family new listings in 2024 was more comparable to new listings from 2018 to 2022.

O’Connor added, “As was the case with closed sales, county-level changes in the number of new listings were fairly uniform across the state in 2024, with the key difference being that new listings were on the rise while closed sales were mostly on the decline.”

Year-over-year growth in new listings of condos and townhouses slowed in the second half of 2024, especially when compared to the first half of the year, he said, noting that because of the surge of new listings that occurred in the early months of 2024, the annual count of new condo and townhouse listings came in more than 11% higher than 2023’s count.

“That increase is not much larger than the 9.5% increase we saw for single-family homes, though, and it suggests that the narrative of panicked condo owners across the state scrambling to sell in the face of the new state-mandated reserve requirements has been a bit overblown,” O’Connor said. “We do think the requirements are having an impact on the market, but this impact is being felt more so on the buyer side than on the seller side.”

With new listings growing and sales declining, inventory levels for both the single-family category and the condo and townhouse category ended the year slightly above the typical levels reported during the pre-pandemic period of 2014 to 2019. 

“Inventory is still largely moving along an upward trajectory so we should continue to watch it as we move into the spring buying season here in Florida,” he said.

The monthly median price for closed sales of single-family homes did not change much over the past eight months, reflecting the balance in the market for this property type; it was $420,000 at the end of 2024, up 2.4% from the previous year. The median price for condos and townhouses, which was $320,000 at the end of 2024 (down 0.8% from 2023), was lower than a year ago in each of the last six months – which tracks with what months’ supply says about this property type being in buyer’s market territory.

Still, throughout the year, the median price for this category remained above 2022 levels.

According to O’Connor, “It will take significantly more inventory to threaten the large gains in price appreciation that occurred in between 2020 and 2022. Overall, the 2024 Florida housing market saw mostly modest declines in sales and little change in the way of home prices. Even though there were some fluctuations in mortgage rates, they remained in the high range relative to recent years. The most significant changes occurring in 2024 were the widening performance gap between the single-family market and the condo and townhouse market and the overall rise in inventory levels.”

Going into 2025, interest rates are still going to dictate much of how the market performs, but the challenges from 2024 are still factors facing Florida’s housing sector over the coming months, he said.