Florida Housing Market Update 2022

So, pretty much everyone knows how crazy the housing market has been, especially over the past year or so. A lot of people are inquiring about the market here in Florida. In this video, I'm going to give you a quick Florida housing market update for 2022.

Alright. So, the Florida housing market update for 2022. There are actually a lot of people that are relocating here or inquiring about relocating here or are in the process of making plans to move here or to even invest in property here. It's a great opportunity here in Florida for investment properties that everybody loves to come to visit. So, why not purchase a little spot to make some money out of it, let it pay for itself or even have your own little vacation spot whenever you do visit Florida if you don't already live here. A lot of people are just curious about the market and wondering if they should hold off or buy right now. Right now, it is still a seller's market, so inventory is still running a little low. And that's obviously driving the prices to become a little higher. So, it's great for the sellers, not so great for buyers, but we are seeing the numbers continue to rise. We don't know what's going to happen in the future, obviously. I mean, we do know at some point that it'll calm down just a little bit, we just don't know when. Unfortunately, we don't have that crystal ball that we all wish we had.

So, in the current market, it's very competitive for buyers when you're doing your offers. The price and terms, it's just matters in that entire situation especially if you're in a competitive, I'm sorry, like a multiple offer situation. You just want to think about how you can be more competitive in the market without really shooting yourself in the foot later and end up putting yourself in position that you won't be able to handle later. So, a lot of things that would help with you making a stronger offer in this current market would be escalation clauses to where you're out bidding other buyers without actually knowing what they are offering. There's appraisal gap clauses where you're offering to pay x amount of dollars above the appraised value, whatever that appraisal value may be. And, there's also the terms that you want to put on your offer to make it more favorable for the sellers. They might want to quit closing. So, if you could do the closing go for it. They might want a shorter inspection period. You can handle that. Go for it in a shorter inspection period. But yeah, there's lots of ways for buyers to be competitive. So just make sure you connect with a realtor whenever you are ready to purchase in the market and make sure that they're able to guide you the right way. If you need a realtor here in the Destin - Fort Walton Beach area, reach out to us here at the Whittemore Group. We can definitely help you out with that. So yes, we all know that the prices are increasing for homes all around the United States, including in Florida. But to break it down a little more specific to our market area, which covers Fort Walton Beach, Destin, Miramar Beach, Navarre, Gulf Breeze, Niceville and Crestview. Yes, we have seen a good change since January 2021. At that point in January 2021, the median sale price was $307,400. And now in January 2022, the median sales price for a single family home was $355,000. So, it's about a 15 and a half percent increase, and this is based on information that I was able to pull from our MLS account. And the average days on market in January 2021 was 41. And in January 2022, the average days on market was 23. So, that's almost half the amount of time that these properties are sitting on the market. Again, inventory has been a little low. So, once a great piece of property hits the market, the claws come out for the buyers and they're fighting, digging it out to be able to win the deal on this fabulous property. And when I say fabulous, I don't necessarily mean like a big nice glamorous home. There's a lot of fixer uppers that are selling pretty quickly too. Because a lot of investors see the potential for these fixer uppers that they can flip and use it for long term, or just put it on the market at the Airbnb. So, a lot of investors are jumping on that opportunity as well to make some great income here in Florida.

Now let's just say, okay, what if I don't want to fight for a home that was just newly listed, and you want to consider a new construction. Well, still a great option. But however, there's still some delays going on with the new construction homes as well, especially with the shortage on labor and supplies. That's going to cause the delay. There's permitting that takes some time. So, before the average completion time for a newly built home was 6 to 10 months, and now we're looking at maybe around 10 to 15 months, if not more. So, you're also just having to consider that the time that you need a property to be finished being built if you're living in it. Of course, you want to time that out right. If you have to be out of your current home in a certain time frame, you want to make sure you're able to purchase new construction home that will be completed by the time that you need it to be. But just, again, be prepared for some unfortunate delays. Again, we don't have a crystal ball, so we can't really just foresee exactly what's going to happen. That's for inventory, sales prices, interest rates. We really just don't know. But, as of right now, we're seeing it to slightly increase. We do know that over the next couple of months, the interest rates are going to slightly increase as well. So, if you are thinking about purchasing, you may want to just go ahead and do it now and you would probably benefit from it a little bit later and then again you really just don't know what's going to happen. So, if you want to roll the dice, that's a great time to do it.

Well, that's all I have for the Florida housing market update for 2022. If you have any questions or any more clarification, feel free to call/text us at 850.320.7757 or email us at Admin@WhittemoreGroupRE.com