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Monday, May 24, 2021

NAR: U.S. Existing-Home Sales Drop 2.7% in April

 By Kerry Smith

It’s the third monthly decline in a row. NAR cites the lack of inventory for the slowdown, as well as the increase in median price to $341,600, up 19.1% year-to-year.

WASHINGTON – Existing-home sales waned in April, marking three straight months of declines, according to the National Association of Realtors® (NAR). All but one of the four major U.S. regions tracked by NAR saw month-over-month drops in home sales, but each also registered double-digit year-over-year gains for April, in part due to the rise of the pandemic one year ago.

Total existing-home sales – completed transactions that include single-family homes, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops – slipped 2.7% from March to a seasonally-adjusted annual rate of 5.85 million in April. Sales overall jumped year-over-year, up 33.9% from a year ago (4.37 million in April 2020).

“Home sales were down again in April from the prior month, as housing supply continues to fall short of demand,” says Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist. “We’ll see more inventory come to the market later this year as further COVID-19 vaccinations are administered and potential home sellers become more comfortable listing and showing their homes. The falling number of homeowners in mortgage forbearance will also bring about more inventory.

“Despite the decline, housing demand is still strong compared to one year ago, evidenced by home sales from this January to April, which are up 20% compared to 2020,” Yun adds. “The additional supply projected for the market should cool down the torrid pace of price appreciation later in the year.”

The median existing-home price for all housing types in April was $341,600, up 19.1% from April 2020 ($286,800) – a record high and a continuation of 110 straight months of year-over-year gains.

Total housing inventory at the end of April amounted to 1.16 million units, up 10.5% from March’s inventory but down 20.5% from one year ago (1.46 million). Unsold inventory sits at a 2.4-month supply at the current sales pace, slightly up from March’s 2.1-month supply and down from the 4.0-month supply recorded in April 2020.

The inventory numbers continue to represent near-record lows since NAR first began tracking the single-family home supply in 1982.

The time between listing a property and having it go under contract also continued to tighten in April. Properties typically remained on the market for 17 days last month, down from 18 days in March and 27 days in April 2020. Of all homes on the market in April, 88% went under contract in less than a month.

First-time buyers bought almost 1 in 3 homes (31%) in April, down from 32% in March and 36% in April 2020.

“First-time buyers, in particular, are having trouble securing that first home for a multitude of reasons, including not enough affordable properties, competition with cash buyers and properties leaving the market at such a rapid pace,” Yun says.

Individual investors or second-home buyers, who account for many cash sales, purchased 17% of homes in April, up from 15% in March and 10% in April 2020. All-cash sales accounted for 25% of transactions in April, up from both 23% in March and 15% in April 2020.

Distressed sales – foreclosures and short sales – represented less than 1% of sales in April, equal to March’s percentage but down from 3% in April 2020.

According to Freddie Mac, the average commitment rate for a 30-year, conventional, fixed-rate mortgage was 3.06% in April, down slightly from 3.08% in March. Yun expects the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage to remain below 3.5% in 2021.

Single-family and condo/co-op sales: Single-family home sales dropped to a seasonally-adjusted annual rate of 5.13 million in April, down 3.2% from 5.30 million in March, and up 28.9% from one year ago. The median existing single-family home price was $347,400 in April, up 20.3% from April 2020.

April existing condominium and co-op sales were at a seasonally-adjusted annual rate of 720,000 units, up 1.4% from March and up 84.6% from one year ago. The median existing condo price was $300,400 in April, a 12.6% increase from a year ago.

“The demand for homeownership in America is as strong as it’s ever been, and NAR continues working with policymakers across the country to find solutions to the issues we face in our industry,” says NAR President Charlie Oppler. “Ultimately, though, buyers still recognize that securing a home is one of the best ways to build long-term wealth, and Realtors continue their work to make that dream a reality for families everywhere.”

© 2021 Florida Realtors®

Thursday, May 20, 2021

Mega Investor Spending Billions on Single-Family Rentals

 By Bendix Anderson

Faced with a dearth of affordable existing homes, single-family investors say they’ll spend big money creating new rental-home developments in Fla. and other states.

NEW YORK – The single-family housing market is red hot with prices rising at record-shattering rates. Homebuyers, who were briefly sidelined during the pandemic, have been hungry to take new space and take advantage of low mortgage rates to buy homes. Nationally, the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller index of property values climbed 12% in February from a year earlier, the biggest jump since 2006.

So, it might seem like a challenging time for investors to swoop in and build single-family rental (SFR) portfolios. But that’s exactly what Transcendent Electra, a new joint venture, is doing with a war chest enabling it to spend billions to buy and build houses. Transcendent Electra, launched in February, is a partnership between Transcendent Investment Management, a single-family rental (SFR) platform, and Electra America, a longtime owner and operator of apartment properties.

“We’re able to leverage Electra’s multifamily expertise and presence in those markets to reach prospective residents and capitalize on economies of scale says Jordan Kavana, CEO of Transcendent Electra. “There are a lot more efficiencies the multifamily has realized that single-family rental houses have not.”

One appeal is that demand for SFR rentals has been rising right alongside demand for home ownership. In fact, two SFR REITs, American Homes 4 Rent, which owns 54,000 houses, and Invitation Homes Inc., recently announced double-digit percentage increases on rents.

With the economy not back to pre-pandemic levels, some SFR tenants have continued to struggle, but those renters typically are not the ones inhabiting houses in institutional-quality portfolios like the one Transcendent is attempting to build.

“A lot of people move from multifamily to single-family rental houses,” says Kavana.

Transcendent Electra announced in May that they were adding 1,889 new homes totaling $1.5 billion to its portfolio of rental properties. Of these, the partnership is already in contract to buy new single-family homes and townhomes totaling $496 million. Transcendent Electra has another $1 billion worth of single-family rental properties in its pipeline. The properties are scattered throughout the following markets: Birmingham and Huntsville, Ala.; Florida; Savannah and Atlanta, Ga.; North Carolina and South Carolina; Nashville, Tenn.; and Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Austin, Texas.

These investments are the first half of Transcendent Electra’s plan to acquire or develop rental houses totaling $3 billion over the next three years. Eventually, the partnership plans to own and manage 15,000 to 20,000 units of rental housing.

“We have strategic relationships … builders we have worked with for four or five years,” Kavana says. “Our longstanding relationships with some of the nation’s top homebuilders have allowed us to locate product in markets where demand exceeds supply.”

Transcendent Electra intends to grow its portfolio of rental houses even though home prices are growing very quickly. The median price of an existing home was $329,000 in March 2021, up from $280,000 the year before, according to the National Association of Realtors.

These prices are much higher than the deeply discounted prices investors used to pay to buy houses seized in foreclosures during the Global Financial Crisis. Transcendent stopped focusing buying existing houses years ago as prices rose.

“To buy an old home – you would almost have to twist my arm … unless you were buying a such a deep discount,” says Kavana.

Instead, Transcendent Electra plans to buy these homes and townhouses directly from homebuilders in new developments.

“They allow us to buy the first five or so houses at a price that meets our return requirements,” says Kavana.

These homebuilders benefit because they can depend on immediately earning income at their planned single-family developments from these sales to Transcendent, instead of waiting for the usual pace of home sales to play out. That allows them to plan more aggressively and move their capital more quickly to new developments. “This is purely accretive from the homebuilder’s perspective,” says Kavana.

Transcendent Electra will focus of buying homes in the $175,000 to $300,000 price range – and will charge rents averaging between $1,500 and $2,800 per month. That works out to an average cap rate of about 10%.

Other companies focused on single-family rental properties have also started to bid to buy these new properties. “Our competition is the top REITs,” says Kavana. “They are starting to understand the value of being in the new product space.”

Family offices and high net worth individuals continue to be the biggest investors in Transcendent’s platform. A few institutional investors have also put money into Transcendent Electra’s platform. About 85% of the investors in Transcendent Electra are based in the U.S., and the rest are international investors. Transcendent has been able to provide these investors returns in the 15% to 20% range.

© 2021 National Real Estate Investor

Tuesday, May 18, 2021

Locked Out: Low pay, soaring rents, pro-landlord laws set up Florida renters for eviction once COVID hit

 How COVID exposed Florida's eviction crisis

By Caroline Glenn - Orlando Sentinel - May 13, 2021



Jocelyn Bennett paints her daughters’ toenails, not bothered by the strong scent of nail polish filling the room at the HomeTown Studios in Orlando. The girls show off their pink toes, toddling around the small pay-by-the-week hotel room, one of many the Bennetts have called home since the pandemic began and they got evicted.

It’s just one room with a bathroom with not enough space to even open the front door all the way. But it’s got a stove and a fridge, and it’s better than living in their car or outside. There are two beds, one for mom and dad, and the other is shared by their five kids who are all under 6 years old.

These days, a bottle of Dollar Tree nail polish is one of the only luxuries Jocelyn Bennett can give them.

“That’s the worst feeling to have is I can’t provide for my kids. That’s probably the worst feeling you can have as a parent, not knowing what to do and calling 2-1-1 and them not knowing what to do,” Jocelyn, 26, said, referring to United Way’s emergency hotline.

In March 2020, Jocelyn lost her nursing assistant job at a senior living facility. Dexter, her husband, had been between jobs, finding work through a temp agency. They were already on food stamps. In April, they couldn’t cover the rent. Their landlord told them they needed to be out in 30 days. And the family became homeless in a matter of weeks.

“It was a downward spiral after that,” Dexter, 36, said. “Since COVID started, we’ve been living in hotels.”

For renters in Florida, this is what eviction can look like. It doesn’t always play out in a courtroom because many renters can’t get a court hearing, which results in their landlord automatically winning the case. Some people, like the Bennetts, leave without responding to an eviction notice because they don’t think they can fight it.

Housing experts argue Florida has some of the harshest eviction laws in the country, written so landlords can evict people as quickly as possible and without going to court. During the COVID-19 outbreak, those landlord-friendly laws, coupled with the state’s severe shortage of affordable homes, rising rents and years of stagnant wages, left thousands of suddenly jobless renters exposed. And even after the government ordered a halt to eviction proceedings and federal dollars were made available to help people pay rent, many tenants were not spared.

Black Floridians, who were already more likely to lose their job to the pandemic and die from COVID-19, were even more likely to be locked out of their homes. In a mostly Black part of downtown Orlando, for example, renters were about six times as likely to face eviction than in another mostly white part of downtown, according to new data compiled for the Orlando Sentinel by the Shimberg Center for Housing Studies at the University of Florida.

Shimberg estimates more than 57,000 evictions were filed in Florida just from March 2020 to mid-December, pushing families like the Bennetts into homelessness at a time the government was ordering people to quarantine.

Central Florida renters, many of them the same low-wage workers who power the region’s tourism economy, were particularly vulnerable. Even before the pandemic and mass layoffs upended their lives, they lived paycheck to paycheck in a town where rent keeps climbing and wages don’t budge.

So when the bottom fell out of the tourism and service industries, there was no safety net for them, and Florida’s Republican-controlled Legislature did nothing to help.

“They are the ones who face wrongful eviction, they are the ones who can’t get living wages, they are the ones who are struggling to find reliable public transportation. It’s all on them,” said state Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith, a Democrat from Orlando. “And when we ignore these crises with affordable housing, eviction, wages, public transit — we’re doing it on the backs of working people.

“They are the ones who pay.”

Renters struggled before COVID

Florida ranks among the states with the worst affordable rental housing shortages in the nation, data from the National Low Income Housing Coalition show. New housing has been added to try to keep up with the state’s population growth, but developers have largely ignored building places to live for low-income residents.

Over the past 20 years in Florida, nearly 200,000 rental units priced under $1,000 per month disappeared as landlords increased rents. At the same time, about 1 million units priced above $1,000 were added, the Shimberg Center found.

And as rent increased, pay lagged. Since 2005, Florida’s minimum wage has gone up by just $2.50. It won’t hit $15 per hour — $31,200 annually for full-time workers — until 2026, a voter-mandated move that’s expected to lift millions of Floridians out of poverty and help close pay gaps for women and people of color.

Because wages haven’t grown, Diane Yentel, president of the NLIHC, said many neighborhoods are still out of reach for renters. NLIHC found an Orlando resident would have to make $23 an hour, or a $47,840 yearly salary, to afford a two-bedroom rental that costs $1,248 per month.


“There was a way for lower-income workers in our country decades ago to be able to afford housing in a way that’s simply not possible today,” Yentel said.

Some of the most common occupations for renters in Florida — housekeepers, cashiers, janitors, restaurant cooks and servers — not only pay some of the lowest wages, but they were also at the businesses most likely to shut down and conduct mass layoffs to curtail the spread of the coronavirus.

Those workers were some of the 1.4 million Floridians displaced by mass layoffs last spring who struggled to collect unemployment benefits and the same renters who later faced eviction.

“They were barely hanging on before COVID,” Yentel said. “When you pay so much of your already limited income towards your rent, you’re always one financial shock away from missing rent and being evicted, in the worst cases becoming homeless. Pre-COVID, that financial shock might be a natural disaster, or it might be an everyday disaster, you know, a broken-down car, a sick child and missing a day of work.

“Last March, the COVID-19 pandemic and its financial fallout was the financial shock.”

That was the case for Jocelyn and Dexter Bennett.

Before the virus, their family didn’t make much but had enough each month to scrape together rent. They had the money from Jocelyn’s nursing job and Dexter had been finding construction and landscaping work through a temp agency. Now Jocelyn stays at the hotel with the kids — they can’t afford child care — and Dexter works at the Second Harvest Food Bank, where he makes $400 a week.

It’s just enough to afford their tiny hotel room, which costs $400 a week. Dexter also washes cars and tutors kids, and food stamps help. Sometimes they get meals and toiletries and diapers from the One Heart for Women and Children food pantry.

But Dexter is thankful that at least his family is together. Last year, after the eviction, Jocelyn lived at a homeless shelter for a few weeks and the kids stayed with family. Dexter bunked with his dad in Orlando until he could save enough to move the family down from Tallahassee. Most of their belongings are still in storage.

“We’re just by the grace of God making it,” Dexter said. “We’re trying to figure it out and by God’s grace we will.”

‘I’m just a person in a hard situation’

But the pandemic didn’t only displace low-income Floridians.

Alexiss Green, 45, had worked for 20 years as a corporate accountant, earning over $50,000 a year. In 2019 she wanted to reinvent herself, so she quit her job, moved her two teenagers into a rental home in Clermont and used her savings to buy a fixer-upper, the first investment in her new house-flipping business.

Three months after buying the property, COVID hit and she couldn’t safely send out crews to work on it. She fell behind on the loan payments and is now working with the lender to relinquish the property. She lost entirely a second investment she made in a joint property.

Without any income, paying the rent — $1,850 for a four-bedroom house — became impossible. In September, she found an eviction notice taped to the front door. She hadn’t paid rent since April 2020.

“I’m not a deadbeat person who doesn’t pay her bills, I’m just a person in a hard situation,” Green said. She said she understands her landlord has bills, too, “but I don’t have control over what’s going on in the world right now.”

Green wasn’t living in poverty before the pandemic, but rent ate a big chunk of her income. She’s no different from many renters across the state.

In Florida, 1.4 million of the state’s 2.7 million renter households, across all income levels, spend at least 30% of their yearly income on rent. Of those, 938,957 pay even more than that, according to the Shimberg Center. That erodes the ability to save money or buy a house, or even have a few months’ worth of savings to cover an unexpected expense.

Home prices have also dramatically increased, making lifelong renters out of people who in another time could have afforded to buy a place. In 2000, the median price of a home in the Orlando market was $165,649, when adjusted for inflation, according to the Orlando Regional Realtors Association.

Today it’s $285,000.

Homeowners are better protected

In Florida, homeowners as a whole are on more stable financial footing, after the foreclosure crisis in 2008 forced banks and lenders to toughen the requirements to qualify for a home loan. The median income for homeowners is $70,486. In contrast, renters make a median income of $42,527.

Homeownership buys stability and the chance to build wealth. Most monthly mortgage payments don’t go up like rent, and even during the pandemic home values improved.

Owning a home also means stronger protections against losing it. For example, a federal foreclosure moratorium shields any person with a federally backed mortgage loan, which covers about 70% of homeowners nationwide. From March 2020 to mid-December, 7,497 foreclosure suits were filed in Florida during the pandemic, compared with 57,381 evictions.

The eviction moratoriums imposed by the state and federal governments because of COVID prevented an immediate deluge of cases, but thousands of renters who should have been protected slipped through.

From April through July 2020, when Gov. Ron DeSantis’ original eviction moratorium was in effect, 8,277 evictions were filed by landlords, compared to the 40,000 cases filed in a typical four-month time frame in the state. Then, when DeSantis changed the moratorium’s wording to suspend just the “final action at the conclusion of an eviction proceeding,” landlords started filing in droves.

There were 7,370 evictions filed in August. In September, there were 8,922. In October, another 10,627.

Some tenants mistakenly thought they were automatically protected and didn’t have to answer a summons from the court. If they didn’t respond in five days, that was grounds for an “automatic default” for the landlord.

Some homeowners laid off during the pandemic also got behind on mortgage payments. The Mortgage Bankers Association estimates 2.3 million homeowners are in forbearance plans.

But because the foreclosure process is much lengthier than evictions, homeowners weren’t at risk of being homeless in weeks. By law, lenders can’t file the first legal notice of foreclosure against a delinquent homeowner until four months after the first missed payment.

“We acknowledge that even in our system, that you’re not likely to lose your house in a foreclosure in a matter of weeks,” said Chief Judge Donald Myers, who oversees the 9th Circuit Court in Orange and Osceola counties. “It’s likely going to take upwards of a year to make that happen.”

Most lenders also have programs to prevent foreclosure, such as a short sale where the homeowner sells the house for less than what’s due on the mortgage and the money goes straight to the lender, or transferring the title to the lender in exchange for the mortgage debt being erased, or going into forbearance.

None of the options guarantees cancellation of the debt and can be blemishes on a credit report, but they buy time to look for a job, catch up on payments and keep people in housing.

“A homeowner just has protections that the renter doesn’t have,” said Marissa Vetter, a program director at the St. Johns Housing Partnership, a nonprofit that helps distressed homeowners. “We’re going to see the crisis with homeowners, it’s just they have a little more time.”

No guaranteed court hearing

The unequal protections for renters and homeowners exist in part because of changes by lawmakers that have all but eliminated the opportunity for tenants to explain to a judge why they’ve fallen behind on rent.

The way the law is now, tenants have five days to deposit the money the landlord says they owe after getting a summons, otherwise, they waive all defenses and “the landlord is entitled to an immediate default judgment for removal of the tenant.”

Even access to a mediator who can resolve the case out of court hinges on tenants depositing the back rent.

“This particular statute is probably why Florida is, in my opinion, dead last in tenant rights out of all 50 states,” said Jamos “Jay” Mobley, senior housing attorney at The Legal Aid Society in Orange County. “You could have a great defense, but you can’t present it unless you can pay upfront. Landlords know this and file questionable suits all the time knowing the tenant can’t come up with the amount they allege is due. And they win.”

Myers said that part of the law “defines the landscape” for evictions in the state.

“The statute is quite clear,” Myers said. “When the Legislature put a requirement for a rent payment into the registry of the court within five days from service, they were saying, ‘We’re serious.’”

According to statistics provided by the courts, 41% of eviction cases end in automatic default in Florida. Myers said he was surprised the number isn’t higher.

The Florida Apartment Association, which represents mostly corporate landlords, supports the deposit requirement because it limits the time landlords go without rent, which they depend on to pay their mortgages and other expenses.

“While we completely understand some of the difficult financial situations that residents might find themselves in, there is another side to this equation, where you have a housing provider on the other side of it,” said Amanda Gill, a spokeswoman for the association. “What are you saying to them when they can’t pay their mortgage? I mean, they’re not able to avoid foreclosure simply because they have a resident who is in pain.”

If they moved quickly and submitted the correct paperwork, moratoriums gave tenants a way to at least delay eviction. But landlords have been finding ways to undermine the moratorium, and groups that include the apartment association have sued the federal government to get it overturned.

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., recently ruled the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention overstepped its authority when it issued the nationwide moratorium, but the Department of Justice has appealed. If the moratorium is struck down, Mobley said courts would have to revert back to strictly enforcing the rent deposit requirement.

The moratorium bought Green, the mother of two from Clermont, a hearing, and a judge halted her case for six months. But a few weeks ago, her landlord asked the court for another hearing because he said Green hadn’t followed the rules set by the CDC requiring tenants to make “best efforts to make timely partial payments” — despite the landlord having received $4,000 in rental assistance.

‘Not asking for a handout’

On the day of her Zoom hearing, Green has her long braids pulled back from her face and is wearing one of her favorite pair of earrings with the Superwoman logo. Every few seconds she clicks the button to join the meeting, anxious about being late. When it starts, a judge and her landlord’s face pop up on the screen.

She doesn’t have an attorney to represent her — 90% of tenants facing eviction don’t — and Florida’s courts aren’t funded to provide public defenders for civil cases. She does her best to answer the judge’s questions, pausing a few times to check her files and punch numbers into a calculator. She tells the judge about the rental assistance, which she received from United Way, and says she’s applied for more aid from Lake County.

She applied for an emergency loan through the Small Business Administration but was denied and has applied to office jobs but hasn’t had any luck. She managed to collect some unemployment and received stimulus checks but that money was used to pay other bills and buy food.

“I’ve been working since 16, and I’ve never had to use government assistance,” Green says. “I am not asking for a handout, but what I am asking for is to be able to remain under this moratorium for the safety and protection of myself and my children.”

Her landlord, who’s in his 70s, says he’s on a fixed income and is using Social Security payments to pay his mortgage. He doesn’t have a lawyer, either.

A week later, the judge’s ruling arrives in the mail. Green prays over the envelope before ripping it open. It’s bad news. The judge ruled she hadn’t made any “timely partial payments,” even $5 or $10 a month. She has 10 days to move out.

Green shuts herself in her bathroom so her kids won’t hear her crying. “I don’t understand,” she whispers. “I’m just totally numb right now. I don’t know what to do right now. I don’t know where to go.”

The day before Green has to be out of her house, she’s finishing packing and loading a moving truck to take the furniture to a storage unit.

Christmas ornaments, the kids’ volleyball trophies, a bowl of shells they collected on a family vacation are all shoved into black, plastic garbage bags. The kids are in their rooms taking apart bed frames.

As she starts out of the driveway the next morning, a deputy pulls up. She tells him the keys and garage door opener are on the kitchen counter. A friend in Davenport 45 minutes away offered Green her guest room, and the kids are staying with their dad in Clermont, another family separated by eviction.

But Green is trying to have faith.

“At the end of the day, no matter how unfortunate this entire thing is, there is something better on the horizon that I just can’t see yet,” Green said. “But this is a circumstance I’m going to have to fight tooth and nail to come back from.”

A few days later, Green gets an email from Lake County saying she’s been approved for $9,000 in rent relief. According to county staff, it will go to the landlord who evicted her.

cglenn@orlandosentinel.com

Have you fallen behind on rent or faced eviction during the pandemic? We want to hear your story. Click here.

How to get help

If you’ve fallen behind on rent, call United Way’s emergency helpline at 2-1-1 to learn about rental assistance programs.

If you are currently facing eviction and live in Central Florida, contact Community Legal Services of Mid-Florida at 1-800-405-1417 to find out if you’re eligible for free legal guidance. Residents in Orange County can also contact the local Legal Aid Society at 407-841-8310. Seminole County residents can call 407-834-1660.


Florida's median home price is up 17% from the same time last year

 The statewide median sales price for single-family existing homes in 1Q 2021 was $317,500.

by: Marla Martin, Communications Manager, FloridaRealtors

In the first quarter of 2021, Florida’s housing market reported more closed sales, higher median prices and more new pending sales compared to a year ago, according to the latest housing data released by Florida Realtors. Closed sales of single-family homes statewide totaled 78,353 in 1Q 2021, up 19.4% from the 1Q 2020 level.

“A year ago, in early March, the first coronavirus cases were confirmed in Florida,” said 2021 Florida Realtors President Cheryl Lambert, broker-owner with Only Way Realty Citrus in Inverness. “Looking back at that first quarter, considering everything that we have all endured with the pandemic, and where we are today in the first quarter of 2021, it’s almost impossible to believe. While we continue to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic and follow guidelines to stay safe and protect our communities, Florida’s housing market remains strong. But, with demand for housing greater than the available supply, it continues to drive home prices higher – and tightens the existing home-market even more.”

In Florida’s condo-townhouse market, statewide closed sales totaled 37,505 during 1Q 2021, up 37% compared to 1Q 2020, according to data from Florida Realtors Research department in partnership with local Realtor boards/associations. Closed sales typically occur 30 to 90 days after sales contracts are written.

The statewide median sales price for single-family existing homes in 1Q 2021 was $317,500, up 17.6% from the same time a year ago. The statewide median price for condo-townhouse properties during the quarter was $235,422, up 14.8% over the year-ago figure. The median is the midpoint; half the homes sold for more, half for less.

Florida Realtors Chief Economist Dr. Brad O’Connor took at look at new listings data for 1Q 2021.

“New listings of homes for resale were marginally lower in January and February than they were a year ago before the pandemic, but these were offset by a decent increase in March,” he said. “For the quarter overall, there were only 2.5% fewer new listings of single-family homes than in the first quarter of 2020, and over in the condo and townhouse category, we saw a 5% increase.

“Most people I speak with are surprised to learn that, apart from the first couple months of the pandemic, the pace of new listings has been fairly close to what it was before the pandemic. That’s an understandable reaction, given how low our inventory levels are.”

O’Connor explained, “One way to think about it is to imagine an empty shelf at a supermarket that has been picked clean. It could be the store stopped getting shipments of the product that was on the shelf, but it could also be that demand for this product increased so significantly that – even though shipments have still been coming in – they’re getting snapped up as soon as they’re stocked. That’s what’s happening in the housing market right now. But to keep inventory from continuing to fall, we need to see a significant increase in the normal rate of new listings, and that’s not happening, either.”

Inventory was at a 1.2-months’ supply in the first quarter for single-family homes and at a 2.8-months’ supply for condo-townhouse properties, according to Florida Realtors.

In 1Q 2021, the median time to a contract (the midpoint of the number of days it took for a property to receive a sales contract during that time) was 19 days for single-family homes and 37 days for condo-townhouse properties.

According to Freddie Mac, the interest rate for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 2.88% for 1Q 2021, down from the 3.51% average recorded during the same quarter a year earlier.

Wednesday, May 12, 2021

Florida's Housing Market: Sales, Median Prices Up in 1Q 2021

 By Marla Martin

Florida Realtors’ data: Single-family home sales up 19.4% year-over-year, median sales price up 17.6% to $317.5K; condo sales up 37%, median price up 14.8% to $235.4K.

ORLANDO, Fla. – In the first quarter of 2021, Florida’s housing market reported more closed sales, higher median prices and more new pending sales compared to a year ago, according to the latest housing data released by Florida Realtors®. Closed sales of single-family homes statewide totaled 78,353 in 1Q 2021, up 19.4% from the 1Q 2020 level.

A year ago, in early March, the first coronavirus cases were confirmed in Florida,” said 2021 Florida Realtors President Cheryl Lambert, broker-owner with Only Way Realty Citrus in Inverness. “Looking back at that first quarter, considering everything that we have all endured with the pandemic, and where we are today in the first quarter of 2021, it’s almost impossible to believe. While we continue to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic and follow guidelines to stay safe and protect our communities, Florida’s housing market remains strong.

But, with demand for housing greater than the available supply, it continues to drive home prices higher – and tightens the existing home-market even more.”

In Florida’s condo-townhouse market, statewide closed sales totaled 37,505 during 1Q 2021, up 37% compared to 1Q 2020, according to data from Florida Realtors Research department in partnership with local Realtor boards/associations. Closed sales typically occur 30 to 90 days after sales contracts are written.

The statewide median sales price for single-family existing homes in 1Q 2021 was $317,500, up 17.6% from the same time a year ago. The statewide median price for condo-townhouse properties during the quarter was $235,422, up 14.8% over the year-ago figure. The median is the midpoint; half the homes sold for more, half for less.

Florida Realtors Chief Economist Dr. Brad O’Connor took a look at new listings data for 1Q 2021.

“New listings of homes for resale were marginally lower in January and February than they were a year ago before the pandemic, but these were offset by a decent increase in March,” he said. “For the quarter overall, there were only 2.5% fewer new listings of single-family homes than in the first quarter of 2020, and over in the condo and townhouse category, we saw a 5% increase.

“Most people I speak with are surprised to learn that, apart from the first couple months of the pandemic, the pace of new listings has been fairly close to what it was before the pandemic. That’s an understandable reaction, given how low our inventory levels are.”

O’Connor explained, “One way to think about it is to imagine an empty shelf at a supermarket that has been picked clean. It could be the store stopped getting shipments of the product that was on the shelf, but it could also be that demand for this product increased so significantly that – even though shipments have still been coming in – they’re getting snapped up as soon as they’re stocked. That’s what’s happening in the housing market right now. But to keep inventory from continuing to fall, we need to see a significant increase in the normal rate of new listings, and that’s not happening, either.”

Inventory was at a 1.2-months’ supply in the first quarter for single-family homes and at a 2.8-months’ supply for condo-townhouse properties, according to Florida Realtors.

In 1Q 2021, the median time to a contract (the midpoint of the number of days it took for a property to receive a sales contract during that time) was 19 days for single-family homes and 37 days for condo-townhouse properties.

According to Freddie Mac, the interest rate for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 2.88% for 1Q 2021, down from the 3.51% average recorded during the same quarter a year earlier.

To see the full statewide housing activity reports, go to Florida Realtors Tools and Research section. Realtors also have access to local market data (password protected) through Florida Realtors’ SunStats resource.

© 2021 Florida Realtors®


Thursday, May 6, 2021

Court Strikes Down Eviction Ban

 


U.S. District Court Judge Dabney L. Friedrich of the District of Columbia struck down a nationwide eviction moratorium Wednesday, calling it unlawful. Friedrich's ruling applies nationwide.

The eviction ban was put in place last year by the Trump administration using public health powers granted to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during health emergencies.


The ban was most recently extended by President Biden through the end of June.


In her 20-page ruling, Friedrich said, “It is the role of the political branches, and not the courts, to assess the merits of policy measures designed to combat the spread of disease, even during a global pandemic. The question for the Court is a narrow one: Does the Public Health Service Act grant the CDC the legal authority to impose a nationwide eviction moratorium? It does not.”


The Georgia and Alabama Association of REALTORS®, two housing providers, and their property management companies, filed the suit in defense of mom-and-pop property owners around the country struggling to pay bills without rental income for more than a year.


NAR—which helped secure nearly $50 billion in rental assistance provided by Congress since December to help tenants pay their bills and provide relief to housing providers who have lost income—supported the lawsuit, saying the ban was no longer needed.


“NAR has always maintained that the best solution for all parties was rental assistance to cover the rent, taxes and utility bills for tenants struggling during the pandemic,” says NAR President Charlie Oppler. “This decision prevents two crises—one for tenants, and one for mom-and-pop housing providers who do not have a reprieve from their bills. With rental assistance secured, the economy growing, and unemployment rates falling, there is no need to continue a blanket, nationwide eviction ban. With this safety net firmly in place, the market needs a return to normalcy and stability.”


Oppler adds that “our attention now should turn to the swift and efficient implementation of rental assistance.”


Monday, May 3, 2021

The Future of Florida’s Growth – Net Migration

 Florida Realtors economist: Economists predict there will be an additional 1.4 million Floridians by 2025 – a good omen for real estate. However, not all of the state’s counties will see equal growth over the coming years.

ORLANDO, Fla. – What will Florida’s population be in 2025? Estimates from both Florida’s Office of Economic & Demographic Research (EDR) and the University of Florida’s Bureau of Economic and Business Research (BEBR) anticipate over 23 million people will reside in the Sunshine State.

That’s a 7% increase from their 2020 population estimate of 21.6 million (created before the release of the official Census count) and good news for real estate – increased population generates demand for housing.

There’s insight to draw from each of the different, but similarly trending, estimates. EDR provides breakdowns into the components of population: net natural increase (births-deaths) and net migration, while BEBR presents a projection for each Florida county.

Before we look ahead, let’s revisit the past. Since 2010, Florida added nearly 2.9 million people. Of that growth, approximately 10% of the gain happened through natural increase. The remaining 90% was attributed to net migration; more residents come to Florida than leave, and the share of growth due to net migration increased over the years.

Now we go back, back to the future. EDR provides a bleak picture for natural increase. It anticipates the number of deaths will be higher than births.

Still, net migration will more than cover the losses from natural increase through 2039, where the estimates stop.

Erica Plemmons is an economist and Florida Realtors Director of Housing Statistics

© 2021 Florida Realtors®