Miami’s Epic Condo Boom Turns into Glut

Real estate agents see ‘looming’ condo price correction.
Home prices overall are still rising in Miami and surrounding cities. The median price jumped 11.6% in January from a year ago, to $240,000. But according to real estate broker Redfin: unit sales plunged 11.9% from a year ago. The fourth month in a row of declines.
It wasn’t because the market was low on inventory: after an enormous and ongoing construction boom, 6,000 new listings hit the market in January, based on data on the Multiple Listing Service (MLS). This pushed inventory up to the highest level recorded in ‘at least’ two years.
This already high number of ‘new listings’ may be under-reporting the true number with a sleight of hand: the number of new condos, according to Redfin, ‘is difficult to measure and may be much higher than what is recorded in industry data, because developers tend to list only a sample of available units on the MLS.’
And most of these units ‘come in the form of high-end beachfront condos.’

This post was published at Wolf Street by Wolf Richter ‘ February 29, 2016.