Orlando Real Estate Market Update

March 2024: Everything’s Moving Up In Orlando

Spring has arrived in the Orlando real estate market, bringing a surge in sales activity! The local associations’ reports have a promising trend: pending, closed sales, median prices, and days on the market are all on the rise. Let’s paint a picture of what’s happening in the promising central Florida real estate market.

Buyers Have More Homes

In March 2024, the market saw a significant influx of listings, providing buyers with 9% more housing options compared to February. This led to a 4.4% overall month-to-month (MOM) increase in inventory, aligning with the typical seasonal trends in Orlando. However, the most striking indicator of market growth was the near 20% year-over-year (YOY) surge in new listings. It reflects a robust and expanding housing market.

Pending sales increased, too, a sign of more interest and buyers looking to live in Florida’s playground. It helped overall sales grow almost 18% month-to-month.

Near Record Prices

That interest, plus overall market appreciation, encouraged sale prices to rise to $386,500. That’s just $500 off Orlando’s all-time highest median sale price of $387,000, reported in June 2022. Orlando could soon set new record median sale prices if market conditions continue. 

That median price is also 6% higher than March 2023. 

Halfway to Balance

The city’s inventory is increasing. Year-to-year, buyers have 78% more homes for sale in Orlando. The total inventory now is 8,971 homes. Around 6,100 are single-family homes, with the remainder falling into the condo and townhome categories. 

All told, the greater Orlando area now has a 3.51-month supply of homes. A balanced market is considered six months. That figure has been down since January when inventory reached 4.78 months. It’s yet another sign of more buyers being present and searching for Orlando homes. Looking at trends, inventory usually keeps declining into the early summer months before growing again through the fall. 

Interest Rates Have Stabilized

March 2024 saw a slight increase in interest rates, but if the buyer activity is any indication, people are tired of waiting for conditions to change to buy a home. The month’s interest rate is only 0.01% higher than March 2023, hinting that these 6-7% rates are still sticking around. 

Orlando Future Activity

Early indications keep sales brisk through April in Orlando. Single-family home sales increased week-to-week halfway through the month, while median home prices were $435,000. Orlando could be poised for a new median home price this month, depending on condo and townhome activity. That was down, and with it, sales prices.

November 2023: Inventory Increases in Orlando, But Closed Sales Drop

November continued nationwide trends of fewer sales in the residential housing market. Higher mortgage rates weren’t helping, with central Florida interest rates averaging 7.3%. Did the national trends play out in the latest Orlando real estate market update?

Note the Orlando metro covers Orange, Seminole, and Osceola counties. The Cities of Orlando, Maitland, Winter Park, Ocoee, Oviedo, Casselberry, Kissimmee, and more are inside its borders. 

Orlando Real Estate Activity

The excellent news is Orlando area home buyers have more homes to choose from. Both the year-over-year (YOY) and month-to-month inventory increased in November 2023. In fact, the YOY growth of 14% represents a big jump in the market. The gains came partially thanks to a 23% positive bump in new listings. Listings have been rising steadily for eight months now.

That brought Orlando closer to a balanced market, as it now had a 4.11-month supply of homes. Six months is considered balanced. It’s a significant change from two years ago, as the available homes on the market have increased 150%. Homes were on the market for a median of 46 days.

The number of closed sales remained exactly the same as in November 2022. On a month-to-month review, the Orlando Regional Realtors Association noted that closed sales have dropped in the sixth month in a row. A decline is expected to continue, as seasonally, the market slows down around the holidays. Notably, November reported the highest number of condos and townhomes sold in the last 18 months.

However, if you’re expecting the increase in new listings to slow pricing growth, that’s not happening in high-demand central Florida. Year-over-year, median home prices grew by 4.2% to $375,000. Median prices did fall slightly from October 2023, but only by $2,000. The year-to-date average sold price was reported at $449,044. 

Big picture on Orlando home sales

Looking forward, fewer homes went under contract, and new listings were down month-to-month. The coming months are trending towards fewer closed home sales. The weekly updates in December reflected fewer closed home sales for single-family homes, townhomes, and condos.

But that’s expected as Orlando’s market is seasonal. Spring is coming. Sales activity usually increases during February, March, and April. Paired with that are anticipated slightly lower mortgage rates, which could encourage sales activity. If more buyers jump on the lower rates, it would further cause median price growth for Orlando housing.

August 2023: Orlando inventory may be back on the rise

As summer sizzles to an end in Central Florida, so typically does the home sales activity. Fall is usually slower in the Orlando real estate market. Already, the end of August showed that around 16% fewer home sales closed, but there are some other factors at play here. Here’s the latest on local real estate.

Inventory is rising–maybe?

Looking year-to-year, the Orlando metro real estate market follows the nationwide trend of fewer listings. It’s a drop of almost 10%. But, if you look at how listings are performing month-to-month, there’s more on the market in August 2023–about 7% more. 

New listings were down by about 20%, but on the month-to-month look, they’re up 6%. In another sign that inventory might be rising, each weekly update for September 2023 showed a week-over-week increase for single-family homes and condominiums.

The association president says a slowdown is typical of this time of year; sales activity usually pulls back slightly, and inventory increases. How that will play out in this year’s constrained market remains to be seen.

Sales prices are stabilizing

It cost a median of $375,000 to buy a home in Orlando in August 2023. That’s about $2,500 less than August 2022, or a 0.7% change. That carries over to the month-to-month look, where prices were down 1.3%. It’s only the second month in a row that sales prices have been down, and the figures are quite small, signaling that price growth is stabilizing for Orlando real estate.

The early figures for September mirror that trend. In the last week of the month, single-family home prices rose by 1.1%, while condo and townhome prices fell 2.7%.

Low inventory persists

The Orlando metro had 6,115 homes for sale in August 2023. Based on the buyer demand, that equated to a 2.19-month supply of inventory, which was about 7.7% more than the prior year. Listings were on the market for an average of 41 days before the contract and 75 days to sell. Both figures were up from the prior year and the prior month. In terms of days to contract, it’s about a 52% slowdown.

The local market is highly cyclical, with more interest in the winter and spring and a slowdown in the summer and the fall. This is also reflected in the month’s supply of inventory, which, over the last twelve months, was at its highest in November and January. The inventory of homes was at its lowest mark in May. So, the current inventory of homes is simply back on its upswing.

Mortgage rates

The multi-decade-high mortgage rates are impacting home sales in Orlando. The good news for August buyers was that the average mortgage rate was 6.58%, down from 6.84% in July. However, it’s about 1.3% higher than the prior year. The higher numbers align with high-interest rates across the nation.