Southeast Florida Residential Real Estate Market Update

July 15, 2018: Fort Lauderdale, Miami, and West Palm Beach metros’ residential real estate markets are all above their long-term pricing trends – see the Graphs in the Data and Graphs Section of the Local Market Report.  A subset of house pricing data employed in the estimation of the BH&J Buy vs Rent Index indicates that Fort Lauderdale is 14.33% above its long-term trend while West Palm Beach and Miami are 15.57% and 16.28% above their long-term trends, respectively.  The percentage change in prices are calculated from repeat sales indices for all transactions in the three metro areas.

Housing prices, however, are not threating their 2007 levels.  In 2007, Fort Lauderdale was (63.36%) above its long-term trend, while West Palm Beach and Miami came in at (58.29%) and (65.43%), respectively.

Additionally, the BH&J Buy vs Rent Index currently indicates that Southeast Florida markets are slightly overheated as well but not dangerously so as they were in 2007.  Currently, Southeast Florida’s BH&J score is .29, while in 2007 it was .98.  BH&J scores approaching 1(one) indicate, on average, individuals would be better off renting and reinvesting in a portfolio of stocks and bonds in terms of wealth creation as opposed to owning and building wealth by way of equity build-up.  Scores approaching 0 (zero) indicate a toss-up between renting and reinvesting versus owning, while scores approaching -1 (minus 1) indicate ownership is strongly preferred to renting and reinvesting.

Thus, while Southeast Florida markets are above their long-term pricing trends, they are not at the dangerous levels experienced in 2007 which preceded the crash of local residential markets.

Residential real estate cycles are relatively new, making future predictions of these phenomena rather difficult.  However, it seems reasonable to conclude that, if property prices start to slow in the near term, then Southeast Florida property markets should be in for a “bumpy landing” as opposed to the market crash of 2008 – 2012.  On the other hand, if double digit percentage property price increases continue much longer, then local markets could once again experience a significant residential market crash.

In the last year, all three metro areas have experienced annualized property price increases of 10.03% (Fort Lauderdale), 8.26% (Miami), and 8.04% (West Palm Beach).