Today's big news: Driven out by high costs, Americans are still relocating at a record pace!

Hi everybody, Joe Hillner with Your Home Sold Guaranteed Realty, where we guarantee you a cash offer on your home within 24 hours! 

Ok, so every week, I share market data to keep you informed with the local real estate market.  
Here is this week’s Boca Market Watch.

First, Single Family Homes:

61 new listings, pretty good, and ranging in price from $435K to $24.5M.  Nice!
27 homes back on the market, while 19 homes listed took a price decrease, and 6 sellers raised their asking price.  And  another light week with 43 different properties under contract, and 25 going pending.  20 homes were unsuccessful in selling and were taken off the market or the listing expired outright.  And another light week for sales with 43 homes closed in the past week,  ranging from $450K to $8.2M!

Next up, Condos and Townhomes:

63 new listings, so so, and ranging from $100 Grand to $5.75 Million.  
19 units came back on the market, 13 properties with a price decrease, and 8 sellers with an increase.  And another good week with 42 different properties under contract, and 42 going pending,  And like the last couple of weeks, only 12 condos or townhomes were unsuccessful in selling and were taken off the market or the listing expired. 79 closed sales this week, that's a decent week, and ranging in price from $90 K to $1.8M.

Here's what's making news right now.

A record 32.3% of online home shoppers nationwide sought to move to a new metropolitan area during the first quarter of 2022, as housing prices and mortgage rates continue to skyrocket.

According to data released Wednesday from Redfin, a record 32.3 percent of users sought to move to a new metropolitan area during the first quarter of 2022, an increase from the first quarter of 2021, when 31.5 percent were considering a relocation.

While a prevailing narrative of the pandemic housing market has been white-collar workers relocating to dream locales after being freed from the shackles of office work, As Inman reported in March, Redfin’s latest data suggests a new wave of migration is cresting out of sheer necessity, as housing markets become increasingly expensive amid dramatic increases in home prices and mortgage rates.

Redfin data shows an increase in the outflow of expensive coastal cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Seattle, with many homebuyers looking to relocate to low-cost areas like Phoenix and Austin, Texas. In doing so, however, wandering homebuyers have driven prices in sunbelt cities in Texas and Florida higher and higher, stretching the designation “affordable” to its limits.

The city with the biggest outflow in the first quarter of 2022 was San Francisco, which saw 52,964 people leave the city, compared to just 40,736 during the first quarter of 2021. The top relocation destination for departing San Franciscans was nearby Sacramento, where the median home cost is dramatically lower than the Bay Area, at just $435,600 compared to $1,471,200 in San Francisco.

In our area, we have a net inflow of 1300 people a day, yes a day, into the state of Florida.  That's 466,000 new permanent residents every year, and a large percentage of them want to live in South Florida.  We expect to add another 5 million new residents by the year 2030, and at least in our area, there's nowhere for them to live.

As you know, our for sale inventory is critically low, hovering around a 3 week supply.  And the rental inventory situation is even worse.  So while home prices spiked up 29% last year, rent prices went up 32%.  And so far this year, it hasn't gotten any better.

In fact, the recent jump in interest rates seems to have only fueled even more desperation from buyers, as they continue to make offers 10-20% over asking price, which is insane, and knowing that the property will not appraise anywhere close to the contract price.

In Boca Raton, the median list price for single family homes just hit $1.4 M, up from $1.1M at the end of 2021.  That's an annualized increase of 108% if it were to continue!  Unbelievable!  With all of the snowbirds heading North in the next couple of weeks, we can expect that to cool down somewhat, and let's hope so.  Clearly, that is unsustainable, but it certainly brings affordability into question.

When faced with the prospect of paying super high rent, and throwing $40 - $50K a year down the drain, many first time buyers are re-committed to buying now.  And unfortunately for them, they are up against a flood tide of cash laden investors from all over the world looking to park money here in real estate.

I still get people asking me every day, "When will it end?  Prices have to come down".  And they're right, at some point the rate of appreciation will slow down.  But with the extreme imbalance in supply and demand, it doesn't look like that will be anytime soon. This is the only market we've got, so we'll just have to make the best of it.