Today's top story:   Hurricane Ian has come and gone, but left a trail of utter destruction of lives and property.  What does that mean for the real estate market?

Hi everybody, Joe Hillner with Your Home Sold Guaranteed Realty, where we guarantee the sale of your home or I'll buy it! 

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:

This past week, 47 new listings, so so, and ranging in price from $419K to $15M!  8 homes back on the market, while 51 homes listed took a price decrease, and 4 sellers raised their asking price.  And a terrible week, only 19 different properties under contract, and 14 going pending, just abysmal! 30 homes were unsuccessful in selling and were taken off the market or the listing expired outright.  And just a bad week for sales with 41 homes sold, ranging from $415K to $8.9M!

Next up, Condos and Townhomes:

44 new listings, not good,  and ranging from $135 Grand to $2.3 Million.  10 units came back on the market, 45 properties with a price decrease, and 7 sellers with an increase.  And an even worse week with 35 different properties under contract, and only 22 going pending,  Just 13 condos or townhomes were unsuccessful in selling and were taken off the market or the listing expired. 64 closed sales this week, not great, and ranging in price from $95K to $1.3M.

Here's what's making news right now.

First of all, our thoughts and prayers go out to all of those in other parts of the state that lost loved ones or their homes.  It's just a staggering tragedy in scope and we all need to pull together to try and help in any way that we can.

The early estimates are that the storm caused $40 Billion of property losses!  As you are aware, we were already in the middle of a housing insurance crisis.  Just last month, another 3 insurance companies went out of business or just stopped writing policies in FL.  With the kind of catastrophic losses from this storm that will need to be paid out, it's obvious that more insurance companies will follow suit.

We have already seen insurance costs for residential real estate more than double in the last year alone.  We have to expect that that will get much worse in the coming months and years, if it is available at all!

First American Financial Corp. just released its latest Real House Price Index, which measures price changes of single-family properties after adjusting for the impact of changes in household income and interest rate changes. The one-two punch of rising mortgage rates and home prices has pushed “real” home prices up by more than 50 percent over just the last year!

That has basically priced many buyers out of the market, precipitating the market shift we saw happen several months ago.

Now if we add more uncertainty to the equation, due to buyer fears of more storms, and even higher cost of insurance, we can expect even fewer buyers being able to afford a home, or those that are scared off just curtailing a purchase altogether.  And if one is financing a purchase, much higher insurance costs, or the inability to get a company to underwrite a policy, could kill the deal outright.

So does that mean that we are in for another market crash?  Well, as I reported previously, the Fed Chairman already went on record saying that his method of controlling runaway inflation is to "correct" the real estate market.  It appears that that is already happening.  So this additional hit from Ian could push us over into a more serious correction, or not...

We still have a very low amount of inventory relative to demand.  Less than 2 months of supply, so well below what would be considered a balanced market. 
 Our area is listed as #17 of the most overvalued markets in the country.  That being said, the gap between the median sale price and the median house buying power is pretty small in our area.  So most of the buyers in the market can still afford something, just not their dream home.

And we still have over a thousand people a day net inflow into the state of FL.  They have to live somewhere, there's virtually nothing available to rent, and given the opportunity, they want to buy in most cases.  We'll just have to see if Ian causes anything more than a temporary disruption.

I'd like to make one last appeal to all of you out there.  Please do whatever you can to help our less fortunate neighbors who have been affected by this terrible storm.  Thank you!