Home sale prices remain steady

A home is shown for sale on Northeast 43rd Street in Ocala on Feb. 11, 2025. [File photo by Bruce Ackerman/Ocala Gazette]

The Florida Realtors Association’s February 2025 market report shows that, statewide, the median single-family home sale price rose to $415,000, a 0% change from February 2024. Townhouses and condo median sales price were $315,000, a 3.1% year over year decrease from last year. The statewide active listing inventory for single-family homes was 111,827, a large increase of 31.6% from last year.

Single-family market: Slightly rising prices
Ocala/Marion County’s February median sale price reported for single-family homes was $290,000, a 0.7% increase from 2024.
There was the “usual increase in closed sales from January to February,” said Brad O’Connor, senior economist for the Florida Realtors, a statewide agents’ reporting and professional trade association. “But we didn’t see as much of a bump as we did last year. So, while single family home sales were actually up year over year in January by a little over 3.5%, they fell by about 7% year over year in February.”

More inventory also affects the market, he said.

“We are still tracking a bit above the level of new single-family home listings we are accustomed to seeing at this time of year. Over the past three years, the number of single-family homes coming onto the market each month has generally exceeded the number of homes either selling or being withdrawn from the market each month,” O’Connor said.

“So that means that the number of active listings for sale as of the end of each month, what we call active inventory, has generally been on the rise, with new listings still higher than recent levels and sales trending below recent levels. We should expect that trend to continue into the spring buying season here in Florida. At the end of February, we had an inventory of close to 112,000 active single-family home listings. That’s about 32% more active listings than we had at the end of last February and about 14% more than the average February inventory level from the pre-pandemic years of 2014 through 2019,” he stated.

The association reported that the supply of single-family existing homes statewide increased to a 5.3-months’ supply.
“Months’ supply inventory is a useful indicator of market conditions,” the report stated. “The benchmark for a balanced market (favoring neither buyer nor seller) is 5.5 months of inventory. Anything higher is traditionally a buyers’ market, and anything lower is a sellers’ market.”

Statewide, the number of cash sales for single-family homes decreased by 2.2% with a total of 5,467 throughout Florida, which was just over 30% of all sales, nearly one-third of the overall market.

“Cash sales can be a useful indicator,” the report stated, “of the extent to which investors are participating in the market. Investors are far more likely to have the funds to purchase a home available up front, whereas the typical homebuyer requires a mortgage or some other form of financing.”

Ocala/Marion County saw a decrease in single-family home closings from last year, down to 576 sales, a 13.4% change.

Townhouses and condos: Sales sluggish

Ocala/Marion County townhouse and condo median sales prices came in at $185,000, a 28.2% decrease from last February. A total of 39 closed sales were reported.

“At the statewide level, this side of the market continues to be weaker than that of the single family home side of the market for multiple reasons, including, but not limited to, buyer concerns about condo reserve requirements, higher concentrations in some of the weaker markets in the state, and waning levels of interest from out of state buyers, as well as disproportionate economic impacts to buyers most sensitive to housing affordability,” O’Connor said.

“Closed sales of condos and townhouses were down 13% year over year in February, a more substantial decrease than we saw in January when we were only down by 3.7%. New pending sales of condos and townhouses, meanwhile, were down almost 15% in February, so we’re not likely to see much improvement in closed sales in the March statistics either. New listings of condos and townhouses were up by 6.7% year over year in January, but in February they were actually down by half a percent,” he added.

Existing condo-townhouse properties were at a 9.7-months’ supply in February, an increase of 56.9% from February 2024 and total active listings of 75,051. For the sector, the number of cash sales decreased by 13.6% and represented 53.1% of the market.