Buying a home in South Florida this year is likely to be easier to navigate than last year, real estate experts say.

Realtors are offering insights on why the market may be more appealing to many buyers in 2025.

“Last year, a lot of people were afraid to do things,” said Kay Conageski, a Realtor with the Keyes Company, a real estate company operating primarily in South Florida. “They always say that in an election year, ‘Oh, we’re afraid to move, we’re afraid to make a change. We’re afraid to buy a big purchase.’ So I think we saw a lot of that last year.”

Adding to some of the uncertainty last year: Mortgage interest rates remained rather high despite some fluctuations. Rates may improve this year.

“You saw the interest rates up and down, they were hitting 8%, they were in the 7’s,” Conageski said. “People that may have been saving for a while were ready to buy last year, and then all of a sudden now they’re priced out of the market because the interest rate skyrocketed.”

But Conageski predicts a more stable real estate market in 2025, which includes interest rates.

“Everything kind of smooths out in time,” she said.

Interest rates will likely “stabilize maybe around 6%, maybe 6.5%. And coming down from a 7% or a 7.5%, that’s a big drop for a lot of people and can get them maybe back on the fence to buying property instead of falling off the fence, not being able to afford it,” she said.

Inventory, or the number of available homes, also had “flattened” a bit in 2024, Conageski said. That’s expected to change in 2025 with more properties entering the market, a trend that began toward the end of last year.

“A buyer can take their time. Maybe they’re not as rushed as they were in years past, where they can go into a property, they can see it, they may be able to think about it for a day or two and that property may still be on the market,” she said.

“Of course, you’re still going to have the ones that get listed and fly off the market, and you’re always going to have those. But I think it’s going to be a little bit less stressful, let’s call it, in that people can really consider the purchase instead of just jumping into something really quick.”

Where to buy a home?

Still, despite the good news about the more steady interest rates and growing supply of homes, Conageski said she believes higher-income and out-of-state buyers will continue to dominate the market this year, which means expensive houses will continue to be quite popular.

So the question remains: Where should those on a stricter budget look for a home in South Florida?

This is where the concept of “pocket markets” come in: These are areas with relatively close proximity to major metropolitan locations, such as Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, said Nancy Corey, the regional vice president in Southeast Florida for Coldwell Banker, a national real estate franchise.

Municipalities and unincorporated areas in the western parts of South Florida, such as Parkland, could be considered pocket markets, Corey said.

These spots tend to still have, places to shop and eat, events, community and medical centers but they might offer a more laidback — and less costly — lifestyle than living in the center a South Florida urban hubs.

“I always say, the real people in South Florida live farther west. They don’t have all the transients, all the tourists,” Conageski said. “Out west is where you get the better deal. … I think the reason why a lot of people aren’t familiar with these areas is because they’re not the Fort Lauderdale, they’re not maybe the Hollywood that people are familiar with because they are sitting on the coast, because they are the ones you always hear about. So you start looking into these other cities, and that’s where the deals lie.”

Whether or not to become a homeowner

Coming off a year when renting actually became more advantageous than buying to some people, others may still be grappling with whether to move forward with buying.

While still hot, both the homebuying and rental markets seem to be calming down a bit, and the increase in property inventory will help out the rental market too, according to Jonathan Lickstein, the Broward, Palm Beaches and St. Lucie Realtors president.

“As properties take longer or increase days on market, many of those homeowners will not want to sit on market,” Lickstein said. Rather, they will want to convert the property into a rental.

“So the increase in inventory on the sales side lends toward an increase in inventory for rentals,” he said.

Ultimately, much of the decision of whether to buy or rent boils down to individual life circumstances. Lickstein sees benefits for first-time homebuyers, especially in the future.

“First-time homebuyers, when they’re getting in, it’s the start of building long-term generational wealth,” he said.

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