Whether you’re a renter, homeowner or potential buyer in South Florida, the new year may present you with some favorable changes in the housing market, according to real estate experts.

This could include better prices in 2025, as well as more options to choose from when deciding where to live, whether that’s renting an apartment or buying a house.

South Florida will remain a high-cost, high-demand region. But many renters and buyers — both current and prospective — still could look forward to leaving behind a real estate market marked by the presidential election and anxiety about a potential market crash.

What’s to come

Prices have actually begun to level off, by dropping altogether or rising at a rate that isn’t as high as it was in previous years, and that is expected to continue into the beginning of 2025.

“We’re actually seeing this in both the buying and the renting,” said David Serle, Broward, Palm Beaches & St. Lucie Realtors’ president. “We’re looking at more renters coming into the market and more buyers coming into the market as they perceive that this is a good time to buy or a good time to rent.”

In Palm Beach County, for example, the median sale price for a single-family home in October of this year was $621,500, as opposed to being $622,733 in October of 2023, according to data from the Broward, Palm Beaches & St. Lucie Realtors.

Similarly, the median price for a townhome or condo was $305,000 in October of this year, which is a decrease from the median price in October 2023 of $315,000.

“The properties that are priced right and are renovated or new have been still flying off the shelves, and it continues to be a robust market,” Serle said.

Whitney Dutton, the residential sales director for Native Realty, a South Florida real estate agency, agreed with the notion that prices are becoming more palatable, particularly in the rental market.

Dutton used an example of the Waverly, a residential building in Fort Lauderdale, to illustrate this trend. In February, a two-bedroom was renting for about $3,200; now, a two-bedroom at the Waverly is renting for about $3,000, he said.

“Between now and in January, yes, I think that prices have absolutely relaxed a little bit,” he said.

The driver behind the favorable price conditions has a lot to do with increasing inventory and supply. Earlier in the year, more than 14,000 new apartments were forecast to enter the South Florida market by the end of year.

And the months’ supply of inventory — which is how many months it would take for an area to reach “zero inventory” if no new listings were added — increased in both Palm Beach and Broward counties this year in comparison to 2023, according to the Broward, Palm Beaches & St. Lucie Realtors.

Homes also are staying on the market longer on average, which means buyers have more flexibility, Dutton said.

“If you can put your buyer hat on or your shoes on, you could say, ‘Oh OK, I went out and looked at three homes this week, and I didn’t really like any of them, but I’ve been noticing there’s more properties coming on. I see more signs up,'” Dutton said. “It completely removes a sense of urgency and fear of loss from the market. And when you remove sense of urgency and fear of loss, the buyer gets to be a little more picky.”

This “pickiness” can lend itself to more negotiating power for a buyer or renter, Dutton said.

“I’m telling a lot of our buyers, don’t be afraid to make offers,” he said.

Edgardo DeFortuna, the president, CEO and founder of Fortune International Group, a South Florida real estate firm, said that even though buyer urgency has slowed, demand has not, and he predicts that will continue into the new year.

“The demand has really increased very significantly since the end of the pandemic,” he said.

“And it continues to a great degree, having a more balanced market, meaning that we have a lot of U.S. buyers in addition to the typical foreign buyer that was always present in the Miami, especially in the South Florida market,” he said.

He added, “More importantly, people are moving here to both work and reside in, in South Florida. So it’s significantly more stable and creating jobs and economic activity.”

What’s getting left behind

Dutton believes two primary factors influenced market conditions in 2024: high interest rates and the election.

Political speculation led to hesitancy in buyers and sellers, he said, and while people are still waiting to see how the economy might shift under Donald Trump’s administration, the real estate market will no longer heave under the weight of an upcoming election.

Interest rates have lowered slightly in recent months, and are hovering around the “low-to-mid sixes,” Dutton said, and what it’s led to is houses taking longer to sell.

“Whenever houses are taking longer to sell, sellers get more motivated and buyers get better deals,” he said.

For the next several months, Dutton doesn’t see the market changing much for sellers.

“I don’t think waiting right now is going to help sellers out. I think if you cannot sell your house today in this market, I don’t necessarily know that in six months it’s going to be worth 5% more,” he said. “If you can sell now, sell now.”

What’s still lacking in both the rental and housing market the most is supply of medium- and low-income housing, DeFortuna said.

“We need to try to address that because a lot of the people that are moving to Miami, especially the middle-range people, not the top executives, but the people that are really working in these company need housing and need places to live,” he said.

DeFortuna is hopeful, though, that initiatives such as Florida’s Live Local Act, which provides financial incentives to developers who allocate portions of residential projects to workforce or affordable housing, will help alleviate that problem in the new year.

Overall, DeFortuna is optimistic about the state of the real estate market in 2025 with persistent demand, a tapering of prices, rental availability and the announcement of more development projects.

“The market is going to continue to do very well here in South Florida,” he said.

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