Miami’s Epic Condo Boom Turns into Glut

[marmar]

Miami’s Epic Condo Boom Turns into Glut
by Wolf Richter • February 29, 2016


[font color="blue"]Real estate agents see “looming” condo price correction.[/font]

Home prices overall are still rising in Miami and surrounding cities. The median price jumped 11.6% in January from a year ago, to $240,000. But according to real estate broker Redfin: unit sales plunged 11.9% from a year ago. The fourth month in a row of declines.

It wasn’t because the market was low on inventory: after an enormous and ongoing construction boom, 6,000 new listings hit the market in January, based on data on the Multiple Listing Service (MLS). This pushed inventory up to the highest level recorded in “at least” two years.

This already high number of “new listings” may be under-reporting the true number with a sleight of hand: the number of new condos, according to Redfin, “is difficult to measure and may be much higher than what is recorded in industry data, because developers tend to list only a sample of available units on the MLS.”

And most of these units “come in the form of high-end beachfront condos.”

Given the decline in sales and the rise in inventory (however under-reported), the supply of all homes in the Miami metro area has jumped to 6.9 months, and “the balance of power has shifted into buyers’ favor.” ...........(more)

http://wolfstreet.com/2016/02/29/miamis-condo-construction-boom-turns-into-a-glut/

[Warpy]

1. This has gone on for years there

with new glittering towers being built even as the existing ones have become horror shows for the few people living in them, the bulk of them sitting empty and unsold as the few people who moved in find themselves living in a mostly empty building.

It's not just Miami, either. Under Jebbie, developers went absolutely wild and put up a spiky fence of condos walling off a lot of Florida's best beaches from ordinary citizens while the condo dwellers failed to materialize.