The Commercial Real Estate Alpha Site

February 27, 2025 by Lily Katz and Grishma Bhattarai via Redfin – Click for complete article

The number of homes on the market in the Sunshine State rose 23% year over year to a record high in January amid a decrease in homebuying, an influx of newly built homes for sale, intensifying natural disasters, and surging insurance costs and HOA fees. 

Florida ended January with 172,209 homes for sale—the highest inventory of any month on record. That’s up 22.7% from a year earlier.

Inventory is a measure of the number of homes for sale on the last day of the month. Redfin’s records date back to 2012.

Florida has seen housing inventory surge because it has been building more homes than most states. It’s also grappling with intensifying natural disasters, which has caused home insurance costs to skyrocket and prompted some homeowners to leave the state. With so many options for buyers to choose from, a lot of homes for sale are sitting on the market for months at a time, causing stale inventory to pile up. Listings are also piling up because homebuyer demand has been cooling; pending home sales in Florida fell 9.3% year over year in January.

Florida’s slowing condo market is a major factor pushing up inventory in the Sunshine State, too. Condo inventory in Florida was at an all-time high in January. Meanwhile, inventory of single-family homes was just shy of its record high. Many condo owners are looking to sell because new regulations aimed at ensuring condo buildings are structurally sound have caused HOA fees to soar. 

Active Listings Are at a Record High in 8 Florida Metros, Most of Which Are on the Coast

Active listings—another gauge of housing supply—are also near a record high in Florida. They rose 19.4% year over year in January to 212,437, which is slightly below the all-time high hit in 2019. Active listings are a measure of the total number of homes for sale during the month.

Active listings are at a record high in eight of Florida’s 31 metropolitan areas: Cape Coral, Deltona-Daytona Beach, Homosassa Springs, Lakeland, North Port-Sarasota, Ocala, Port St. Lucie and the Villages. Five out of eight of those metros are on the coast, where homeowners often face higher natural disaster risk, insurance costs and HOA fees.

Redfin agents in Florida say it’s a buyer’s market, meaning sellers may need to offer concessions to woo bidders, and should also make sure their homes are in tip-top shape. In some Florida markets, home prices are falling.

“Bidding wars are very rare these days,” said Bryan Carnaggio, a Redfin Premier real estate agent in Jacksonville. “With this many houses for sale, a home basically needs to look like it’s out of a magazine—and be priced fairly—to get multiple offers.”

Active listings are higher than a year ago in every Florida metro Redfin analyzed. But they’re not soaring everywhere. For example, they’re up less than 5% in Sebring, Panama City, Tallahassee and Okeechobee. 

Metro-Level Summary: Florida Housing Supply (January 2025)

U.S. metro area	Active listings	Year-over-year change in active listings	Are active listings at a record high?

North Port-Sarasota, FL

13,542

14.6%

Yes

Tampa, FL

24,259

17.3%

No

Lakeland, FL

7,500

19.7%

Yes

For all other metros, click here <—–