Douglas Elliman has released its quarterly market overview, detailing a market where despite slowing demand and swelling inventory, prices continue to grow.

Miami Proper

In the final months of 2015, Miami’s market maintained an upward trend on prices, with median sales price hopping 6.3 percent year-over-year from $240,000 to $255,000; actual sales, though, failed to follow pace. During the same period, closed sales in Miami fell more than 15 percent year-over-year.

Inventory was also up year-over-year in the city, as active listings went up 5.7 percent. However, while at a cursory glance the gain appears welcome, a closer look at Douglas Elliman’s data reveals that 100 percent of the increase came in the condo sector (which is now being commonly referred to as “overbuilt”).

Condos and Single Family

Demand for condos is down in the Magic City – sales in Q4 2015 were down 16.1 percent year-over-year. But still, prices were up 2.4 percent during the same period to $215,000, and inventory is up 12 percent to a 9-month supply.

In the single-family market, sales similarly fell 13.9 percent year-over-year, with price appreciation remaining strong at 8.9 percent (the new median sales price is $294,000). The increase to price makes more sense in the single-family market than it does for condos, as single-family inventory fell 7.4 percent from Q4 2014 to Q4 2015.

Luxury

Luxury condos and single-family homes were performing on slightly different levels in 2015’s final quarter.

The city’s high-end condo market took hits across the board. Median sales price was down 13.6 percent year-over-year, pushing the price below the $1 million deck to $950,000. Sales also took a double-digit hit, falling 15.1 percent from the same period last year. And as demand has fallen, days on market has jumped from 52 to 56. However, despite the slowing market, builders continue to flood the market with inventory. Active luxury condo listings took a huge 84.7 percent leap in Q4 2015, from 1,554 to 2,871. That is the kind of anomalous increase that prompted the Treasury Department to increase scrutiny on the county’s high-end cash sales.

Single-family homes in the $1 million-plus range felt a slight bump in median price, as it inched forward 2.3 percent from $1.1 million in Q4 2014 to $1.125 million in Q4 2015. However, as is proving the trend throughout Miami’s market, sales fell 13.8 percent over the same period. The market’s inventory still managed a 9.6 percent increase despite slipping sales, which suggests that builders are maintaining their reluctance to take jobs in the market’s lower-end.

Around the City

In almost every Miami region, sales and prices are down for both condo and single-family property types. Some significant findings from Douglas Elliman’s report were:

• Sales of condos fell more than 20 percent year-over-year in the Downtown (-24.9 percent) and Aventura (20.8 percent) markets.
• In South Miami, sales jumped 64.3 percent. However, that figure is misleading, as the difference between Q4 2014 and Q4 2015 was only nine sales.
• Single-family sales in Coral Gables dropped just over 30 percent year-over-year.
• The single-family median sale price was up 26.8 percent from Q4 2014 to Q4 2015, despite sales falling 3.3 percent.