Brad O'Connor directly addresses camera:  Florida Realtors has released its monthly housing market statistics for December as well as its annual year-end statistics for 2024, so this month we'll be taking a deeper dive than usual as we close out another year in Florida real estate. Let's get right to it.
We'll start by taking a look at new pending sales—our measure of the number of homes for sale that went under contract during a reporting period. In last month's video, we observed that monthly new pending sales of single-family homes were well above trend in November, increasing by more than 12.5% year over year. New pending sales for condos and townhouses were down about 5% year over year, but that too was a stark improvement relative to prior months in 2024. We speculated it was possible Florida's housing market was starting to turn a corner, but we also noted that most of this November surge in new pending sales occurred in the parts of the state most impacted by hurricanes Helene and Milton. That suggested that November's new pending sales growth was the result of sales that were pushed from October into November.
Looking now at new pending sales for December, that appears to have been the case. New pending sales of single-family homes were up only about 1% compared to a year ago, while new pending sales of townhouses and condos were down 13.5%. So, looks like we were back on trend in December. While this may not be the most welcome news, at least we were able to end the year on a high note in terms of closed sales, since a large share of the homes that went under contract in November ended up closing in December.
Closed sales of single-family homes were up nearly 13% year over year—easily the largest year-over-year increase in single-family closed sales that we saw for any month in 2024. That strong performance put us at nearly 253,000 statewide single-family closed sales for the year overall, which is just less than 2% below 2023's total of nearly 258,000 sales, but also the fewest annual sales we've seen since 2014. There was little variation across the state in 2024, as most counties only saw small year-over-year declines. 
Over in the condo and townhouse category, monthly closed sales failed to rise year over year in December for what would only have been the second time this year—but, they only declined by 0.5%, the smallest decrease we observed for any month in 2024. Still, it's clear that this property type category underperformed compared to single-family homes in terms of sales throughout 2024. Annual closed sales in the condo and townhouse category came in at more than 94,000 for 2024, a 10.5% decline compared to the prior year. Multiple factors were responsible for the underperformance of this category throughout the year, including concerns about insurance coverage and reserve requirement compliance giving some prospective buyers cold feet. The result was the lowest number of condo and townhouse sales we've seen for any year in Florida since 2010. Declines were most prominent in coastal counties along both the Atlantic and the Gulf. The lone bright spot was in the I-4 Corridor in the exurban areas between Tampa and Orlando, and further north into The Villages and Ocala. These areas actually saw condo and townhouse sales grow in 2024 compared to 2023.
Let's turn now to the supply side and look at new listings. This is our measure of the number of homes that were listed for sale during a given time period. We include only listings for homes that have been off the market for at least 60 days in this total, unless they were sold and immediately re-listed by the new owner. In the single-family category, the number of new listings in December was up for the second straight month on a year-over-year basis, this time rising by over 13.5%. In all, we saw over 360,000 single-family homes come onto the market in 2024, which is a 9.5% increase relative to 2023. But 2023 was characterized by abnormally low levels of new listings relative to recent years. The number of single-family new listings in 2024 was much more comparable to the numbers we saw from 2018 to 2022. As was the case with closed sales, county-level changes in the number of new listings were fairly uniform across the state in 2024, with the key difference being that new listings were on the rise while closed sales were mostly on the decline.
New listings of condos and townhouses were also up year over year in December for the second consecutive month, rising by close to 11%. That's the largest increase we've seen since July, when they were up by almost 14%. For the most part, though, year-over-year growth in new listings of condos and townhouses was fairly tepid in the second half of 2024—especially when compared to the first half of the year. Because of the surge of new listings that occurred in the early months of 2024, the annual count of new condo and townhouse listings came in more than 11% higher than 2023's count. This increase is not much larger than the 9.5% increase we saw for single-family homes, though, and it suggests that the narrative of panicked condo owners across the state scrambling to sell in the face of the new state-mandated reserve requirements has been a bit overblown. As I mentioned earlier, we do think the requirements are having an impact on the market, but this impact is being felt more so on the buyer side than on the seller side.
With new listings growing and sales declining, inventory levels for both the single-family category and the condo and townhouse category ended the year slightly above the typical levels we saw during the pre-pandemic period of 2014 to 2019. We're still *far* below the levels we observed during the Great Recession, however. That said, inventory is still largely moving along an upward trajectory so we should continue to watch it as we move into the spring buying season here in Florida.
At the end of the year at the county level, one-year growth in single-family inventory levels was fairly uniform across the state, with most counties falling in the 25 to 35% range. If we compare where inventory levels were at the end of 2024 compared to the end of 2019, however, there's a lot more geographic variation. South Florida still has less single-family inventory than it did prior to the pandemic, whereas much of the rest of the state has significantly more—especially in the Panhandle, Southwest Florida, and suburban and exurban areas surrounding Tampa, Orlando and Jacksonville.
One-year growth in active listings of condos and townhouses was strongly positive across the state as of the end of 2024, but some areas have seen more of an increase than others. Compared to the end of 2019, there is even more variation, with condo and townhouses inventory levels doubling or tripling in some parts of Central and Southwest Florida. Many of these areas have seen a lot of recent multifamily construction, which has resulted in sellers of existing condos and townhouses facing competition from builders. Notably, the county with the largest number of condos and townhouses on the market as of the end of 2024—Miami-Dade—is also the only major county to still have fewer condos and townhouses on the market than it did five years ago.
If we go by the general rule of thumb that five to six months of supply is a balanced market, single-family homes are just barely still in a seller's market at 4.7 months of supply, while condos and townhouses are now firmly in buyer's market territory, at 8.2 months' supply.
The monthly median price for closed sales of single-family homes has not changed much over the past eight months, reflecting the balance in the market for this property type. In December, the median price for single-family homes was up only 1.2% compared to a year ago, rising to $415,000.
The median price for condos and townhouses, meanwhile, has been lower than a year ago in each of the last six months. That's also in line with what months' supply is telling us about this property type being in buyer's market territory. In December, the year-over-year decline in the median price for condos and townhouses was 4.5%, falling to $315,000. Still, throughout the year, the median price for this category remained above 2022 levels. It will take significantly more inventory to threaten the large gains in price appreciation that occurred in between 2020 and 2022.
Even though 2024 was not a great year for sales, because prices remained elevated, the dollar volume of sales remained strong. In fact, the annual dollar volume of single-family home sales in Florida actually increased by 2.5% in 2024, rising to approximately $152 billion. If we adjust for inflation using the Consumer Price Index published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in December, dollar volume in this category fell in real terms, but only by 0.5%.
By contrast, the nominal dollar volume of sales for condos and townhouses did not rise in 2024. Rather, it fell by over 9% to roughly $45 billion. After adjusting for inflation, this decline was closer to 12%. That said, even with inflation factored in, dollar volume in this category was higher than in 2020 and every year before that in the current housing cycle.
Overall, the 2024 Florida housing market saw mostly modest declines in sales and little change in the way of home prices. Even though there were some fluctuations in mortgage rates, they remained in the high range relative to recent years. The most significant changes occurring in 2024 were the widening performance gap between the single-family market and the condo and townhouse market and the overall rise in inventory levels. Going into 2025, interest rates are still going to dictate much of how the market performs, but there are several other factors in play, as well. I'll be discussing these factors and more at our upcoming annual Florida Real Estate Trends event here in Orlando. Realtors registered for the annual Florida Realtors Mid-Winter Business Meetings can attend in person, but there's also a virtual option accessible to the general public at floridarealtors.org/events/mid-winter-meetings/trends. The event begins at 12:30pm ET on Friday, January 31. Hope you'll join us—see you then!