September home numbers show Brevard market cooling

Rob Landers, Florida Today
·4 min read

Ah, September. The start of fall when things begin to cool — like the Brevard housing market.

According to the latest figures from the Space Coast Association of Realtors, closed sales dropped just under 2% year over year with 864 closings last month compared to 879 a year ago. But there was a bigger drop in closings from August when the Space Coast saw 936 closings.

Not only does September mark the start of the cooling season, it also ends the third quarter of the year. Overall closings dropped 5.1% year over year in quarter three compared to 2022.

A month earlier: August single family home prices stay steady; townhomes, condo prices surge

Brevard's most expensive: Potential, paradise lead September's priciest home sales

The median home price for a single family home in September was up less than a percent to $364,995 from $362,540 in 2022. And comparing to August's median price, it's just a $5,005 difference. So no real dramatic changes there, but it depends on how you look at it. An optimist would say it held steady, a pessimist would say it's stagnant.

And the same holds true for the overall third quarter where the median home price fell by $1,000 year over year compared to quarter three in 2022.

"Things are slow," said Greg Zimmerman with One Sotheby's International. "Interest rates have buyers hesitant. People who are moving here for jobs and relocating are scared to take bank loans."

And to see that, you need only look at the numbers for September when cash sales increased by nearly 10% year over year and traditional sales dropped almost 2%. But the overall third quarter numbers for the same time frame show a less positive picture with cash sales dropping 5.9% and traditional sales dropping 5.1%.

Zimmerman said that the days of "Oh my neighbor listed their house and sold it in two days" are pretty much gone.

"There is movement," he said. "We're selling one or two a week. The inventory is building up and all the signs are there that we're getting to a normal level of sales."

He's right.

September saw a 35% increase in the number of homes available on the market to a 2.7-month supply — meaning if there were no new listings, from this point, we'd have an available home to sell to everyone moving to Brevard basically through December. It's also a month over month increase where August saw slightly fewer homes on the market at 2.4-months. The 35% increase also holds true for the third quarter.

"I like to be positive," Zimmerman said. "I don't necessarily see the sky falling since we live in such a cool and, in my opinion, undervalued area."

Other statistics for single family homes

  • Pending sales were down 7.3 % year over year for September and for the third quarter.

  • New listings are up 25.1% year over year for September but down 3.9 % for the third quarter.

  • Foreclosure/REO Sales are up 50 % year over year for September with three closed sales but down nearly 13% for the third quarter with a total of seven closed sales in 2023.

  • There were no short sale closings in September this year or last. And there were only two in the entire third quarter this year.

Townhomes and condos

  • Closed sales up 4.6 % year over year in September and 1.3 % for the third quarter compared to 2022.

  • Cash sales were up 4.3 % year over year for September and up 4.8 %for the quarter.

  • New pending sales were up 24.5 % year over year in September but down less than a percent for the quarter.

  • Median sales price was up 5.5% to $307,000 in September compared to $291,500 a year ago. But that's a whopping $70,000 drop from the median price in August. For the quarter, the median price is also up 5.5% to $306,000 compared $290,000 the year before.

  • Traditional sales are up 3.7% year over year with a less than one percent uptick for the third quarter year over year.

  • Traditional sales are up 3.7% year over year with a less than 1 % uptick for the third quarter year over year.

  • Foreclosure sales in September were flat, but for the quarter they jumped 200% year over year.

  • There were no short sale closings in September or in the third quarter this year or last.

Rob Landers is a veteran multimedia journalist for the USA Today Network of Florida. Contact Landers at 321-242-3627 or rlanders@gannett.com. Instagram: @ByRobLanders Youtube: @florida_today

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This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Brevard County real estate numbers show cooling real estate in September