Million-Dollar Home Buyers Were Active in a Few Key Cities Last Month

Data released on Thursday by brokerage Douglas Elliman suggests that the upper echelons of the U.S. housing market defied expectations of a decrease in sales activity in August.

That was true, at least in Florida, California, and New York’s main cities. One of the more dramatic instances occurred in the vicinity of Naples, Florida’s Gulf Coast, where transactions for residences asking for $5 million or more increased by 120%, while the total number of newly signed contracts fell by more than 15% from a year ago, according to a recent article by Beckie Strum of Mansion Global.

On the other side of the Florida panhandle, Miami-Dade County had a general decrease of over 9% in newly signed single-family home contracts. In spite of this, Douglas Elliman statistics show that the number of luxury transactions increased, with homes asking for at least $5 million going from six last August to 23 this year.

The president of appraisal company Miller Samuel and the report’s author, Jonathan Miller, claimed that a shortage of available inventory and rapidly rising interest rates are to blame for the general slowdown in transactions. “The current market pace is brisk as new listings declined annually for the 12th consecutive month,” the research stated.

The state’s headquarters for luxury housing, Palm Beach County, had a 7% decline in total newly signed contracts despite an increase in sales of premium homes. From 11 to 13, deals were made for single-family homes and condos requesting at least $5 million.

Up north in New York City, dealmaking in Manhattan fell into nearly every price range, with the exception of co-ops priced between $4 million and $20 million, where sales increased to 13 last month from eight the previous year.

Although there was one more $20 million+ home deal than a year ago, the Hamptons’ home sales fell due to a lack of inventory.

The most recent data may also allay concerns on the West Coast that a proposed mansion tax on properties valued at $5 million or more might choke off the city of Los Angeles’s upscale real estate market.

August showed a sharp decline in transactions in Los Angeles County overall, with single-family houses asking $5 million or more being the exception. Transactions for these homes increased by 5%.

This article appeared on Mansion Global

The post Million-Dollar Home Buyers Were Active in a Few Key Cities Last Month appeared first on Naples News Now.