In this monthly market update, Naples real‑estate specialist Renee Hahn presents a data‑driven snapshot of June 2024. She notes a 59% year‑over‑year rise in inventory to 4,680 listings, while pending contracts fell 11% and closed sales dropped 17%, indicating a buyer‑friendly environment. Median closed price slipped only 0.8% to $595,000, but price reductions surged with 1,351 cuts. New listings rose 2%, with condos seeing a 9% inventory increase versus a 3.9% decline in single‑family listings, reflecting higher ownership costs for condos. Geographic analysis shows South Naples (ZIPs 34112‑34113) leading inventory growth (+80%) and North Naples (ZIPs 34109‑34110‑34119) experiencing the steepest median price decline (‑15.2%). Days on market rose 56% to 78 days, underscoring the need for realistic pricing. Hahn highlights a broader pricing reset, citing reduced equity ratios (84.9% to 69.2%) and a shift from near‑list‑price sales to more negotiated deals. She shares a recent builder transaction that included substantial credits and lot‑price reductions, illustrating aggressive incentives. Finally, she warns of an upcoming Florida regulatory change effective August 17, requiring signed buyer‑agent agreements and prohibiting commission disclosures in MLS, signaling a shift in how buyer commissions are handled. Hahn closes with contact information and offers valuation assistance or agent referrals.
Chapters
Hello, this is Renee Han, your Naples real estate expert, bringing you the monthly Naples area real estate market update. That's a mouthful. Anyways, we're gonna buzz through this. It is a Friday night, and I don't know about you, but, uh, I'd like to move on and do something else a little more fun than market updates. Anyways, we're gonna dive right in. Um, I want to talk about— the first thing I want to talk about is what you see going on between inventory and sales. So inventory, this is a year-over-year look, so it's, it's the slow time right now. Without question, it is seasonally, but the data I'm sharing is for last year the same time. So it was also the slow season last year and inventory is up 59%. So we were sitting in the month of June with 4,680 homes on the market available for sale. Conversely, if you look at the pending sales, pending sales was down by 11%. So inventory up 59%, closed— pending, not closed— pending contracts down 11%. So when those those two lines are going in opposition, what does that mean? It's in— it's more favorable for buyers. Number one, they have good amount of inventory to pick from, which by the way is healthy for the market because when inventory gets too constrained, buyers stop looking because there's nothing available. So that's good that there's a lot to choose from. However, they have a price advantage because right now inventory's gone up by almost 60% while pending contracts have gone down by over 10%, so 11% So 4,680 properties on market, only 711 went under contract. So you think about that in proportion. Median closed price also went down, but not by a lot. It was only 0.8%. So the median closed price in Naples is $595,000. New listings. So this is the compound effect, if you will. New listings were up 2%. So you already have high inventory, you're adding new new listings at a higher proportion than last year, and things are selling slower. I will tell you, the condo market is getting hit worse than single-family homes, um, generally speaking. And that has a lot to do with the fact that cost of ownership at condos has gone up, whether it's insurance, whether it's the associations building up their reserves because some of, some of the new requirements for these associations to carry certain reserves, the inspection that are required, some of the perhaps the maintenance to get up to code— not to code, that's the wrong thing to say— to get up to current code on some of these buildings. So cost of ownership has gone up, so frankly it has caused some of the condo buyers to just hit the pause button or slow down. And as you see, the inventory is not slowing down. If you look at the breakout of inventory, the condo market increased by 9% whereas the single-family home new listings decreased by 3.9%. So again, another proportion story there. Well, all of that has led obviously to continued price reductions and what I call price right-sizing. So there were 1,351 price reductions in the month of June. Um, if you think about the geography, there's always— I've always said this Naples can be very segmented by price point, it can be segmented by community, it can be segmented by type of dwelling. In this case, if we look at the geography, South Naples— so I'm talking specifically about 34112 and 34113— reported the highest percentage of inventory increase in June. It was up 80% compared to other geographic areas that are tracked by Naples Area Board of Realtors. North Naples area, so we're talking 34109, 34110, 34119, showed the highest decrease in the median closed price in June. That went down by 15.2%. It went from $740,000 median closed price to $627,500. So some good interesting information. What I would wrap this all up and say— oh, let me back up because I didn't finish. We talked about overall inventory, we talked about new listings, we talked about what went under contract, we talked about the median closed price. Let's talk about closed sales. So we talked about pending sales went down by 11%. Closed sales went down by 17%. So that's a bit of a lag, right? So what closed this month are things that went under contract in previous months. So 17% down is a function of, of how things have been running between now and then. And keep in mind, there's still a certain number of contracts that go under contract and don't close for a variety of reasons that we're not going to cover here. Days on market is 78. That was a 56% increase. Still lower than we've had in some past times where you might see days on market around 90, 120 days. The thing to keep in mind is because this is an average, you have to know there's a lot of homes that are sitting for a heck of a lot longer than 78 days, and there's some that are selling for quicker. So it just means that as sellers, you have really, really, really got to get a handle on pricing because candidly, even some of my clients are still holding on to pricing expectations that just aren't reasonable. Before. The market has shifted, and it's shifted in what I would call a significant way. So you can't keep looking back, and that's what we are all trained to do when you're pricing something out. You're not— you're giving some consideration to active listings, but candidly, people can list things for whatever they want. It doesn't always make sense. But closed sales is always where you go to pull data, how, you know, what have actually, you know, what have things sold for. The challenge is it has been a continuous fluid market for quite a long time. So what something closed 4, even 3 months ago may or may not be reflective of what you can reasonably get now because the market has continued— I hate using words like this, but it's deteriorated for sellers for the most part. Now don't freak out, we're still— equity is still strong, people are still making money off of their houses, but we've really got to do a pricing reset over what again people have grown accustomed to. And I'm starting to see more of that. Again, you see the price drops. Ideally, you hope not to have to do a lot of price drops because price drops make you look a bit chaotic. I'd rather see things come on for a fair and reasonable price than set it and have to keep going with price drops. But again, that's a conversation for another day. I did want to point out an article that was published in Newsweek yesterday or the day before, and the title is Florida homeowners see resale value plunge in multiple cities. So Florida, it actually specifically calls out Naples um, along with Port St. Lucie, Fort Walton Beach. But Naples, it said the equity is down from 84.9% to 69.2%. So whether you even understand what that means, just focus on the fact that it's gone down by that much—84.9 to 69.2. So again, think of this as a pricing reset, if you will. And what that means is you've got to be reasonable in your pricing. And I'll tell you what, I'm looking at the percentage of and I see a lot more things at the 90, 92, sometimes even the 80s, whereas we had grown accustomed for a short time to 100% of the list price. Then we were like, okay, 2% off. Well, now it's creeping down. Now some of that has to do with how you price it, obviously, but just be ready because buyers are looking for negotiations. They're looking for advantages. You don't know it, the builders are giving it. I closed a builder deal the other day, so the base price on the house was somewhere around $675,000, and then with finishes it was going to be just under a million, maybe, maybe right at a million. The builder gave $100,000 in credits on finishes. So however somebody wanted to use it, another $12,000 incentive, another $2,000 incentive, and they decreased the lot price from $55,000 to $21,000. That's a lot of negotiating. So if you don't think people are negotiating, builders are always a good sign of what's going on there. And they're offering a lot of incentives to real estate agents because they want them to bring the business. Now, one thing I want to leave you with is if you want to talk about what's going on in the commission space, I don't want to take time out of the market report to hit that, but give me a call because we are on the brink of changes that everybody needs to be aware of. I will tell you really quick, high level, and then we can talk about the details in a follow-up. Number one, every buyer and buyer's agent, every realtor that is working with a buyer, must— is required to, for our license compliance, to have a signed buyer-agent agreement for the services and the pay that they're going to get. So the buyer's going to set what the agent's commission is. Now, that doesn't mean you can't go try to negotiate to have commission covered by the seller as part of your negotiation, but it's a paradigm shift, if you will. Now, there's going to be a lot of business as usual because a lot of my sellers, as an example, are still willing to cover buyer's commission, particularly because of this market, right? If we're in a hot market, that could change, by the way, buyers, keep that in mind. Right now, the listing, the property owners are still willing to give on covering some or all of the cost of the buyer's agent. But just know there's a shift, agreements are required, and you can't indicate what the commission arrangement offering from the seller is in MLS anymore. So that's gonna take a phone call to try to figure that out. Or it may take getting to the offer stage where depending on what your offer is, companies decide if and what they are willing to cover in terms of other costs such as commission. So just know those changes are effective August 17th. Many of the associations are making changes and adopting it earlier. What I will tell you is there are a number of states in the US— this is going to be a change for Florida, but there are a number of states in the US that already do as a standard buyer and buyer agent agreement. So that's not new, it's just new to us in Florida. Uh, again, this is Renee Han. If I can be of any assistance in market report and home valuation and anything else under the sun related to local real estate, or even if you're looking for an agent outside of where I have responsibility, I'm always happy to help you find a great realtor. It's a great use of my prior skills, uh, with talent assessment combined with my knowledge of real estate to find the right agent for you. So reach out anytime. 239-287-2576, or you can always find me at the web at www.yournaplesexpert.com. Thanks and have a fabulous weekend. Watch the Olympics, it's always exciting to see the world come together in that setting, and, uh, God bless.
