Single-family home inventory in Florida has reached its highest level in a decade and it’s “still climbing,” president and founder of Altos Research Mike Simonsen said. As per Altos’ latest data, single-family inventory was up by 37.6 percent this year compared to 2024—which is among the biggest increases in the country. By comparison, inventory has grown by 29 percent at the national level.

This growth, according to several housing experts, indicates that the Sunshine State is shifting in favor of buyers and home prices may finally slow down and even drop after years of booming.

Why It Matters

Florida’s housing market exploded in the years following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, as the rise of remote work drove an influx of new residents to the sunny state. The state responded to its population growth by building more new homes than almost any other state, but now these new listings are struggling to find willing buyers as prices remain historically high and mortgage rates are still hovering around the 7 percent mark.

According to housing experts, sellers in the Sunshine State are increasingly having to meet buyers where they are at, slashing their asking prices to make their properties more appealing in a less competitive market.

What to Know

Inventory in the Sunshine State has consistently been growing since late spring of 2023, thanks to Florida’s unparalleled efforts, with the exception of Texas, to build new homes. In January, according to Redfin data, the number of homes for sale in the state, at 213,166, was 19.8 percent higher than a year earlier; the number of newly listed homes, at 54,335, was 8.1 percent higher. The Florida market, according to the real estate brokerage, had eight months’ worth of supply, two more months than a year earlier.

According to Altos data, Florida is among only eight states that had higher inventory now than they did in 2019 (+8.6 percent), including Texas (+29.3 percent), Idaho (around +8 percent), Colorado (+8.9 percent), Oklahoma (+12.7 percent), Arkansas (+20.3 percent), Tennessee (+1.2 percent), and Georgia (+2.7 percent).

It’s not only new construction that’s feeding into the inventory growth in the state. A new building-safety regulation requiring that the state’s aging condos undergo regular inspections and homeowners associations hold enough funds to conduct necessary repairs and maintenance has led to an explosion of listings in South Florida in the past few months, as owners fear rising fees. These properties, however, are not attracting the interest of many buyers.

At the same time, high property insurance premiums in disaster-prone areas of the Sunshine State and the difficulty of finding affordable coverage are also straining demand.

Despite the addition of new inventory in Florida, home prices are still rising at the state level, even as the pace of this growth has slowed down significantly. In January, according to Redfin data, the median sale price of a home in the Sunshine State was $410,500, up 1.4 percent compared to a year earlier.

A lot of this new inventory, however, is piling up in the Florida market, as sellers struggle to find willing buyers amid the ongoing affordability crunch in the U.S. and many are cutting their asking prices in an attempt to lure in bidders. The number of homes sold in January across Florida was down by 0.41 percent year-over-year, for a total of 22,148, per Redfin data. An average home in the state spent 73 days on average on the market before going under contract, 14 days more than a year earlier.

According to real estate analyst Lance Lambert, when “active listings start to rapidly increase as homes remain on the market for longer periods, it may indicate potential future pricing weakness.”

What People Are Saying

Tracey Ryniec, value stock strategist at Zacks, wrote on X, mentioning the case of Florida’s The Villages: “They have priced themselves out of the market. Prices have to come down.”

Realtor.com senior economic research analyst Hannah Jones said in a December report on Florida: “Warm markets, especially in Florida, saw inventory pile up and market pace slow more than was typical nationally. More generally, the South has seen inventory climb and market pace slow over the last year as buyers stick to the sidelines, thwarted by still-high home prices and mortgage rates.”

What’s Next

While Texas and Florida were leading inventory growth across the country in the past few months, Simonsen said in a recent update that these two states have “kind of plateaued” now, with the biggest shift in inventory moving to the West Coast.

Simonsen expects inventory to increase at the national level by another 15 percent throughout 2025, leading to buyers having more options and likely more negotiating power. The real estate analyst expects 2025 to be the last year of inventory shortage in the U.S.—predicting this may be over by spring of 2026. Mortgage rates, however, are an important variable in Simonsen’s equation—and experts widely expect them to remain between 6 and 7 percent for the next couple of years.