Smaller house price gains for South Florida in April

South Florida sellers aren’t seeing as big a bump in home prices as they did last year.

Broward County’s median price for existing single-family homes in April was $273,000, up 9 percent from April 2013, the Greater Fort Lauderdale Realtors said Thursday.

In Palm Beach County, the April median was $272,375, just 3 percent higher than a year earlier, according to the Realtors Association of the Palm Beaches.

The percentage increases have slowed considerably in recent months. In 2013, median prices in the two counties were soaring, with year-over-year gains above 20 percent.

“Those days are gone,” said Liz Caldwell, a Fort Lauderdale agent who also sells in southern Palm Beach County. “It’s a more normal market now.”

Homes traditionally have appreciated in value at about 4 percent a year.

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MORE CASH DEALS IN SOUTH FLORIDA

And this is also valid for foreigners investors. Read this ….

Never mind the rising price of homes. Buyers are coming with fistfuls of cash.In fact, homebuyers in South Florida now pay cash more often than they get a mortgage.

During the first three months of the year, 69 percent of Palm Beach County homebuyers paid cash, up from 42 percent in the first quarter of 2013, according to a report Thursday from RealtyTrac Inc. And that number was higher than the year before, when cash accounted for 40 percent of sales countywide.

In Broward County, 68 percent of homebuyers paid cash, up from 47 percent last year and 42 percent the year before.No one expected this. Analysts predicted that cash deals would fall as prices rose.

So what happened?

Read more here : http://www.sun-sentinel.com/business/fl-cash-home-sales-20140508,0,6158103.story

BUYING A HOME BEATS RENTING AFTER LESS THAN 2 YEARS

It takes only a little more than a year for South Florida homeowners to see the payoff in buying over renting, a new report shows.

In Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties, buying a home beats renting it after just 1.2 years, according to a first quarter analysis. At the same time in 2013, buying was better than renting in South Florida after two years. … Read more …