Total Sales

Historically, March, April and May are Southwest Florida’s strongest months in terms of total residential real estate sales.

In 2019, March had 1,925 total sales, while April had 2,303 and May had 2,367 sales. 

This year, we were on track to beat that, with March of 2020 having 2,243 total closed sales. If we had continued on the historic trend, April and May would have seen over 2,500 closed sales per month. 

Instead, Covid-19 broke out, and our sales dropped by nearly one third. Instead of the 2,500 sales we should have seen in April and May, the actual numbers were 1,677 in April and 1,214 in May, shown in Graph #1.

 

New Listings

The primary reason that the number of sales slowed down was a lack of new listings. Many sellers decided not to list their homes in April and May to keep strangers out of their house. This was especially the case in owner-occupied homes.

As you can see from Graph #2, the number of new listings in April of 2019 was about 2,750. in April of 2020, that number dropped to 1,400. 

Days to Sell

Fortunately, all of these seemingly negative factors worked together in a positive way. With the number of listings way down, sellers had more negotiating power and the buyer demand was greater.

As shown in Graph #3, the days it took to sell a home in Southwest Florida, in April, dropped to just 42 days. That’s a 3-year record! 

Summary

The raised housing demand and seller’s market that Covid-19 created, helped keep Southwest Florida’s sale prices climbing, as they’ve been doing for years. 

In addition to the climbing sale prices, the days to sell is lower than ever, and many buyers are coming back into the market. 

The Southwest Florida housing market is strong, and getting stronger every day. 

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