FORT LAUDERDALE -- Sergio Blandón, a retired import and export agent, spent three years living in Florida and decided that was enough.
“I want to live without thinking about mortgages and high home insurance,” said Blandón, 71, who returned to his homeland in Managua, Nicaragua.
There was a time when an occasional disgruntled resident like Blandón might not matter to Florida’s booming $180 billion home industry. But that may be changing. After six years of fierce hurricanes and searing summer temperatures, brokers, mortgage bankers and Florida’s entire residential real estate industry have expressed concern that weather patterns influenced by climate change may have wilted the state’s reputation as an idyllic place to live and work.
As of November 2024, the industry reported $139.3 billion in monthly single-family home sales. The sale of townhouses and condos accounted for another $41 billion, according to the association.
But RedFin has spotted some worrisome trends in home sales statistics.
According to the Seattle-based brokerage and mortgage originator, the state has seen a decrease in the purchase of homes by investors. The trend, which may be a leading indicator of overall home sales, has affected major cities like Fort Lauderdale, which saw a 23.8% decline in purchases. Miami followed with a 19.4% decline.
According to RedFin, Florida also saw a 10.2% drop in homebuying from October 2023 to October 2024. At the same time, the average number of days a home is listed on the market increased by more than a third to 67 days, up from 44 days in October 2023. And according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, the number of unsold Florida homes began rising in the summer of 2022 and topped out at 153,052 in December 2024.
Blandón said he has decided to pursue real estate investments elsewhere.
After arriving in Florida in 1993, he found job prospects lacking and three years later he decided to move to Cleveland where he bought two properties. In 1996, he bought the first property for $115,000 in Brook Park, Ohio, and the second for $93,000 in Parma. He said both properties increased in value by 50%.
“Ohio’s real estate market is slow compared to Florida’s because people look for houses in order to stay there for a lifetime,” said Blandón on a recent family visit to Florida.
Once he retired, he sold both houses in Ohio.
Although one of his sons lives in South Florida, he declined to buy a property because he never felt attracted to the state’s fast-paced lifestyle and the high cost of living, including rental rates and insurance.
He also said that he feels safer living outside the United States when it comes to natural disasters.
“I come from a country that has hurricanes and earthquakes, so I’m used to them,” Blandón said. “But I know in my heart that I’ll be safer in Nicaragua than here.”
Experts say the same factors affecting urban areas like South Florida – inflation, rising home insurance and the latest hurricanes – are also affecting smaller coastal cities like Cedar Key.
While the impact the state’s real estate trends have on Florida’s $1.6 trillion economy is huge, current market forces are creating both winners and losers. But even the winners know the underlying trends are not positive.
“My customers have told me that the reason why they leave is because they can’t afford rent anymore here,” said Lenin García, 42, the owner of The Perfect Moving, which moves people out of Florida to other states like Georgia, Texas, Connecticut and Pennsylvania.
In the last two years, he has hauled 50 households for residents wanting to leave Florida.
García said that most of his customers tell him that the main reason they leave is because they have found better job opportunities that will allow them to have better salaries that make it easier to pay rent and even buy a property.
“There was a lady who told me she was leaving because her new job was going to help her afford rent because she couldn’t do it anymore in Florida because it’s getting very expensive,” García said. “Plus, she said she was traumatized because of the hurricanes.”
Romelia Pina, a real estate agent at Delux Royal Real Estate, said she believes the state’s residential market still has upward potential.
“Florida is a pearl because everyone wants to live in Miami,” Pina said. “With or without hurricanes, it’s incredible to see people wanting to move to Florida.”
But she also sees other trends afoot.
After Hurricane Milton, most of Pina’s customers whose homes were damaged in Orlando decided to sell and move to cities in north-central Florida and other places inland, she said.
“Some of them moved to Sarasota and other inland parts where they can’t be affected by coastal hazards and surge,” Pina said.
In the last four months of 2024, six out of seven houses she sold belonged to homeowners who moved to central Florida, she said.
“I don’t know if the reason why people are moving is because home insurance taxes are rising or the fact that people live in risk areas but that’s the truth,” Pina said. “It’s a cycle.”
Zoramir Rodriguez, a real estate agent at InvesTeam Realty, said the bloom is not completely off Florida. She said buyers are still influenced by the state’s warm temperatures and culture.
“My public is mostly Latino so they’re always looking for places similar to the ones they come from,” Rodriguez said. Moreover, she argued potential buyers do not think about hurricanes when they want to move to Florida.
“People buy with their hearts and not with their heads,” Rodriguez said.
While some are leaving the state, there are always exceptions to any trend.
Christine Dillon, 71, bought a house in Cedar Key a couple of days after Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida.
These types of storms bring opportunities for people like her and her husband Christopher Dillon, 69, who recently bought a property in the state.
“A lot of times after a hurricane, places get more valuable,” Christine said. “And that doesn't seem to make sense, but it's true.”
Born in Pennsylvania, Christine Dillon moved to Key West in the 1970s when she was 18 years old. The couple recently bought a house in Cedar Key for $220,000.
The closing contract was scheduled the day after Helene made landfall on Sept. 26.
When they drove 87 miles to Cedar Key to see the house, the seller feared they would not be interested in buying it because of some damage during Helene.
The seller, a contractor, asked them if they would still buy it if he fixed it up.
“We were scared, but we said yes because the property is amazing,” Christine Dillon said. “We're excited about it.”
Christopher Dillon said this is not the first time he has seen buyers move into areas affected by natural disasters. It happened when Key West was hit by hurricanes Ian in 2022 and Irma in 2017.
“That's strange, isn't it?” Christopher Dillon said. “I saw a property that wouldn't sell before that sold after the hurricane for almost the same price as they were asking. It was funny.”
House Damage Correlation to Real Estate Market in Cedar Key
Total insured wind losses in Florida could reach $1.43 billion, according to CoreLogic, a property information and analytics provider, in the firm’s updated Helene Insured Loss Estimate report.
The report also estimated there was between $30.5 billion and $47.5 billion in insured and uninsured losses in total wind and flood damage across 16 states including Florida.
After Helene made landfall as a Category 4 storm on Sept. 26, more than 100 houses in Cedar Key were affected by flooding issues, cosmetic damage and breakaway wall debris, according to Jason Whistler, the Levy County Property Appraiser.
From his perspective, even before the storm, the real estate market had slowed down because of inflation. People moving into the city from other states and counties were affected by rising land values in Levy, he added.
“(It) had slowed down considerably as far as the amount of sales, but the sale prices were still fairly high,” Whistler said.
Insurance Scene in Florida
Eli Beracha, director of the Tibor and Sheila Hollo School of Real Estate at Florida International University and a professor for real estate investments, said that if insurance prices increase dramatically again this will negatively affect home prices.
This means more people will not be able to buy houses and pay for insurance.
“I think the difference between now and five years ago is that insurance premiums have gone up,” Beracha said.
In December 2022, the Florida senate approved legislation to create the Florida Optional Reinsurance Assistance (FORA) program administered by the State Board of Administration with $1 billion in general revenue funds. The law protects homeowners from insurance companies that charge expensive rates if they live in high-risk areas. Simultaneously, the bill also asks insurance companies to register with state regulators to make sure every resident gets fair access to insurance.
In 2018, the Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund projected losses of $1.45 billion for Hurricane Michael in 2018 and $3.75 billion for Hurricane Irma in 2017. Both hurricanes affected Cedar Key.
The catastrophe fund also paid $220 million in reimbursements to insurers after Hurricane Michael. Following Helene, losses paid by the National Flood Insurance Program for recovery were expected to be between $4.5 billion and $6.5 billion for homeowners across Florida and the southeastern United States, according to CoreLogic.
According to a report by the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation, the total estimated insured losses from Hurricane Helene are more than $2 billion.
Real Estate Market Status in Cedar Key
As in the rest of Florida, the housing market in Cedar Key appears to be experiencing a slowdown. In 2023, there were 90 houses sold in the city, while in the first 11 months of 2024 there were just 53.
But so far, prices do not appear depressed.
In October 2024, Cedar Key home prices increased 153% compared to October 2023, with a median price of $413,000, according to Redfin.
When Hurricane Michael hit Cedar Key in October 2018, there were 882 properties affected based on flood-recreation models from First Street Technology, which evaluates climate change with financial risk. The agency reported that in 2016 Hurricane Hermine affected 874 homes.
Alex Stewart is the founder of The Market Distillery, an online platform that shows Florida real estate agents the status of the local real estate market.
“People are still moving here. You know, if you've lived in Florida for any amount of time, you're used to it in many cases,” Stewart said.
His research on how hurricanes Ian in 2022, Michael in 2018 and Irma in 2017 impacted home prices in Florida is based on data three, six, 12 and 24 months after the hurricanes. The study revealed that in some cases if a hurricane hits hard enough and it's a smaller market, home prices probably would fall by 20%.
“I think there are some markets that the hurricane probably had a direct hit on and those are somewhat lower than what the state average was,” Stewart said. “So, we know that it is probably directly related to the hurricane.”
Despite the threat of more storms, some residents just don’t want to leave their homes.
Chad Osteen, 53, is the fourth generation in his family who have been fishing in the Cedar Key coast.
“Everybody knows everybody. It’s a small crop,” Osteen said. “You’re just being around the water. I mean, you grow up around the water.”
His mother Joanne Osteen, 78, raised him in the city. Helene flooded her house, damaging floors and walls. The repair will take them three or four months after their insurance pays their claim. But his mother will not be leaving town, he said.
“She can't leave it. People love this place,” Chad Osteen said. “Everybody looks out for one another.”
As a fisherman, he said Helene disrupted his fishing routine as the area he used to work in has not recovered.
But he has found another way to make a living. Chad has been running barges that clean debris in Cedar Key Beach about seven days a week.
He started working after Helene hit.
“I'd probably be running about three to four (barges) right now, maybe five,” Chad said. “But I'm gonna do this for about another month, and then I'm gonna go back to fishing in December.”
In fact, Chad has since returned to fishing.
