Spotlight On: West Palm Beach Housing Market

With a year’s supply of homes and condos sitting on the market, the West Palm Beach housing market in Florida has a ways to go before it can fully recover from the excesses of the real estate boom.

The feverish buying and building spree in Palm Beach and Boca Raton peaked in the summer of 2005, and the market is still cooling.

There are, however, some signs that the worst might be in the past, notes USA Today, which features Palm Beach in its weekly real estate spotlight.

Condo sales, which make up about 45 percent of this market, rose 11 percent in May, while prices dipped just 1 percent, compared with May of last year.

That’s much better than condo activity throughout the Florida housing market, which saw condo sales plunge 28 percent and prices fall 4 percent over the same period.

For single-family homes in the West Palm Beach-Boca Raton area, sales were down sharply and prices, slightly, as they were in Palm Beach County as a whole. But the Florida statewide numbers were even worse.

“The inventories (in West Palm Beach-Boca Raton) are at an all-time high,” says Clark Toole, CEO of Coldwell Banker’s Florida operations.

“Things are selling, but they have to be priced correctly, and that may be something that was a 2003 asking price.”

Does that mean breathing room for Florida mortgage seekers. We’ll have to stay tuned. But don’t look for a slowdown in luxury home sales.

Homes priced above $1 million in the area are “holding their own,” Toole says. “People in that category may not be as affected by, say, rising gas prices.”

Or rising Florida mortgage rates, for that matter.

A Florida real estate mogul is trying to sell his 6.5-acre estate, with nearly 500 feet along the beach (below, left). The property, which he bought in 2004 for $41.2 million, has been extensively remodeled.

Meanwhile, the median-priced house (below, right) features three bedrooms, two and a half bathrooms, and 2,812 square feet.