Condos In 'Deteriorating' Buyers Market At Start Of 2025-26 South Florida Winter Buying Season

In this issue of the Miami Condo Market Intelligence Report™, we analyze the South Florida Overall and Vintage condo markets at the start of the busiest six-month period for condo shopping.

Volume 2025, Issue 45 (Subscribe here)

For this week’s Miami Condo Market Intelligence Report™ newsletter, we analyze the Overall and Vintage condo markets in the tricounty South Florida region of Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach at the start of the 2025-26 Winter Buying Season.

To access the audio version of this Miami Condo Market Intelligence Report™ newsletter, please use the Substack app.

Retailers look to the December holidays to bolster their bottom line, and South Florida developers and condo sellers rely on the six-month long Winter Buying Season for the same boost.

The most important season for condo shopping in South Florida has officially begun.

The 2025-26 Winter Buying Season that stretches six-months long from November through April is a time when tourists and investors come to town to enjoy the favorable weather, numerous events and Carnival-like atmosphere.

For visitors, their experiences often lead many of them to begin searching for a condo as a second home in the tricounty South Florida region of Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach.

Typically, these visitors end up closing on their transactions sometime during the subsequent Summer Buying Season that stretches between May and October.

As a result, the Winter Buying Season has become an important time—or pipeline—for prospective buyers to condo shop while the Summer Buying Season is when many of those transactions are completed.

In anticipation of their arrival, we conducted an analysis of the Overall and Vintage condo markets in South Florida so that prospective buyers and investors have a better idea of what to expect once they get on the sand.

The new supply metrics—refined using the latest South Florida Summer Buying Season data from May 2025 through October 2025—confirm the market is firmly in the hands of the buyers.

The sheer volume of inventory, coupled with significant transactional headwinds, has created an environment of oversupply that we see is not yet materially correcting, but simply waiting for prices to meet reality.

In the recent past, a Black Swan event such as the Lehman Brothers investment bank failure in 2008 or the pandemic in 2020 has typically broken the logjam necessary for a deep correction to begin.

In analyzing the South Florida Overall condo market—encompassing everything from oceanfront luxury towers to older low-rise properties in the suburbs—we determined that there are currently nearly 26,100 condos actively listed for sale.

Using the six-month Summer Buying Season pace of 2,026 sales per month, the market calculates out to about 12.9 months of supply.

This places the South Florida Overall market precisely at the upper limit of a Buyers Market (7.0 months to 12.9 months) and on the brink of a Deteriorating Buyers Market (13.0 months to 18.9 months), according to our classifications spelled out in the Miami Condo Supply Tracker™.

This deterioration is exacerbated by a monumental disconnect in transactional speed: units that successfully traded during the Summer Buying Season took an average of only 108 days to transact, yet the inventory currently on the market has been available for resale for 190 days and counting.

This is clear evidence that cash-strapped sellers are clinging to prices—an Overall average asking price of $901,900 per unit or $547 per square foot—that buyers are unwilling to consider, even though the Overall units that did trade during the Summer Buying Season traded at a lower range of about $570,585 per unit or $391 per square foot.

This lack of momentum comes despite supportive action from the Federal Reserve, which cut interest rates twice since September 2025 from 4.5 percent down to 4.0 percent currently.

Unfortunately for the condo market, the anticipated decrease in 30-year fixed-rate mortgages has largely failed to materialize, with rates remaining steady above 6 percent - or even increasing - due to growing concerns rising inflation and a slowing job market.

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell describes the current situation as “two-sided risk.”

This presents a troubling dilemma: Will lower mortgage payments truly bolster demand if prospective purchasers lack job stability, a concern compounded by the chilling effect of an aggressive U.S. immigration policy on international buyers who account for a significant share of condo transactions in South Florida.

Meanwhile, the Vintage condo segment—composed of units that are at least 30 years old—is under unique and intense scrutiny.

These Vintage units are the properties most directly affected by the post-2021 Surfside Condo Collapse legislation, which mandates the rigorous 30-year Milestone Study, leading to rising maintenance fees, hefty special assessments and pricey insurance premiums.

The Vintage condo market currently has nearly 17,900 units on the market, yielding 11.8 months of supply when measured against the Summer Buying Season pace of about 1,515 sales per month.

This figure firmly places the Vintage condo segment in a Buyers Market (7.0 to 12.9 months), according to the Miami Condo Supply Tracker™.

While the transactional speed was slightly faster during the Summer Buying Season, closing in an average of only 98 days, the Vintage units that traded did so at a notably lower average price of about $336,862 per unit or about $281 per square foot.

These are price points indicative of the massive price compression occurring as sellers attempt to offload the uncertainty and potential financial liability associated with the 2025 Florida Condo Association Financial Cliff.

To further underline the lack of investment viability, we recently completed a cap rate analysis for two key bellwether markets: Greater Downtown Miami’s Overall condo market and the Miami Beach Vintage condo market.

When the basic expenses of property taxes and median maintenance fees are subtracted from the gross annual rent, the cap rate for Greater Downtown Miami’s Overall condo market penciled out at 0.80 percent, while Miami Beach’s Vintage market was even lower at 0.70 percent.

Based on the Miami Condo Investability Barometer™, the current cap rates for Greater Downtown Overall units and Miami Beach Vintage units fall into the lowest category of Uninvestable (0 percent to 1.99 percent).

For context, a South Florida condo unit is Investable once it generates a cap rate of between 4.00 percent to 5.99 percent.

This analysis confirms that the high cost of ownership is far outpacing the rental income returns, cementing South Florida condos—both Overall and Vintage—as a speculative purchase rather than a cash-flowing asset.

This bearish financial sentiment is partially reflected in the Miami Condo Cliff Index™, which tracks the financial health of 23 high-profile markets in the tricounty region based on Overall units and Vintage units.

The South Florida Overall Condo Cliff Index™ stands at 7.05, showing a 2.95 percent strength since its Jan. 1, 2025, launch point of 6.85 points.

By comparison, the South Florida Vintage Condo Cliff Index™ stands at 6.85, having sunk slightly by 0.24 percent from its Jan. 1, 2025, start at 6.87, confirming that the older housing stock is facing a subtle, persistent erosion of financial health.

As South Florida enters this key Winter Buying Season, the data suggest unequivocally that the balance of power has shifted entirely to the buyer to the detriment of bullish sellers who remember what market conditions were like back in the go-go years 2021, 2022 and 2023.

We will be unveiling our 2025-2026 South Florida Winter Buying Season Outlook at our November Monthly Virtual Meeting at Noon (Miami time) on Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2025.

To provide some foreshadowing: We are bullish for buyers and bearish for sellers.

Our outlook for buyers is optimistic as the market for transactions is slowing dramatically, causing sellers to feel immense pressure, especially as their 2026 condo maintenance fees are announced, prompting many to look for an exit to avoid costly refurbishments and the annoyance of living through the construction repairs.

Conversely, our outlook is bearish for sellers because the amount of outstanding supply is such that condos will revert back to their fundamental nature: a commodity.

As we often remind investors, when the South Florida condo market enters a commodity situation with too much supply and insufficient demand, prices must fall in order for transactions to occur despite interest rate cuts for buyers and overimprovements made to the units by the sellers.

The unanswered question going forward is, what factor—inventory glut, rising expenses or lack of investment return—will ultimately force condo sellers to adopt the necessary price cuts necessary to revive this rudderless South Florida condo market?

We are pleased to offer a portion of our research for free to our newsletter subscribers and MiamiCondo.Club readers, providing a glimpse into our insights.

For full access to our comprehensive reports, statistical charts, virtual Monthly Meetings and exclusive MeetUp events, we invite you to join the Miami Condo Investing Club™.

The Club's mission is to foster a community that shares realtime, actionable intelligence on the latest real estate trends, emerging opportunities and trusted service providers throughout South Florida.

Whether you are a Do-It-Yourself (DIY) condo buyer or a seasoned real estate professional, the Club provides invaluable resources, including up-to-date statistics, expert analysis and access to tailored consulting services.

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We also encourage you to explore our podcast, available on all major platforms such as Apple, Spotify and YouTube, for insightful discussions and updates.

As always, our consulting, expert witness and buyside brokerage services remain available to you, building on our established reputation since 2006.

For specific information regarding discounted condo resales or bulk deals in South Florida, please visit CondoVulturesRealty.com or contact our office directly at 305.865.5859.

— Peter Zalewski, Founder of the Miami Condo Investing Club™

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This information is intended for general informational purposes only and is based on research, personal experience, and interviews. It does not constitute legal advice, as we are not legal professionals. While we strive for accuracy and completeness, this information is provided on an "as is" basis, without any warranties or guarantees. As a policy, portions of this report’s language and grammar may have been assisted by AI. All data, editing and fact-checking is always completed by a professional analyst.

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