Miami's Coconut Grove Area Faces 10-Month Supply Of Condos Listed For Sale In South Florida Amidst COVID-19 Pandemic

Buyers Purchased Less Than 15 Coconut Grove Condos In Q1 2020 

(This Report Is Powered By The Condo Vultures® Podcast Series Featuring Expert Peter Zalewski

DOWNTOWN MIAMI (June 24, 2020) - More than 40 condo units are formally listed for sale in Miami's Coconut Grove neighborhood in the South Florida county of Miami-Dade amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new report from Condo Vultures® Realty LLC.

Based on condo sales of more than four units monthly in the first three months of 2020, the Coconut Grove market now has nearly a 10-month supply of units available for purchase in the tricounty South Florida region of Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach at the traditional start of the Summer Buying Season, according to the report based on data from the Southeast Florida MLS Matrix.

A balanced market is generally considered to have about six months of supply. More months of condo supply listed for sale suggests a buyer’s advantage and less months typically indicates a seller’s advantage in the market.

It is worth noting this report only tracks those Coconut Grove condos formally listed for sale. The report does not factor in the nearly 47,750 new condo units currently in the development pipeline east of Interstate 95 in the tricounty South Florida region, according to CraneSpotters.com.

In this new COVID-19 pandemic era, numerous questions exist about how the South Florida residential real estate market will perform going forward, both in the short- and medium-term periods. After a typical start to the new year, the South Florida residential real estate market began to change dramatically at the end of the first quarter of 2020. 

When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis declared a "state of emergency to create a pathway to obtain funding and resources to stop the spread of COVID-19" on March 9, 2020, the South Florida residential real estate market continued to function, albeit with changes for safety that included social distancing and a push for virtual tours instead of buyer actually visiting properties.  

Nearly a month later on April 3, 2020, DeSantis instituted a 30-day "statewide stay-at-home order" that effectively shut down the Florida economy but in doing so deemed residential and commercial real estate businesses "essential services," according to an industry press report.

Despite the ability to transact real estate during the "stay-at-home order," it is unclear how many buyers have been willing to view properties - either in person or virtually - in hopes of purchasing residences. It is also unclear how many sellers have opened their properties to potential buyers given the contagiousness of the COVID-19 virus. 

Once the "stay-at-home order" was finally lifted on May 4, 2020 for nearly all of the state - excluding the tricounty South Florida region of Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach - the Florida economy was thought to be in recession like much of the United States. Palm Beach County eventually opened its economy on May 11, 2020, and a week later both Miami-Dade and Broward counties opened for business on a limited basis on May 18, 2020.

A month later during the week of June 22, 2020, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties instituted mandatory mask wearing in public areas in response to a "spike" in the number of COVID-19 cases in the South Florida region, according to the Palm Beach Post. 

Broward County - located between Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties - was expected to follow suit and mandate masks in public areas in the near future.   

This being said, about two Coconut Grove condo units are under contract - or pending - and waiting to transact at an average asking price of about $608,500 each or about $489 per square foot, according to the statistics. 

The average asking price of a Coconut Grove condo currently listed for sale is nearly $2.8 million per unit. This works out to an average asking price of $913 per square foot, according to the data compiled by CondoVulturesRealty.com.

In the first three months of 2020, the average transaction price of a Coconut Grove condo was nearly $1.2 million or about $582 per square foot.

This means the current asking price of a Coconut Grove condo listed for sale is nearly 132 percent higher than the average transaction price achieved on a per-unit basis and nearly 57 percent higher than the average transaction price on a per-square-foot basis between January and March of this year.

In the first quarter of 2020, the sellers who were able to unload their units needed about 143 days to transact a Coconut Grove condo listed for sale. The current Days-On-The-Market average for Coconut Grove condos listed for sale is about 277 days, according to the statistics.

The number of Days-On-The-Market for the condo units currently under contract is about 84 in Coconut Grove, according to the statistics.

CondoVulturesRealty.com is a licensed Florida brokerage that specializes in assisting buyers and tenants in value-oriented condo acquisitions and leases in the tricounty region of Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach.

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