BREAKING!: INVENTORY SURGE in 5 Orlando Luxury Markets: Predictions for Buyers and Sellers in 2025

Ladies and gentlemen, if you're in the market now for a million dollar plus home or you own a property like this right now, you're in for an absolute treat because today I'm doing a deep dive analysis on the eight top luxury markets in the Orlando metro area. And you would say, Jared, how in the world are you going to give us this ranking? Where does your data come from? Well, number one, I'm pulling this from the backend of the MLS data provided by the Florida Association of Realtors. And number two, the ranking is based on a two-year outlook of the housing market going backwards. As you know already, back in 2022, Jerome Powell, in order to fight inflation, started jacking up the interest rate right in the middle of the year. And since that time, we have had an absolute fall off in transactions. So in 2023, last year, the year that followed this timeframe where we had interest rates go from literally 3% to nearly 7.5%, 30-year fixed interest rates. Overnight, we ultimately had a 30-year low in transaction volume in 2023. Now here we are, we're going 2024, we're wrapping it up, going into 2025. And as luck would have it, we're even selling fewer homes in 2024. But at the same time, home sellers, once interest rates started climbing late 2022, they've pulled themselves out of the marketplace. Many marketplaces, even though the buyer volume became very anemic, home sellers themselves kind of kept the market from spiraling because they did not push a lot of inventory in the market. Because if they had of, with the lack of buyers, would have had a very high supply situation. And ultimately that would have had a very dampening effect on the housing market, especially in the price points. But as you may know, if you follow my channel, I do a lot of deep dive analytics on all the marketplaces around Orlando because they all function differently. Today, I'm going to rank these markets from coldest to very hottest. So you can know which markets are outperforming all the rest and which ones are struggling just a bit here as we round out 2024. Jared, how did you pick the eight marketplaces? These are the marketplaces that turn over the highest 1 million plus single family residences. You're thinking of places like Lake Nona, Windermere, College Park, Winter Park, Lake Mary, all of those and more. Let's dive into the update. All right, my friends, let's get started. We are starting with number eight, the coldest million dollar home market on the list, and that's going to be Celebration and Reunion, Florida. Now, this marketplace is balanced in that it's struggling in both the amount of buyer demand it has and the amount of supply it has. So it's very high supply, and it's also finding a struggle to find buyers. The reason why I'm sharing this is because through all the markets I'm going to show you, I'm really going to show you this one chart on the screen. And when you see this chart climbing, like you see it visibly here, where in recent months, Reunion and Celebration, Florida has seen over 10 months of supply. One month in the past year, they were over 11 months of supply. Months of supply is the ultimate indicator that you can check to see how dead a market is or how overly active it is. When months of supply is very high, what that is a measure of telling us, if you stop listing all homes in this particular market, this is just how long it would take you to sell off the existing inventory. And keep in mind, that's if you stop listing them in real terms, if you're in the marketplace, you're going to have new homes hitting the market on top of what's already there. And what this chart tells us in Reunion and Celebration, there have been recent months where it is anywhere from 9 to 11 months of time based on how slowly buyers are purchasing homes there versus what is sitting on the market. It's a very good read for all of these markets. And I'm going to show you as you see the markets on the top of the list, they're diametrically in different positions than this market. So getting back to Reunion and Celebration, and I want to tell you this, if you're in Celebration watching this video, you got to understand you share a market with Reunion in your same zip code. So I'm pulling data. There's actually a fair number of million dollar properties in Reunion. And ultimately, you could have more of this chart, I would say, biased, struggling, negative signaling from the Reunion side or the STR market more than you're seeing it from the more owner-occupant rich million dollar purchases and million dollar sales over on the Celebration side of things. But I will tell you this, the reason why you're noticing, if you look at the bottom of this chart, you had 10 months of supply in moving season, it kind of dropped a little. Now it's just inside of a 10 month supply. Most recent month is 9.7 months of time to sell through this zip code. The saving grace, okay, Jared, why is it falling? Falling is a good indicator, right? The only reason it's falling is not an uptick of buyers, okay? And we had interest rates fall recently, they were shot back up. But for 30 days, the month that we're looking at this particular chart, it's all a factor of just sellers pulling back, okay? If sellers didn't pull back, if you had a normal pace of sellers in Reunion and Celebration like you've had for the past 18 months, because like I said, it's drawn down in the last 90 days, but demand isn't setting any records here, okay? So the amount of buyers putting homes under contracts that I mentioned earlier, it's up one month, down the next in terms of how active buyers actually are. And ultimately, when you look at the unsold inventory, because there's just a lot of homes for sale, plus one mil here, there's a narrative of a lot of these homes in this particular area are sitting 250, 300 days, sometimes more than a year on the market, which is way less common than the rest of the markets I'm going to show you here in a minute. Hey, I'm interrupting myself to ask you, are you thinking of buying or selling a home? Make one call, that's all, and put my 23 years of experience and nearly 4,000 sold homes to work for you. All right, number seven on the list is Lake Mary Heathrow. We're looking at 32746. You're going to notice that as of late, they are at a six month of supply, 131% above last year. You can see that really all this year, from January till present month, it has literally shot up in this marketplace unabated. And this month marks the highest number that this market has ever seen in months of supply at a six month mark. So why is this happening? If you look back end of 2023, there was actually a very stabilizing market here, two and a half months of supply. Sellers owned the marketplace coming at the end of 2023. But if you're a seller in this marketplace now, it feels very different. And why is this happening? Because right now, in the past four to six months, there have been a much higher index of people in this market hitting the market, more so than even the last market I showed you in the Celebration Reunion area. As a comparison to recent time, sellers are now saying enough's enough. I don't care that it's going to cost me more for a high interest rate where I'm going. For whatever reason, the sellers in this market are selling and the buying pace is not keeping up with how fast these listings are hitting the market. If there isn't an abatement soon, if the direction this market's going with the amount of sellers listing all at the same time, having them stagnantly unsold in the moment, then you are ultimately going to see this climbing at six to seven and eight months going into January of next year. There may be an abatement in the spring, but we will see. If I'm a buyer, I got some great opportunities. And if you're a seller in this market, you need an agent that's very sharp and able to read the market, understanding what's going on neighborhood by neighborhood, because the supply side for the sellers, way more competition than it has been in probably more than a year to a year and a half range. Now, the next market we're talking about is Dr. Phillips in three, two, eight, one nine. You can see here that in a three-year graph, the most recent month on record. Again, this is a month with low interest rates. There was a 6% interest rate. You probably got a jumbo loan at six, six and a quarter this particular month. If there was a time when the marketplace should have been bringing this number down, it didn't. And 8.3 is a three-year high for Dr. Phillips. It's all a supply side narrative. It is all a push, particularly the share, because when I look back in the end of 2022, going into 23, closings were keeping a steady pace. Look how low this was under four months of supply, which is really, this was an active market coming up all the way towards the end of 2023, that the marketplace here was balanced, you know, is almost balanced to the degree that the market under a million is trading. So the market under a million, if you're looking at four to $800,000 price points in the same zip code, those were in the same pattern. Usually a lot of times you see luxury a little bit elevated, a little bit longer on the market. And ultimately this market was a lot tighter. That number has now been climbing and has doubled in the past year. And again, this is because in the past six months, there have been single months, meaning listings coming to market. For instance, in March or May or you had months where it was double and triple the volume. Okay. So you had much bigger numbers of sellers pushing inventory supply side was much, much higher. So while there is arguably been not necessarily any change in the amount of buyers in this market, the buyers are just kind of buying them at the similar clip. The pendings haven't fallen off. It hasn't been this thing where the buyers pull Now they are historically low numbers of buyers. Okay. These aren't big years. We're seeing where buyers are just buying up a lot of inventory. Like you were when interest rates were severely low early 2021 end of 2020. But what we are seeing is there's just a been a huge resurgence in eight, one nine of sellers saying enough's enough. How's this hitting the market? There's a lot more and supply side is growing much faster than that steady pace of pendings. Buyers are putting just that steady pace, new listings, just far outpaced them for many months. And ultimately the pile of unsold homes gets higher and higher. Now, winter garden is number five on the list. And it makes this list because much like the most recent market or two that I've mentioned a surge in supply. There has been a little bit of a pullback in buyer activity from last year, but there is a lot of supply, nearly 80 homes. It's one of the largest supplies of a million plus single family homes in the entire Orlando Metro. Most people, I don't think, believe that when they're in winter park, college park, or Lake Nona, they look at winter garden. It's kind of like the outlier horizon West. There's a lot of town homes. There's a mix of apartments. There's affordable housing and there are some luxury houses. There are a lot of waterfront property, but people I think would be surprised to know that most of the million dollar turnover is in winter garden, Florida. And right now winter garden went from a 1.7 month of supply July, 2022. When you were trading homes here, you would run out of luxury homes in under two months. It was one of the fastest trading markets. And one of the things that I noticed as I looked at the trends here, and if you're in winter garden, you need to pay close attention. Closings are down in the million plus segment. They're actually negative. The other thing is dollar volume is down in three out of the past four months. Dollar volume is adding up all the million dollar home sales. And you're looking at it against prior year, almost like looking at GDP for our country. And most like 99% of all of the categories of prices across Orlando every month, dollar volume is always positive. Just like GDP positive means it's up. It's there's it's moving in a good direction. Negative tends to mean there's possibly a recessionary force going on. The market is uncommon. And right now there have been several months strung together in the million plus for winter garden. You're seeing a lot of them out there. You're starting to see damn market time grow. And it just means you have to have a competency in your pricing right now. If you do need to sell right now, winter garden, because there is a lot of competition. And that is why you have an elevated nearly six month of supply for everything to sell off based on how fast they're turning over. All right. Number four on the list is Windermere, Florida. Now, Windermere and three, four, seven, eight, six, much like winter park. And I would let the cat out of the bag, but Windermere has been one of the most thriving zip codes. Even when a lot of Orlando in the past year, all price points, a lot of Orlando has been shifting towards buyer favored markets crossing over kind of a neutral. And again, you all remember in the hype of the COVID era, sellers were very strong. They had control. And just in the last year, the narrative has kind of slowly shifted towards the buyer. Well, Windermere, a couple of zip codes. You're going to see at the top of the list. This is where you start to see the golden child of the luxury market. And honestly, Windermere has been the golden child at any price point. I know it's inexplicable to me. It's a very landlocked area. You know, it's not, there's some construction going on, but most of it's infilling going on, particularly in the luxury market now. And what you're seeing in the past four to five months is a shift in demand. Again, you understand if Windermere is number four on the list of eight, it's doing better than most, but you are seeing, look at this past six months, it's kind of gone elevated. It's bumping on the ceiling of a seven month supply of homes and kind of softening down a little bit. Recently, what we're seeing in supply here in Windermere is not what I told you in Dr. Phillips and in Lake Mary. Those two markets that I spoke about briefly had a big resurgence of sellers saying, I'm out, I'm listing, I'm done. Windermere is not seeing that. Supply is nothing crazy, but as I've been watching this marketplace and Windermere being largely under a five month supply in the luxury market range, this has shifted largely over the past eight months because there have been several months in Windermere where buyers have been way out of the market. So to give you an example, moving season, peak season, families are out of school. This is when we play musical chairs in Keynes Point and all these other markets where you tend to have a spike in marketplace shifting as people trade through the summer months. April, May, and July sales were down in Windermere, 30%, 40%, and 25% respectively. And again, even while sellers, their activity in putting homes to the market is just steady, nothing spiked, nothing out of the norm, your unsold inventory is just climbing as a result of buyers not being there. And I will say, and this is kind of something that we could set as a backdrop for the entire luxury segment, something that has been an interesting phenomenon, not just in the Orlando market, but in a Miami Metro, some of these other areas, if you've seen some of my other updates on luxury, there has been a significant drawing down in the amount of all cash buyers over the past five or six months. Really since about March, there are even markets like Miami where there is actually a very low percentage of mortgage purchasing versus cash. Cash has pulled significantly back. And that is why a lot of times when I'm doing a luxury update, people tend to say, zone out. When I'm talking about interest rates are high, they're like, well, who cares about interest rates? These are high cash purchasers. A high percentage of cash involvement in this market segment, it's dropping. So the percentage of purchasing by cash in most of these markets, give you an idea. If a market segment has a 30% running average, where all the purchasing is coming all cash, you're seeing that number drop by 30%. So instead of 30, it's closer to 20 or 18% purchasing from cash. It's a phenomenon happening across the entire state. But again, Windermere makes the list at number four. It's been one of the tightest markets. It is look like it's transitioning a little bit towards the looser side. And you can see that with how elevated. So this chart's been running really below five months at all times, except for 2024. And that's been anemic buyer activity. Let's move on. All right. We're number three on the list with Lake Nona. And I want to say this about the top three, the top three of the Orlando Metro that are making my list are the only three markets that you could actually characterize based on the data as being neutrally balanced, neutral markets. You're not, you wouldn't be characterized as seller favored or seller having an over amount of strength in the dealmaking. And these are the only ones that are neutral versus everybody that was four to eight. All of those, the argument made that it's either slipping just inside of for a place like Windermere and the ones listed towards the bottom of that list, like Lake Mary celebration reunion. Those areas are solidly buyer strength buyers, having more negotiating power in the marketplace, but let's look at three to eight to seven, three to eight to seven. You can see was really below four months of supply. This is a luxury market that had been largely competing how fast they turn over a million dollar homes with the national market, all homes, any price point also including very comparable with Orlando's average Orlando being one of the hottest markets in the country of the past four to five years. But look what's happened. It is elevated a little, but it's held flat for about 18 months now. And it's made a sizable dip. It dropped in September, most recent month that we have data for by nearly 30%. Now, what I will tell you as I did all the research on both zip codes, if you're in Lake Nona and this, you're saying, this isn't my side of the area. I'm going to pull yours in a second, but look at this 18 months. If you look at this and pull back, is it climbing? No, you don't see this major right side upward shift that we've seen far from markets four to eight. Why is that happening? Because the demand is there. So let me tell you this in 2023, like the other markets, it was anemic. Sellers did not push a bunch of homes in the market. Buyers were also very anemic, very low levels this year and eight to seven sellers stepped up their game. They pushed a big move of inventory compared to prior years. When that happened, the reason why, when this could have shifted higher with all that supply buyer demand met it. So buyer demand with more choice, gobbled it up and everything kind of stayed along this six month mark, even with a tells me that this is a tighter feel market. Okay. So if you're in this marketplace, the homes that are high appeal probably sell reasonably fast. Now let's take a look at eight, three, two. Now you can see eight, three, two functions a little different. Now the marketplace is not spiraling. You got to understand that even though visually there's an upward move back here in the summer of last year, there was only a two month supply of homes. So this right here is ridiculously tight market. So what you're seeing here is just little more of a balanced marketplace. This is not crazy by any stretch of the imagination, but this marketplace has had very low inventory versus the amount of buyers that are there. So it's just been, you know, this market even last year probably was not fun for buyers. Okay. So a two month supply, one of two things are happening. Either you're in a dog fight to get what's there, or you just have so little choice. You might end up buying somewhere else anyways. So essentially you're seeing the market loosen up a little bit. There's been a pickup of supply, but look, what's happening. There has been the same story in eight, three, two, as I told you in eight to seven, where more sellers this year have picked up the games that I'm out. I got to sell. I'm not staying. And I think what's happening is everybody's mentally getting their heads around. Okay. I have to sell. Rates are high. So what I think 23 people looked around and obviously if they're going to sell, they're going to go somewhere else. Those high interest rates played a role in them saying, Nope, I'm waiting. Seven and a half percent's a lot. It's a big bullet to bite moving somewhere else. Now it's still 7%, 7% plus as we're now heading into 2025. But I think it's at a point now where the seller's like, Hey, I've made my peace with God on this. I'm going to move no matter what. But again, even though it is an elevated fashion, look, we had, you had a fall off, uh, this current month. And this tells me too, I think, um, without even looking at it, I bet you money. Lake Nona has a fair amount of finance buyer activity all year round. Okay. So you have a balance of people that buy in Lake Nona. They're probably families that, you know, moving equity from somewhere else. They don't have all the cash to pay off the house. Like if I look at a marketplace like Windermere, I'd imagine you probably have a percent, a good bit percentage higher of all cash purchasing going on where you don't have that here. So this sweep that took place last month was a result of that, that rate, the interest rate falling help this market out. However, that rate is now no longer there. As of October 1st, literally the interest rate just took off and headed North for almost a full percentage point. So I have to see what the future holds. We'll watch Lake Nona, but it finds itself at number three on the list. All right. Number two on the list is college park. And the largest segment of million plus transacted in this area. So it's a good pulse to check, to get an idea of how this market in the central part of town is moving. Now, to give you a feel of what you're looking at here on this three-year chart, look at how low this market is. This is the summer of last year. Now this is a timeframe when rates have now been elevated at around seven for a running a year. Okay. June of 2023, this market had 1.8 month of supply. Meaning you stop listing million dollar homes. They're gone under two months. That's super hot, very low amount of choice for the buyer. Look what's happening. Even now throughout the summer, it's under three months. Now it's just balanced above it's about 4.7 months. But again, this market has its ebbs and flows. It never really gets out of hand when you got to understand most of the markets we looked at are way. If there was a chart up here, they'd be up here. And this market really kind of stays very, very tight. And for that reason, 3, 2, 8, 0, 4 is number two on the list. All right. Number one on the list is winter park, Florida. Now, if you saw a recent update, I did a deep dive for all price ranges in winter park on this channel, maybe about a month and a half ago. At that point, I was done because I don't stare at this particular markets data all too often, but winter park in the $1 million plus category is much like college park. It is running very consistently. It stays. Look at this. This is almost three years of time and you stay anywhere between a two month of supply. And now where you're running at about four, four and a half months of supply. So this particular marketplace is very dependable for the home sellers. Home seller has a house in the market. It's gone. There's a buyer for it. It does not spiral. There's not a big stack of unsold homes that are in this marketplace. And winter park, as you can guess, is a decent size luxury marketplace. There is a decent amount of turnover. There's an opportunity for a lot of homes. If there weren't buyers for them to stack up and have unsold inventory spiral, you'll notice recently here in moving season, there's this little spike. We actually crossed over the five month of supply mark and it's coming right back down. So there was a little bit of sellers kind of tiptoeing into the market. But all in all, when you take a wide view of winter park, Florida, it is a very in demand market. There is a steady interest in this marketplace in the amount of sellers here is just not enough to stack inventory, making it the reigning champ right now going into 2025 for the luxury markets that we've ranked here for Orlando. If you're in the central Florida area and you're looking for a great church, I'd love for you to join me at the Grove Bible Chapel. Just visit joinmeathegrove.com for full details. When life changes and it's time to move, the process can feel stressful and overwhelming. You need a real estate professional who can make it smooth and simple. That's why you need to make one call. That's all. Put my 23 years of experience and nearly 4,000 satisfied homes sold to work for you.