When selling a property, most often the owner sets an asking price somewhat more than he/she thinks the property is worth.
Common sense applied, they expect a bid somewhat lower, but will gladly accept the higher price, if the buyer offers it.
During the 2020-21 "lockdown", residential mortgage interest sank to its lowest rate in over 50 years. Banks, flush with cash, were uninterested in loaning money. Every minor deviancy from the bank's already intolerable requirements stopped closings and put borrowers in limbo until resolved.
At the same time, democrat-controlled administrations in "sanctuary" cities were running their decent business and residential folks out of town with "defund the police" and other protected BLM-focused programs. Displaced residents matriculated from inflated "bourgeois" taxation to Texas and Florida. Accumulated wealth and its politics from the North and West ran headlong to the South and East
Competition for every available home in Florida resulted in a serious "Seller's Market". An asking price, inflated to increase seller's profit to about what one would expect, formed the foundation from which buyer's bid against one another - a greater offer than was asked winning. Existing houses sold for $10K to $50K above their asking price. The watch word was, if you sell, you better have a residence somewhere else, or be prepared for unaffordable housing yourself.
In '22, with Federal interest rates raised artificially to their mid-'90's levels, residential real estate sales in Florida have cooled and returned to a semblance of the "Buyer's Market" dominated by location-location-location, where demand is significantly higher. Development and home construction that had started has cooled again.
What I see for myself are rising interest rates, inflated fuel, material, and labor, cooling of the demand for new home construction, engineering and development formerly stopped is aching to be completed, and unscrupulous unsupervised contractors, or their and unscrupulous workers, are cutting corners in their attempt to make a fast buck. For instance, the developer of 130-acres adjacent to our church, unsupervised by the County, cut all vegetation to within 20-feet of our property line, when their permit allows no cutting within 40-feet. They dumped used oil and filters from construction equipment in the conservation woodland. Now, as storms produce runoff, it pollutes and kills all vegetation in the public right-of-way ditches on its way straight to the Federally protected Indian River.
To me, it is another Carpet Bagger Invasion. An analogy might be insufficient lubrication at startup galling the cylinder walls in the process. It is going to take time for EVERYTHING to stabilize in this uncertain economy. There is no New Normal. The "bounce" at rebound has exceeded all expectations, and not for the better.
