Brad O'Connor directly addresses camera:  We are now in the thick of the spring home buying season here in Florida. As the latest statistics from Florida Realtors for April of 2024 show, closed sales remain lower than what we may have been used to prior to the pandemic, but they are holding fairly steady. Meanwhile, prices continue to rise at a much more sustainable pace and options for buyers continue to expand.
Let's start by taking a look at closed sales of single-family homes in April. Closed sales in this property type category were up almost 6% year over year, but notice on our chart here that in April of 2023, there was a temporary dip in sales, so that is part of the reason we are up this past month on a year over year basis. Note that sales were a little bit stronger in May of last year, so we may see next month that we are down again compared to a year ago. Compared to the last couple of years before the pandemic, we are still down in this property type category, as well—by a little over 8 ½% compared to April 2019 and by about 3% compared to April of 2018.
Over in the townhouse and condo property type category, it's a similar story. In April, we were up by almost 2% year over year in closed sales, but compared to pre-pandemic levels, we were again down. Compared to April 2019, we were down by almost 13 ½%, while we were down close to 11% compared to April of 2018.
As for the incoming supply of homes for sale, new listings of single-family homes remained elevated in both property type categories. In April, new listings of single-family homes were up 25% compared to a year ago, although this level of new listings, while significantly greater than last year, is much more in line with our typical pre-pandemic numbers. New listings of single-family homes were up a little under 4% compared to April 2019, and a little over 3% compared to April 2018.
Similar to single-family homes, new listings of townhouses and condos were up about 24% year over year in April. But in this property type category, we are seeing a level of new listings that is higher than what we would have expected pre-pandemic. New listings of townhouses and condos were a little over 11 ½% greater than what we saw in April of 2019, and a little over 9% above what we saw in April of 2018.
With the level of sales remaining a bit low and a continued increase in new listings, bidding wars have died down in many parts of the state, and we are seeing the typical home for sale last a bit longer on the market before going under contract. The typical single-family home that had a closed sale in April sat on the market for about 35 days before going under contract, which is about 13% longer than we saw a year ago in April of 2023. Notably though, this is about the same number of days on market you would have expected in April of 2018, and about 19% fewer days than single-family homes were sitting on the market at this time in 2019. 
Townhouses and condos that sold in April were typically on the market for about 43 days, so a little bit longer than single-family homes, and about 48% longer than last year. So quite a significant increase there, but again, we can look at April of 2018 where we saw the median was 43 days as well, and there was a significantly higher median of 51 days in April of 2019.
With new listings outpacing sales, and homes sitting on the market a bit longer than a year ago, we have seen quite a bit of inventory growth in recent months here in Florida. You're probably seeing lots of headlines about Florida's rapid rise in inventory, but we need some perspective on that. And probably the best way to do that is to again compare to pre-pandemic levels, which can be represented by the dotted lines here on this inventory chart. You can look to see that single-family inventory is not quite back to the typical 2014-to-2019 level that we were used to, but it is getting close. And on the townhouse and condo side, we do now exceed that typical level of inventory that we had in the years ahead of the pandemic. Still—focus now on the left side of the chart and just keep in mind that the level of inventory we have now is not comparable to what we faced early last decade, when we had an ongoing foreclosure crisis coming out of the Great Recession. The fact that our measure of days on market is much more similar to what we saw immediately ahead of the pandemic or even below that level in some cases, gives us reason to be positive about our recent increase in inventory, which is going to ease price growth and allow for more opportunities for prospective buyers who were left in the cold when inventory was so low a couple years ago.
So now let's close by looking at recent price growth, starting with single family homes, where the median sale price in April increased by almost 5% year over year up to just under $430,000. Again, this is a much more manageable rate of price growth, and of course there are some parts of the state where price growth is even lower than this, but generally we're seeing positive price growth in most places. Over in the townhouse and condo category, the median price increased by just over 3% to $335,000.
As always, Florida Realtors has a wide array of other metrics available for you to review, not only at the statewide level, but also for your local market. Florida Realtors members can find the latest statistics on our interactive web application, SunStats. And of course our statewide statistics are available to everyone at floridarealtors.org. Thanks for watching—we'll see you next month!