Brad O'Connor directly addresses camera:  Last year, the typical 30-year fixed mortgage rate in the U.S. increased from about 3% in January to over 7% in November. This threw a wet blanket on what had been a red-hot housing market, reducing both homebuyer demand and the rate of new listings each month. Sales activity slowed down over the course of the year across the entire country, and Florida was no exception.
So far in 2023, the 30-year rate is down from its recent high of last November, but has remained elevated within the range of 6 to 7% for the past four months. Consistency alone *can* be a comforting factor on the demand side in housing, as it reduces prospective buyers' sense of uncertainty and makes them more comfortable wading back into the market. Still, sales levels remain low relative to a year ago here in Florida. In January, closed sales of existing single-family homes were down almost 33% year-over-year. This improved to just over 21% in February. And the latest statistics from Florida Realtors for March showed this trend continued, with closed sales of existing single-family homes falling by only 15% compared to a year ago. 
But a big part of why this year-over-year deficit shrank in March was because the housing market was already starting to weaken in March of 2022. Note how sales were down year-over-year that month, as well. Of course, as rates continued to rise last year, demand weakened further, through the summer and toward the end of the year when rates were near 7%. That means that going forward this year, when we look at the year-over-year change in sales each month, we're going to see a big improvement, but much of that will be because we'll be comparing it to the 2022 market which steadily worsened all year.
For this reason, it's going to be useful to use our last full pre-pandemic year, 2019, as a benchmark as well, as we go through 2023. Single-family sales in February 2023 were only about 2% lower compared to February 2019, but in March 2023, they were up 4.6% compared to March of 2019. So sales, at least, continue to trend closely with the pre-pandemic market.
Over in the townhouse and condo category, sales were down 23.5% year-over-year in March, but this was also an improvement compared to the prior two months. And compared to March of 2019, sales were up by over 8%. 
Inventory levels in both property type categories remained higher than a year ago, with single-family inventory up 116% year-over-year, and townhouse and condo inventory up by 108%. But we remain well below pre-pandemic inventory levels, and as a result, price growth has only slowed down rather than fully reversing.
The median price for single-family home sales closing in March was $405,000, an increase of just over 2% compared to a year ago. And in the townhouse and condo category, the median sale price rose by almost 4%, up to $320,000.
Those are the statewide numbers, of course, but what about your local market? Is it seeing the same trends? It's easy to find out if you're a member of Florida Realtors. Just go to sunstats.floridarealtors.org and log in to view the latest market data for your area. We have the whole state covered down to the city- and ZIP Code-level. Thanks for watching! I'll see you next month.