Brad O'Connor directly addresses camera:  Closed sales of existing homes were down in Florida on a year-over-year basis in October, based on the latest statistics from Florida Realtors. But new contracts were up year over year, as were new listings. Let's dig deeper into these numbers to see what's going on.
In this chart, I'm showing you the statewide number of closed existing single-family sales in each month dating back to January 2019 but let's focus specifically on 2022, shown here in blue, and 2023, shown in green. You may recall previously in September, we were up on a year-over-year basis for the first time in 2023. But as I said at the time, there's no guarantee that is going to continue, and lo and behold, we were down modestly in October by 5.3%. As you can see though, we are pretty much in the same neighborhood that we were in last year. That has been a pretty common theme throughout 2023, where the housing market has not improved much, but it hasn't really worsened either. We are kind of in this holding pattern until interest rates really make a true downward shift. When that will happen is still unclear, so the best thing to do for now is plan for both a scenario where they remain elevated and a scenario where they begin to fall. Most likely, rates will remain elevated until we start to see a more consistent amount of economic data telling us that the labor market is weakening more substantially than it has been.
The number of existing single-family homes that went under contract in October was actually a bit more interesting. The typical 30-year fixed mortgage rate climbed to about 8% during the month, and yet, new pending sales of single-family homes were up by 8.4%. As we will see later in this video, part of this may be due to an increase in listings available to prospective buyers, who as we know have long been frustrated by a lack of selection. And some of it is definitely due to base effects in Southwest Florida, because that's where some of the strongest year-over-year growth in new contracts was. At this time last year, Southwest Florida was recovering from Hurricane Ian and new pending sales in that region were much lower than usual. That said, there was also a small increase in cash sales year-over-year in October, which you would certainly expect when rates climb as high as 8%. The share of single-family closed sales that were paid in all cash in October was 31%, which is higher than the 28.4% share they had a year ago. Most of these cash sale contracts were also signed in October, which means these cash sales counted as new contracts in the statistics, as well.
Over in the townhouse and condo category, closed sales fell by about 3% year over year. New contracts in this category were up by 1.4% year over year, a much more limited gain than what we saw in single-family home contracts. This weakness in new contract growth for townhouses and condos was prevalent throughout much of the state, but particularly in coastal areas. Much of the new construction occurring throughout the state has been multifamily units, although to be fair, a lot of those are being built as rentals, so the exact impact on existing townhouse and condo sales is hard to quantify. Cash sales made up a nearly 54% share of closed sales in this category in October, compared to 49.4% a year ago. Again, that is in response to interest rates climbing to 8%.
Let's turn now to home seller activity and look at new listings of existing single-family homes in October. For the second straight month, new listings in this category were up year over year, this time by 14.5%. Similar to what we saw with new contracts, some of this increase in new listings was also due to a base effect in Southwest Florida, with new listings being suppressed last October in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Ian. Looking at the chart, though, you'll also notice that there was a slight uptick on a month over month basis. That's not something we've seen over the past couple of years, but this was quite a common occurrence for October in prior years, as prospective sellers prepared for the annual arrival of snowbirds from up north. 
This year-over-year growth in new listings of existing single-family homes was markedly greater than the growth we saw in new contracts over the same time frame, and as a result, at the end of October, the statewide inventory of single-family homes on the market was 8.6% greater than it was a year ago. As you can see on the chart, that's a slight acceleration in month-over-month growth in inventory, compared to recent months, as well. We saw something similar last year during the summer, and it didn't last, but there's never a guarantee that history will repeat itself, so we'll continue to monitor this latest spurt in inventory growth.
Turning back to the townhouse and condo category, new listings were up by nearly *30%* year-over-year, so as you might expect, inventory growth in this category was also quite sizeable, coming in at 44.6% year-over-year.
Still, whether you look at single-family homes or townhouses and condos, inventories remain below the levels that were typical of the 6 or 7 years leading up to the pandemic. So supply is still limited and as a result, prices have remained fairly stable. The median sale price for single-family homes in October was up 2% year-over-year, to $410,000. Over in the townhouse and condo category, meanwhile, the median price was up just a bit under 4%, to about $322,000.
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.