Broward's Two Housing Markets: 12.9 Months of Condo Supply vs. 4.6 Months for Houses

A client called me last week from a driveway in Plantation. She'd been reading about the "Florida buyer's market" for six months, walked into a three-bedroom house with a pool, offered $40,000 under list because that's what the internet told her to do, and got beat by a cash buyer over asking in eleven days.

Then she asked me the only question that matters: "So is it a buyer's market or not?"

Here's my honest answer, and it's the whole point of this post. Broward County is running two housing markets at the same time, and they are not close.

Condos and townhomes in Broward have been sitting on roughly 12.9 months of supply. Single-family homes have been running near 4.6 months. A balanced market is about five to six months. So on one side of the county line you have nearly triple the competition among sellers, and on the other side you have a market that is still tilted toward the seller.

Same county. Same insurance environment. Same mortgage rates. Two completely different negotiations. And the price gap tells the same story: Broward's median single-family sale has been near $650,000 while the median condo and townhome has been closer to $255,000, with a blended county median around $469,000.

Why Condos Got Hit and Houses Didn't

People assume this gap is about taste — that buyers suddenly decided they don't want condos. That's not it. Three specific forces landed on condo buildings and walked right past single-family houses.

One: the milestone and reserve rules. Florida required older buildings to inspect their structures and fund a structural integrity reserve study on a real timeline. Buildings that had deferred concrete, envelope, and roof work for twenty or thirty years got handed the actual bill. Dues climbed. Special assessments landed. A lot of long-time owners — many retired, many on fixed income — opened a five-figure assessment letter and listed instead of writing the check.

Two: association insurance. When a single-family owner's premium jumps, that owner absorbs it privately. When a 300-unit association's master policy jumps, it flows straight into every owner's monthly HOA payment, and it shows up in every buyer's debt-to-income calculation. Rising dues don't just annoy buyers — they shrink how much house that buyer qualifies for.

Three: warrantability. Well over a thousand Florida buildings have landed on Fannie Mae's unavailable list, which means conventional financing is off the table there. That doesn't just reduce demand for those units — it deletes most of the buyer pool and leaves cash. When a building goes unwarrantable, the supply in that building effectively stops moving and quietly stacks into the county inventory count.

None of those three touched a house in Cooper City. That is the entire reason one county is producing two opposite numbers. I've written about how to check whether a building is on that list before you fall in love with a unit, and it is the single most valuable ten minutes of due diligence in this market.

The Statewide Backdrop Is Tightening

Here's the part that changes the clock on this. Florida's end-of-month inventory fell about 13% year over year in August and dropped below where it stood two years ago. Statewide, the single-family median ticked up just over 1% to roughly $415,000, and the condo and townhouse median rose nearly 3% to just under $298,000. Broward's total home sales have been climbing for several consecutive months.

Read that carefully, because most buyers read it backwards. Supply is contracting while sales are rising. That is not what the bottom of a market looks like on the way down — that's what it looks like on the way sideways into a turn.

I am not going to tell you condos are about to rip. The distressed end of that market has real work left to do and some older buildings have repriced 20 to 40% for reasons that haven't been fixed yet. But the buyers who keep waiting for a cleaner bottom are watching the number of listings available to them shrink every single month. Twelve-point-nine months of condo supply is a lot of leverage. It is also less leverage than there was in the spring.

How I'd Play Each Side of This County

If you're buying a Broward condo

Underwrite the building before you negotiate the unit. Milestone and recertification status. The structural integrity reserve study. Two to three years of dues history plus the current budget. Insurance renewal history. Litigation disclosure. Rental restrictions. Warrantability. I want all seven before we talk about the kitchen, because any one of them can erase every dollar we negotiate.

Negotiate the assessment, not just the price. This is where Broward condo buyers leave the most money on the table. At nearly 13 months of supply, I'm asking the seller to pay a pending assessment in full at closing, fund a rate buydown, and cover closing costs. On the monthly payment, a seller-funded buydown often beats an equivalent price cut. Price is the headline. Terms are the money.

Target the building that already paid. My favorite trade in South Florida right now is a well-run older tower where the milestone work is finished, the assessment is already paid, and the reserves are funded — bought at the price the frightened market is putting on every building of that vintage. You get the completed product at the scared discount. That's the one I'd put my own money into.

If you're buying a Broward house

Drop the buyer's-market script. At 4.6 months, a lowball offer with a long inspection window and a financing contingency loses to a cleaner offer at a similar price. Your edge isn't price — it's certainty. Full underwriting done up front, tight timelines, flexibility on possession.

Compete on structure, not on emotion. Ask what the seller actually needs. I've won houses for clients at the same number as a competing offer because we gave the seller a rent-back and they needed thirty days.

Know your submarket, not the county. Inventory in Weston at $1.2M does not behave like inventory in Pompano at $475,000. I run the numbers by city and band before we write anything.

And hold the wider context, because it explains why the top of this market never softened at all: while Broward condos pile up, executives and entire firms keep landing in South Florida every quarter. That corporate migration is the demand engine underneath the whole region, and the condo market's recovery is happening building by building rather than all at once. The split between segments is the defining feature of this market, and one county south of here the same two-speed pattern is playing out with different numbers. Any single "Florida real estate" headline is almost always useless to an actual buyer.

Buy the Home, Then Protect It

This is where my real estate license and my insurance license stop being two separate jobs.

The buyers I worry about are not the ones who overpay by 3%. They're the ones who win a beautiful negotiation, drain every last dollar to close, and then meet a special assessment or an insurance renewal with nothing behind them. The purchase was right. The position was fragile. In a Broward condo, that's not a hypothetical — that's a Tuesday board meeting.

I learned what an unfinished plan costs the hard way. When I lost my mother in 2012, not long after I'd moved to Los Angeles to rebuild everything, I watched what a family goes through when nobody finished the paperwork. That's not a sales angle. It's why I ask every client the question that makes the room go quiet: if your income stopped tomorrow, how long does this home stay in your family?

So negotiate hard enough that you close with cash still in the bank. Keep six to twelve months of carrying costs liquid, and in a condo, count dues and potential assessments inside that number, not outside it. Put the protection layer in place before you need it, because nobody gets to buy coverage on the day it matters.

That's the whole philosophy: buy the home, protect the family, build the legacy. Broward is handing condo buyers more leverage than they've had in years and handing house buyers almost none. Know which market you walked into before you write the offer.

Written by

Agu Ukaogo

South Florida Luxury Realtor & Wealth Protection Strategist. FL Real Estate License: SL3588365. Bridges real estate transactions with life insurance and wealth protection that keeps homes in families. HomeWithAgu.com · (305) 791-0812