Serhant, a US real estate brokerage, has recently published a report for 2022 that analyzes the sales of properties worth over $10 million in New York and South Florida, where the ultra-rich prefer to settle.
According to the report, these sales are declining. For instance, in the first half of the previous year, 27% fewer purchase and sale contracts on luxurious homes were signed in Miami than over the same period of 2021. In the second half of the year, the decline accelerated to 60%. However, the situation in Palm Beach remained relatively stable, as the number of contracts dropped by only 6% from January through June and by 28%, from July through December.
According to Garrett Derderian, Director of Market Intelligence at Serhant, market actors in South Florida believe that prices of high-end properties have reached a peak, so they assume a wait-and-see attitude. The supply of such homes is limited, however, so properties with correctly evaluated prices, especially move-in-ready, still sell pretty well.
The same report says that prices in the segment of properties worth over $10 million remain resilient in the face of market changes, particularly in South Florida, where the median selling price has increased by 3% year-on-year in Palm Beach and by 2%, in Miami.
Mr. Derderian believes that buyers of such a level frequently prefer to act fast in anticipation of uncertainty, so the segment of super-expensive real estate is always one of the last to slump and one of the first to recover.