The Palm Beach County housing market is not crashing—it is splitting. According to real estate agent Loodmy Jacques, who leads The Jacques Team at Keller Williams Reserve in West Palm Beach, single-family homes and condos are now operating as separate markets within the same zip codes, moving at different speeds and offering different levels of leverage to buyers and sellers.
On the single-family side, supply remains tight. Jacques estimates roughly 3.5 months of supply, a level still associated with a seller’s market. The median home goes under contract in about 40 days and closes near 95 percent of its original list price. Multiple offers are still common on well-priced houses. The county has about 24 percent fewer single-family homes available than a year ago, as many owners with low-rate mortgages choose to stay put. Buyer preference is also shifting toward owning land without association rules and simpler financing, though buyers remain price-sensitive.
Condos tell a different story. Supply sits closer to 6.7 months, tipping toward a buyer’s market. The median condo takes about 69 days to go under contract and sells for roughly 93 percent of list price. Multiple offers are uncommon unless the building is newer or fully funded. Despite the slower pace, condo prices have not collapsed; Jacques puts the median condo price up about 5 percent year over year. However, that county-wide figure can mislead because it blends newer, well-funded buildings with older ones that may be flat or declining.
The pressure on older condos traces largely to reforms Florida adopted after the 2021 Surfside collapse. Buildings three stories or taller must now complete a Structural Integrity Reserve Study and set aside money for identified repairs. “Owners in older buildings are now paying for decades of delayed repairs all at once,” Jacques says. That cost arrives as higher monthly dues, special assessments, or both. Financing has tightened alongside it. Jacques estimates that only about 21 of roughly 2,400 South Florida condo buildings are approved for FHA loans, and more than half of condo purchases in Palm Beach County are now paid in cash.
For buyers and sellers, the implications are clear: single-family homes are being priced against a shortage, while condos are increasingly a building-by-building decision. Jacques notes that a building’s reserve study and financial health matter more to an individual unit’s price than the county median does. That makes the buyer’s side of the process more about documents than square footage. As the market heads into the fall, the story is less about direction than divergence. More information is available at loodmyjacques.com.
