How Palm Beach’s Real Estate Market Is Beginning To Thrive Again
Suburbs in America helped keep the real estate market afloat throughout the past ten months of the Covid-19 pandemic. As individuals fled their small apartments in bustling metropolitans for a quieter, more secluded space to spend their quarantine, markets in city spaces began to decline. However, with the release of multiple vaccines, a new administration taking control over how we respond to this pandemic, and a new year on the market’s side, some areas of the country are already seeing an increase in desire to buy.
The exclusive town of Palm Beach, Florida is a small sliver of an island that is typically home to some of the nation’s wealthiest individuals. Now, people throughout America are fleeing their Suburban spaces to get away to warm Palm Beach, creating a new sellers market that Guy Clark, an agent with Douglas Elliman Real Estate in Palm Beach, was truly not expecting.
“Anyone with money is currently fleeing places like New York and coming here, it’s a seller’s market like I’ve never experienced.”
Some of the migration, according to Wall Street data, is due to a multitude of job relocation’s from New York to Florida. Some of the wealthiest in America who have the privilege and ability to move right now are also fleeing Covid hotspots to take advantage of Florida’s lack of state income tax.
The Palm Beach County Clerk’s office recorded more than 20 home sales in 2020, exceeding $20 million each; for reference in 2019 only 10 homes of the same pricing were sold. According to John Cregan, an agent at Sotheby’s International Realty, many of the homes currently being rented or sold are off the market and being done in private deals. Older homes are being torn down and renovated to prepare for a future influx in buying once the pandemic is over.
The rental market also picked up with the winter season, which is typically a hot time for buying in Palm Beach. Even with the limited supply that realtors were working with, rentals overall have been on the rise within the past few months. Some have even turned to hotels for long-term stars as an alternative to their suburban homes.
According to Lesley Sheinberg and Barbara LeBrun of NAI/Merin Hunter Codman, migrants from around the nation are also looking for commercial spaces to rent to be used as an office space.
“Every single showing this week we have there is from people up north or different states, either wanting to have a presence here, so they don’t have to commute back and forth, or wanting to get out and move their business here.”
The rise in rental markets, and the real estate market in Palm Beach overall, will have an amazing trickle down effect on the local economy. Interior design firms and other local businesses in Palm Beach all report a rise in transactions when the real estate market begins to rise in the area. Some businesses are already seeing this increase occur, and the hope is that as time moves on the positive effects of that spending will ripple out to the rest of the state.
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.