Shared from the 4/22/2017 Palm Beach Daily News eEdition

Sales of condos, co-ops rebound

Most of substantial first-quarter improvement came in Midtown.

Picture

Miller Analyst cautions not to read too much into data.

Picture
Photo by Jacek Gancarz

The priciest Palm Beach condominium to change hands in the first quarter was Unit S-44 at 2 North Breakers Row, which sold in late March for a recorded $15.5 million.

Picture
Photo by Sargent Architectural Photography, courtesy Sotheby’s International Realty

Among the largest Palm Beach properties changing hands in the first quarter of this year was a new house at 101 Indian Road, which sold for $49 million.

Sales of Palm Beach condominiums and cooperative units rebounded during the first three months of this year compared to the same period in 2016, according to new sales reports released on behalf of larger real estate agencies that do business on the island.

But most of the improvement came in Midtown rather than on the South End.

Reports were issued by Douglas Elli-man Real Estate, the Corcoran Group, Sotheby’s International Realty and Brown Harris Stevens.

All four reports analyzed sales in January, February and March, but each used slightly different figures and property categories, making apples-to-apples comparisons difficult. Most of the reports were based solely on sales data taken from the Palm Beach Board of Realtors Multiple Listing Service, although Brown Harris Stevens’ analysis also included off-market sales, according to Palm Beach-based broker Ava van de Water.

The Palm Beach Market Update from Sotheby’s noted that 37 Midtown condos sold in the first quarter, an 85 percent jump over the same period in 2016.

On the South End, however, the number of first-quarter sales fell slightly, from 39 last year to 38 this year.

The total dollar volume for the condos sold, however, increased by nearly 200 percent, year over year — from $20.4 million to $61.1 million, according to the report from Sotheby’s. Average prices declined on the South End, however, while rising in Midtown.

The Elliman Report, meanwhile, showed a 38 percent jump in the year-over-year average price paid for condos town-wide.

Analyst Jonathan Miller, who prepared the analysis for Douglas Elli-man, suggested that the “surge” in condo sales, at least in part, may be due to released pent-up demand from buyers who had not been willing to commit during the contentious election season that led to President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January.

But Miller cautioned about reading too much into the numbers. “It isn’t clear if the jump is attributed (mostly) to the election or if it reflects a trend that will lead to a modest increase in (sales) activity over the course of 2017 versus 2016,” he said.

Major sale

Corcoran’s report and the Brown Harris Stevens analysis largely attributed the rise in average condo prices to an unusually large $15.5 million deal in late March at 2 North Breakers Row. The sale of Unit S-44 set an oceanfront condo record and marked the second-highest price ever paid for a unit anywhere in Palm Beach. That sale was brokered by Lawrence A. Moens Associates.

The reports show the sales numbers for single-family deals were less robust than for condos. According to The Corcoran Report, the number of closed sales dropped from 22 to 21, with a 14 percent decrease in the average price paid for those properties. Median prices were fairly flat, according to Corcoran’s analysis. The median is the price at which half of the units sold for more and half for less.

All the reports agreed that condos and single-family properties took longer to change hands in the first quarter of this year than those that sold in the same quarter last year. In the single-family category, properties that sold had spent an average of 234 days on the market compared to 74 in 2016, the Elliman Report showed.

The condo section of Brown Harris Stevens’ report, meanwhile, shows that apartments spent 183 days, on average, on the market before selling; for the first quarter of last year, the agency recorded that figure as 126 days.

The reports that solely analyzed MLS data, by the way, would have missed the first quarter’s biggest single-family deal, an $85 million sale brokered by Moens for 1290 S. Ocean Blvd.

dhofheinz@ pbdailynews.com

See this article in the e-Edition Here