What's New In The Tallahassee Real Estate Market?

Keeping an eye on the newest listings in the market is a good practice, you’ll have a good sense of seller expectations with what they are asking in terms of price for the offering.

For example, when you think sellers are offering crazy-good values, you know the market is getting soft and buyers are at an advantage (think 2012).

The opposite is true too. When sellers appear to be asking a premium for their homes (think 2006), then you know demand is super high and sellers are at an advantage.

Average Home Prices

Home prices continue to rise in Tallahasee.

If you have not been shopping for a home in the past few years, but remember that Tallahassee was grossly over-built and had years’ worth of inventory of homes, you need to know that has all changed.

After dealing with a glut of homes for sale from 2006 through 2014, the market transitioned from a buyers’ market at most price ranges to a sellers’ market at most price ranges.

When we combine the low inventory with the current high demand from buyers, prices are moving higher.

Average Home Values

Just as price have risen, home values have been recovering in Tallahassee since they bottomed in 2012. Homes have appreciated (on average) nearly 21% since market bottom, and early sales in 2018 show they are continuing higher.

When you look at the value trend above, you can see that while values are moving higher, they still have not reached the level recorded at the peak of the housing market in 2006. As a matter of fact, current home values are still 18% lower than they were in 2006.

What many people do not realize about the Tallahassee real estate market is that much of our buying comes from people already in Tallahassee. And nearly half of all buyers have a Tallahassee home to sell first, so when values plunged, it stopped the market.

The people who owned homes and wanted to move found themselves “upside down” on their mortgage and thus were trapped. It has taken many years, but finally a good percentage of those trapped sellers have been able to move.

But with values still 18% lower than the peak of the market, there are still thousands of trapped homeowners who cannot move. As values move higher, they will be freed to do as they please.

Rising values are bringing demand back to the market due to the large number of people who purchased or refinanced their homes from 2005 through 2009.