‘The phone’s barely ringing.’ Orlando home sales plummet in November. – Orlando Sentinel

Orlando home sales hit their lowest point in nearly four years in November, heading into the holidays with falling prices and rising inventory, according to the latest market report.

Sales in metro Orlando were down 26.5% from October to 1,996, the lowest total since January 2019, according to the new report from the Orlando Regional Realtor Association. It was a drop of 45.5% compared with November 2021.

“The phone’s barely ringing,” said real estate agent John Silva of John Silva Realty & Associates in Orlando. “Those high, skyrocketing prices we saw months ago, they aren’t moving anymore. They’re just sitting on the shelves.”

Homes spent an average of 43 days on market in November, up from 38 in October. Median home prices also fell slightly to $360,000, down $5,000 from the previous two months.

Inventory rose slightly to 7,197, the ninth straight month of increases, bringing Orlando to 3.61 months of supply. Experts consider a market to be balanced between sellers and buyers when it has six months of supply.

The association surveys sales in Orange, Osceola, Seminole and Lake counties.

While acknowledging the usual holiday downturn, association president Tansey Soderstrom wrote in a statement that “this season’s slowdown may be especially significant. While there is a lot of uncertainty with where the housing market is headed, buyers in the Orlando area have twice as many homes to consider than they did a year ago.”

Buyers have been pulling back from the blistering hot market of the past two years since the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates this year to fight inflation.

Mortgages rates in Orlando in November averaged 6.6%, according to the report, down from October but more than double from November last year. A survey from Zillow in October found Orlando had the third-highest increase in monthly mortgage payments in the country.

On Wednesday, the Fed announced another rate hike of 0.5 percentage points.

“People can’t afford houses anymore,” Silva said. “That’s the true reality of it.”

Silva said his sellers have had to drop their prices. He said one who was asking $750,000 for her house was accepting an offer for $620,000.

However, Silva said that it’s not impossible to move a house.

“Anything that’s listed in good condition at the right price, it sells,” he said. “But it’s a buyer’s market now.”

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