Which is true: “Florida homes for sale quadruple to 53,000”, or “300,000 new homes built in Florida last year”?

Photo above - Cute, eh? But if Florida was really experiencing a surge in unsold homes, how could this "fixer upper" possibly be asking $500,000? (in my hometown, Tampa). At today's 6.5% mortgage rates I would need $160,000 annual income to buy this.

Someone is lying. Or possibly “hallucinating”. Newsweek says there’s a biblical style migration out of Florida (see link below). The challenger – Bing the AI robot – says that 303,000 new homes were built in Florida last year. They both can’t be true, can they?

Actually, they might be. And I’m going to side with Bing here, even though AI is clearly plotting the destruction of all human life and not telling us about it. Here’s how Newsweek may have gotten it wrong:

South Florida DOES have increased listings. I can well believe the 50K figure. There are beachfront geezer skyscrapers in Miami, eroding and tipping due to salt corrosion and pilings set too shallow in the sand. Hundreds of pics of this. There are also pics of mobile homes and cottages in swampy, low-lying areas. Unrestored after one or another of the hurricanes over the past several years. These are teardowns, because of the mold and rot. You're buying the land. There's no valid occupancy permit. Then there are vacancies due to normal death rates among Florida’s retirement population. If some intern at Newsweek did an internet query of “home many residential properties listed for sale in April" and then compared it to the 2022 pandemic lockdown number, the answer would be "quadruple". Hello, clickbait!

Okay, let’s move on. How does Bing come up with the opposite result? Same method. Bing would search for county and municipal construction permits. Okay, there’s 300,000 of THOSE. Probably some of those listings are still under construction. And probably more geezers are migrating to Florida to evade the super-high income taxes in New York and New Jersey. Just like some NON-geezers, such as Jeff Bezos, are fleeing California to homestead in Florida. We have zero income taxes.

Florida DOES get more than its share of storm damage. And thus higher insurance premiums, as well as rising condo maintenance fees if you live in a high-rise. That's a problem for senior citizens trying to juggle their social security checks and dwindling 401k/IRA balances. Is your annual social security benefit increase going to keep up with those insurance and condo fees? AI probably has a theory about this too. I didn’t bother to ask it. Because future insurance premiums and condo fees aren't as easy to data mine as construction permits.

I live just outside Tampa. If there were thousands of newly vacant homes with “for sale” signs posted near me, I’d be aware of it. The ones for sale this month are the same ones as I drove by in 2024. Plywood on the windows, overgrown landscaping, and greenwater pools. With mortgage rates tripled by the Federal Reserve, only pros or idiots want to take a loan and try their luck at rehabbing and flipping.

I’m just sayin’ . . .

South Florida Homes for Sale Quadruple As Residents Leave En Masse

how many new homes were built in florida last year 2000 - Search