As the new season hurtles toward Palm Beach with the speed of a prize-winning thoroughbred, island real estate pros are expecting a busy season — and it looks like it has already left the starting gate.
The early summer months saw sporadic spurts of real estate sales before transitioning into more typical doldrums by the end of July, property records show. In fact, agent Todd Peter of Sotheby’s International Realty in Palm Beach said he and his wife and real estate partner, Frances, ended up postponing some summer travel because work on the island beckoned.
“We stayed around until the end of July because we were so busy,” he said. “We were showing properties, putting things under contract and closing deals. This was the busiest summer I can remember.”
A lull followed, but by the final weeks of September, agents who do business on the island — including Brown Harris Stevens agent Liza Pulitzer — noted a surprising surge of activity.
“We are significantly ahead of last year, and the anticipation is that we are going to have a strong season,” said Pulitzer, who partners at Brown Harris Stevens with agent Whitney McGurk.
As an example, Pulitzer mentioned a recent well-attended open house for one of her listings at 200 Bahama Lane on the North End, priced at $17.95 million. “It was nonstop traffic — and at the end of September. That’s unheard of,” she said.
A dozen agents, brokers and other real estate pros who spoke to the Palm Beach Daily News mentioned several reasons why the past several weeks have been especially active, with would-be buyers already checking out what’s available for sale and for rent in the ultra-affluent town.
Buyers eying Pam Beach for so many reasons
Palm Beach’s profile has never been higher, they all agreed, with the town squarely in the international spotlight as the winter home of President Donald Trump, who will soon re-open his Mar-a-Lago Club for the season.
But there are other factors at play on the island’s real estate scene, including Wall Street’s continued bullish performance, which has fattened portfolios even amid the global and domestic economic uncertainty related to Trump’s imposition of tariffs, as well as anxiety over domestic unrest and wars abroad.
In addition to the stock market’s strength, the extension of the federal 2017 tax cuts — which Trump signed into law on July 5 as part of his so-called “One, Big Beautiful Bill” — are generally said to benefit wealthier Americans, who often double as deep-wallet real estate buyers. And Florida’s relatively attractive tax climate continues to be magnet for many out-of-state homebuyers.
September, meanwhile, saw the Federal Reserve drop interest rates for the first time in nine months — a notable development, although the vast majority of home purchases in Palm Beach are all-cash transactions.
Easy access to that cash may offset many of the broader economic and global concerns among those eyeing real estate in Palm Beach, where a Daily News analysis of Forbes data showed that at least 70 billionaires — a new record — have strong residential ties.
Wealthy and ultrawealthy people — especially those who have achieved success in business — typically have the resources and experience to navigate any uncertainty strategically and strike while the iron is hot, several real estate agents affirmed. As one agent put it: “They are accustomed to adjusting their decision-making around what’s going on in the (wider) marketplace.”
Closer to home, the sizzling economic growth and rampant redevelopment of downtown West Palm Beach — already dubbed “Wall Street South” — has attracted businesses and buyers ready to shell out big bucks, often for units in the growing number of new luxury condominium towers.
Effects of the pandemic-sparked real estate boom still linger
For that growth, thank the COVID-19 pandemic, which sparked a multiyear real estate boom that sent real estate prices soaring, initially in Palm Beach and, later, in the then-sleepy city just across the bridges.
To be sure, home prices and values in Palm Beach are no longer escalating at the pace they once were. But they are, by and large, holding their higher values, particularly when compared to the years just before the pandemic hit in March 2020, agents said. In many cases, property values doubled, but over the past two years they have settled into a more predictable pattern.
“Prices have stabilized,” said agent Gary Pohrer of Serhant, echoing his colleagues at other agencies. “People know they not jumping into a frothy market. It’s a very solid market.”
As a result, said broker Linda Olsson of Linda R. Olsson Inc., “people are adjusting to the reality of what they can afford in Palm Beach. Palm Beach has really become a wealthy bastion.”
‘They want to be where the action is’
Many of the newer buyers have been affluent young families who have chosen to spend most of the year in the area and have often enrolled their children in local schools, agents report. Those families may be contributing to busier real estate activity of late, especially the ones who bought homes during the mad rush of the initial pandemic years, said agent Margit Brandt of Premier Estate Properties. Many of them are now looking for something bigger or of better quality to suit their needs, she said.
“We’re seeing a lot of those sales,” Brandt said.
Home-shoppers on the island may also be spurred by a desire to be in the same place where their friends and business associates either have bought homes, townhomes and condos or are renting homes for the season, Olsson said.
Agent Chris Leavitt of Douglas Elliman Real Estate agreed. “They want to be where the action is — and we’re where the action is. It’s FOMO,” Leavitt said, using the popular acronym for “fear of missing out.”
And broker Christian Angle of Christian Angle Real Estate had a similar take.
“The message is this: Palm Beach is a community that is still the epicenter right now of the world, filled with influential people who are directly impacting what is happening in the world,” Angle said.
How NYC mayor’s race could affect Palm Beach
There’s also an unexpected factor in the mix. Some agents — and their clients — are wondering if another miniboom might be on the way to Palm Beach, sparked by the jaw-dropping upset in the June Democratic primary for New York City mayor.
Zohran Mamdani, a New York Assemblyman and self-described Democratic socialist, beat out former Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Mamdani will face off in the Nov. 4 general election against Republican activist Curtis Sliwa and Cuomo, who is running as an independent.
Wealthy New York homeowners — along with real estate landlords and investors — have expressed fears about the repercussions of Mamdani’a promises to freeze rents and raise taxes slightly on 1% of the city’s wealthiest.
The outcome of the New York race is definitely on the minds of Palm Beach real estate agents and their clients, said agent Suzanne Frisbie of the Corcoran Group, echoing other agents.
“There’s a fair amount of conversation about it going on, that’s for sure,” Frisbie said.
Brandt said she has talked to New Yorkers who are keeping a laser-beam-like eye on their mayoral race and know what they will do if Mamdani wins. “Some people are saying, “We’re getting a place in Palm Beach and we’re out of here,’ ” said Brandt, who recently spoke to Fox News about the repercussions of the election in New York.
But others aren’t quite so sure that a Mamdani win in November would spur wealthy and ultrawealthy New Yorkers to sever their residential ties to the city in favor of Palm Beach.
“The idea that people are going to pull up stakes and leave New York — I think that’s overblown. But people may be looking for a second home or third or fourth home in Palm Beach (if Mamdani wins),” said Jonathan Miller, a real estate analyst who heads New York City-based Miller Samuel Inc.
Miller regularly tracks home sales in New York, Palm Beach and other areas for Douglas Elliman. “The housing market in Manhattan,” Miller notes, “is booming.”
Listings still tight for single-family homes, rentals
Those shopping for homes in Palm Beach this season likely will find the same strapped inventory of single-family and luxury townhouses that has characterized Palm Beach for the past few years. The situation has eased a bit since the early years of the pandemic, but buyer demand still appears to be exceeding supply, real estate agents report.
As of the second week in October, about 75 single-family homes were listed for sale out of around 2,200 houses on the island. The search of the multiple listing service showed single-family asking prices ranged from a high of $84.95 million for a newly built oceanview mansion on the South End, to $5.9 million for six-bedroom house on Park Avenue on the near North End. Of the single-family listings, 19 carried prices of more than $30 million, an MLS search showed.
And while agents expect the number of listings to rise over the next month or two, the laws of supply and demand are still expected to favor sellers over buyers.
Agent Dana Koch of the Corcoran Group notes he recently put under contract a four-bedroom house he co-listed Sept. 9 with his mother, Corcoran agent Paulette Koch, for $20.5 million at 167 Everglade Avenue.
“In the first couple of weeks of September, we had multiple bids,” Dana Koch said, adding that the property on the near North End had several things going for it, including location, condition and price.
Brandt confirmed that she is handling the buyer’s side of the sale on Everglade Avenue.
Koch added: “Things that are priced improperly are still sitting on the market. If you price it properly, you’ll have an opportunity to sell.”
Porher agreed that correct pricing is critical and likens the market to a game of musical chairs — but with houses. “When there are fewer ‘chairs’ left, a sense of urgency (among buyers) sets in,” he says.
Brokers and agents also are seeing a tight inventory for single-family rentals, a mainstay of the island’s real estate market during the winter season.
Olsson took a deep dive into the MLS listings for single-family rentals available on Oct. 7 and found only 24 properties that appeared to have substantial openings this season. Prices ranged from $150,000 per month to $15,000 per month.
Condo market recovering after new regulations
On the multifamily scene, there were about 140 Palm Beach active listings of condos and co-operative apartments for sale in the second week of October, at prices that topped out at $17.85 million for a three-bedroom apartment at 2 N. Breakers Row in Midtown. The lowest-priced unit was a one-bedroom apartment on the South End, listed for $320,000 at 2840 S. Ocean Blvd.
The island’s condo market, which is filled with older buildings, has seen unprecedented challenges over the past few years, as resident associations have scrambled to deal with insurance hikes and meet tougher state regulations for building inspections and for maintaining stockpiles of financial reserves. Those requirements came in the wake of the deadly 2022 condo collapse in Miam-Dade County’s Surfside community.
But over the past two years, many buildings in Palm Beach have met those challenges head on, sometimes by levying weighty assessment on residents and adopting an expedited schedule of concrete-restoration and other projects.
And things appear to be looking up for the condo market as the new season dawns. On the South End’s Condominium Row, for example, plenty of repair and maintenance work has been ongoing, completed or scheduled. Projected costs have been budgeted, often funded through special assessments paid by owners, said Douglas Elliman agent Joan Wenzel, who specializes in condo sales on the South End.
Owners who are selling their apartments now have more of an idea of what assessments buyers may face to pay for scheduled projects, with planned payments sometimes divvied up over several years, Wenzel said.
As a result, she added, the South End condo market is “beginning to pick up. I think it’s going to pick up more, because (sellers and buyers) know what the assessments are going to be. They have a time frame, or they’ve already done the work. Buyers will no longer will be caught off guard.”
She adds: “A third if not more of the buildings have done the work already,” she said. “Now they’re building up their reserves.”
Her Elliman colleague Scott Gordon sees the marketplace for South End condos subtly shifting from a sellers’ market to a buyers’ market, as more buildings come into compliance. In turn, he noted, the improvements increase the value of the residences for sale in those buildings.
“The buyer has more of a comfort level that the improvements have been made and the buildings are in better financial shape,” Gordon said. “We have enough transactions over the past 12 months to recalibrate prices and value.”
But he acknowledged that sellers in Palm Beach’s midrise buildings on the South End will be facing stiff competition from new towers outside Palm Beach that offer higher ceilings and ultraluxury amenities.
Still, he said, there’s still a market segment that will always want Palm Beach’s coveted 33480 as part of their address. The South End also offers less traffic congestion than other out-of-town areas, he said.
“The trick will be sourcing good properties”
Back on the single-family scene, Frisbie said she is optimistic about the new season — and the challenge now is to coax more would-be sellers to enter the market.
“The trick will be sourcing good properties,” Frisbie said. “So many (homeowners) have been approached and re-approached (to sell).”
Brandt said she expects the most in-demand properties this season to be high-quality homes that are newer or “have been renovated, are pristine and move-in ready.”
Attracting would-be buyers, on the other hand, doesn’t seem much of a problem on an island that has always offered a prime list of selling points, from high-level security, natural beauty and handsome architecture to — more recently — easy access to downtown West Palm Beach and, in some cases, President Donald Trump.
“I’m not seeing any lack of appetite or any lack of interest from buyers,” Frisbie said. “Palm Beach has always held its appeal, and I don’t know of anything that would change that. But we obviously don’t have a crystal ball — and it’s still October.”
dhofheinz@pbdailynews.com.
Darrell Hofheinz is a USA TODAY Network of Florida journalist who writes about Palm Beach real estate in his weekly “Beyond the Hedges” column. He welcomes tips about real estate news on the island. Email dhofheinz@pbdailynews.com, call 561-820-3831 or tweet @PBDN_Hofheinz. Subscribe today to support our journalism.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Daily News: Real estate pros are anticipating a busy winter season in Palm Beach. Here’s why.
Reporting by Darrell Hofheinz, Palm Beach Daily News / Palm Beach Daily News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
