Palm Beach condo deals lagged far behind single-family sales, fourth-quarter real estate reports for 2024 show.
The town of Palm Beach bustled with an active real estate market last year for single-family homes, especially when it came to higher-end and trophy properties, according to a just-released round of fourth-quarter sales reports.
And things got even busier after the November presidential election once again put Palm Beach at “the center of the universe,” as broker Linda Olsson of Linda R. Olsson Inc. wrote in her sales report, referring to Donald Trump’s win and his subsequent encampment at his Mar-a-Lago Club in anticipation of Inauguration Day.
But the real estate story was far different for much of the island’s condominium and co-operative market. Some aging multifamily buildings struggled with sales, according to the fourth-quarter reports, several of which also summarized real estate activity for all of last year.
In all, sales of single-family properties in 2024 totaled $1.876 billion, down 1% from the $1.9 billion that sold in 2023, according to the report issued by Frisbie Palm Beach Real Estate, which is headed by Corcoran Group agent Suzanne Frisbie.
“Locally, the Palm Beach (single-family) real estate market has remained solid,” the Frisbie report said, with strong prices fetched for “premium properties,” including new or newly renovated homes and those facing the ocean or the Intracoastal Waterway.
The wealthy town, in fact, saw 10 sales in 2024 with recorded prices of $49 million or more, as previously reported by the Palm Beach Daily News. At the top of the list were the $150 million sale of a mega-mansion on private Tarpon Island and the $148 million sale of a landmarked oceanfront estate at 455 N. County Road.
But a noteworthy decrease in the dollars generated through multifamily sales townwide was telling, Frisbie’s report showed. In 2024, $420 million worth of condos and co-ops changed hands, down about 21% from the $531 milllion recorded the year before, according to Frisbie’s analysis, which was issued separately from a report prepared by the Corcoran Group.
With multifamily sales and single-family properties combined, Palm Beach saw $2.1 billion in sales during 2024, a drop from $2.4 billion recorded the prior year, Frisbie Real Estate’s report showed.
On Palm Beach’s condo/co-op scene
The challenge facing multifamily buildings was particularly apparent on the South End’s so-called “Condominium Row,” with many condo associations last year struggling to 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.
Complicating the sales picture for the local condo market have been volatile interest rates, rising insurance premiums and hefty assessments for owners.
Is it any wonder that the just-released sales reports…
Read More: Palm Beach home sales bustled in 2024 but condos lagged: Q4 reports
