Pending Luxury Home Sales Surge in West Palm Beach, Defying National Trends

With wealthy buyers relocating from states such as New York and California and large financial institutions drawn by local economic policies, pending sales and demand for luxury real estate in West Palm Beach, Florida, are bucking national sales trends.

Pending sales in January for luxury homes in the area spiked 30 percent from a year ago, real estate brokerage Redfin reported on March 2. That jump—the sharpest among the 50 most populated metropolitan regions in the United States—follows a 31.5 percent year-over-year gain in pending sales in December, Redfin said.

Nationally, however, pending sales of luxury homes dipped 3.6 percent year over year in January, while non-luxury pending sales declined 1.8 percent, according to Redfin.

Prices for West Palm Beach luxury real estate properties—typically defined as the top 10 percent of home pricing in any given market—rose nearly six times faster than non-luxury sales, Redfin added. The median sales price of luxury homes was $4.2 million in January, an increase of 187 percent over the past decade.

Prime oceanfront properties across the Intracoastal Waterway on Palm Beach Island, meanwhile, sell for far more. The historic 2-acre Villa Flora estate recently sold for $76.7 million in an off-market deal. The barrier island’s most famous resident, however, is President Donald Trump, whose 17-acre Mar-a-Lago estate spans the breadth of the island from the Atlantic Ocean to the Intracoastal Waterway.

“The area’s luxury housing market has boomed due to an influx of wealthy buyers relocating from states like New York and California in search of lower taxes and sunny weather,” the Redfin report said.

Meanwhile, Nancy Cardone, senior vice president for William Raveis Real Estate, said in a statement provided to The Epoch Times that the social cachet of Palm Beach Island, along with proactive economic development efforts to attract high net worth individuals to the region, have fueled increased interest in residential real estate throughout the West Palm Beach metro region—dubbed “Wall Street South” by locals. Financial institutions with a presence in the area include BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, Elliott Management, and Virtu Financial.

“Palm Beach continues to be the epicenter of major social and philanthropic events through the winter and spring seasons, which are well promoted and publicized,” Cardone said.

“Wall Street South has been a very successful campaign that has attracted CEOs to relocate their business and business executives to our area,” she said.

“The State of Florida is a business-friendly state without a state income tax or a state inheritance tax. Those are important factors for individuals who have spent a lifetime earning their legacies and wish their families to benefit from those efforts.”

Luxury prices are on the rise in many other metropolitan markets, Redfin noted. Prices for luxury homes jumped the most in Kansas City, Missouri, at just over 17 percent from the previous year. Luxury real estate prices jumped 16.4 percent in Nashville and were up just under 16 percent in San Francisco.

Luxury properties can vary greatly by region, online real estate platform Realtor.com said in a recent luxury property report. In legacy markets such as San Francisco and San Jose, California, luxury properties are typically fully renovated homes dating back to the mid-1970s. However, in emerging luxury markets such as Boise, Idaho, or Heber City, Utah, most luxury homes are new construction.

Danielle Hale, Realtor.com’s chief economist, said the age of luxury properties in certain markets is indicative of that market’s housing lifecycle.

“In legacy coastal metros, we’re seeing the results of maturity, where the most desirable luxury neighborhoods reached full build-out decades ago, leaving little room for new construction,” Hale said.

“Conversely, in the Mountain West and Sun Belt, we’re seeing active expansion, where the luxury tier is being defined by a new wave of development.”

According to Realtor.com, Key West and Key Largo, Florida, had the highest starting price for legacy luxury properties at nearly $5.3 million. The starting price for older luxury homes in the Greater Los Angeles metropolitan region was $4.12 million, followed by San Jose at $3.15 million and New York, Newark and Jersey City, New Jersey, at just under $3 million.

New luxury homes in Heber, Utah, started at $7.60 million. New luxury residences in Naples and Marco Island, Florida, had a starting price of $3.60 million, while luxury starting prices in Crestview, Fort Walton Beach, and Destin, Florida, were $2.73 million.