Getty Images; Realtor.com
A major homebuilder has reported recent gains in Florida, marking a surprising turnaround in the state after several years of slowing sales and falling prices.
PulteGroup, the third-largest homebuilder in the nation, said that net new orders in Florida rose 2% last quarter compared with a year earlier.
“We’re really happy with what we saw out of Florida,” PulteGroup President and CEO Ryan Marshall told investors on a call last month. “We get buyers from all over the country, all over the world that come into Florida. We also see a healthy mix of folks moving within Florida as well.”
Marshall said that while sales of entry-level homes remained sluggish in Florida due to affordability challenges, homes for move-up buyers had jumped 18% year over year, and active adult communities had also performed strongly.
PulteGroup’s unexpected uptick in Florida sales follows years of pronounced weakness in the state, where homebuilders have been forced to slash prices and offer mortgage rate buydowns and other generous concessions in the face of weak demand.
In recent months, however, there are signs that Florida’s housing market is getting closer to equilibrium, with inventory stabilizing and price declines slowing.
“Florida and its constituent markets are in a period of price decline, but it appears that decline is slowing,” says Realtor.com® senior economist Joel Berner. “As inventory growth flattens, prices in Florida look poised to do the same. Prices may not rebound quickly, but their current retreat may be coming to an end.”
Inventory might also be stabilizing after years of rapid expansion. Since April, the supply of homes on the market in Florida has declined for three straight months, reflecting a decrease in new listing activity.
After active inventory in Florida hit 182,600 in April, an all-time high in records dating to 2016, inventory declined each of the subsequent months, reaching 174,600 in July. While that is still well above pre-pandemic levels, it could be a sign that supply is beginning to stabilize.
Statewide, Florida’s median home list prices are down about 10% from two years ago, which might be enough to lure some reluctant buyers off the sidelines.
In June, single-family home sales in Florida ticked up 2.8% compared with a year earlier, the state’s first annual increase since January, according to the Florida Realtors®.
“It does seem like inventory is somewhat stabilizing, and not quite as many new listings hitting the market in the last couple months,” says Brian Stephens, a real estate agent in Lakeland, FL. “Buyers are still moving slower, but realizing that rates aren’t going down soon—and they are looking at new builds also, where the builder buys down the rate.”
Still, the state’s housing market has several headwinds to contend with, including soaring home insurance premiums, which remain the highest in the nation on average. As well, Florida’s condo market continues to struggle under the weight of hefty HOA fees and special assessments to meet new reserve requirements following the Surfside collapse.
In recent earnings calls, other major homebuilders have also continued to highlight weakness and uncertainty in Florida’s housing market.
“There’s been a lot of change in the dynamics in the Florida markets. And perhaps most so there,” D.R. Horton COO Michael Murray told investors last month. “Other markets continue to be consistent performers, where there’s been limited inventory and limited development of lots, and housing production continues to see strong demand in those markets.”
In July, KB Home President and COO Rob McGibney highlighted Jacksonville and Orlando as markets “where resale supply has increased and starts putting pressure on pricing and creating more competition and just more choices for buyers.”
However, he noted that Tampa was among the markets where the homebuilder is still seeing relatively strong demand and sales performance.
“It is very local, very specific—you can’t put a market condition on an entire state or even an entire market in most cases, it’s community by community,” he added.
It marked a shift in tone from March, when McGibney singled out Florida as KB Home’s worst state for sales in the first quarter, prompting the homebuilder to make major price cuts there.
“Builders have been highly active in the Sunshine State for many years, and existing-home inventory has been growing as well,” says Berner.
“More homes on the market and fewer interested buyers have led to fewer home sales and price reductions on the homes that do sell, which drives builders’ earnings down,” says Berner.
Faced with weaker demand, homebuilders have pulled back on new construction in the Sunshine State.
In the first six months of 2025, new permits for single-family homes in Florida totaled 59,699, down 11% compared with a year earlier, according to U.S. Census Bureau data compiled by the National Association of Home Builders. Nationally, single-family permits declined 6%.
On the brighter side, permits for multifamily units in Florida jumped 25% annually in the first half of the year, totaling 36,013 and bouncing back from historic lows seen last year.
Additional construction is sorely needed in Florida, says housing policy expert Samuel Staley, the director of the DeVoe L. Moore Center at Florida State University.
Staley estimates that Florida needs an additional 100,000 housing units to meet overall demand for housing in the state, a supply gap that has helped drive home prices far out of proportion with local wages.
In his view, the structural shortage of homes will prevent home prices from plunging dramatically in Florida anytime soon.
“We’re going to continue to see moderation in home prices, and in some areas, see declines. But we’re not going to see prices go back to pre-pandemic levels unless we dramatically increase the supply of housing,” he tells Realtor.com. “I think it’s going to level off at levels that are significantly higher.”