A four-bedroom home near Tampa, Florida, sold at a deep loss, exposing the increasingly tough state housing market. The owner of the property, Blackstone, bought the home for $490,000 in April 2022 but then sold it this week for just $360,000—a 27% drop in value. The sale speaks to broader trends in Florida’s housing market, which is seeing prices decrease and inventory start to go up. The average of homes in the property’s ZIP code is $410,206, down 1.6% from last year, according to Zillow. More listings have increased competition and pushed down prices.
Nick Gerli, chief executive of Reventure App, said via X, formerly Twitter, the social media platform, that Blackstone had acquired the home at the peak of the market in 2022 through its subsidiary Home Partners of America as part of a rent-to-own strategy. But it proved far more difficult to rent the property out than had been anticipated, and Blackstone sold at a loss. The inventory of homes for sale leaped to 219 listings in the area, the most in a decade, driving down the price, according to Gerli. This house has been on the market for 250 considerably longer than the neighborhood’s average of 53 days further illustrating the obstacles involved in selling within a softening market.
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What this means for buyers and sellers in Florida
The sale of the Blackstone property is another indicator of the bigger correction coming into Florida’s housing market. According to a brokerage at St. Petersburg’s Savvy Buyers Realty, Tampa began slowing about four months ago, Robert Washington, a broker there, informed Newsweek. Others blamed that for the hurricanes this year; Washington thinks interest rates and rapidly high prices within the past year 2021-2023 can be attributed as the culprit for the factor in play here. He did, however, note that over the last couple of weeks, buyer activity has started to pick up, which may signal the possibility of a recovery.
Nick Gerli reiterated this when he told 10 Tampa Bay the correction phase the Tampa housing market is moving into could favor buyers. He goes on to say that 2025 will bring more inventory, lower prices, and more opportunities for homebuyers. The presence of such large institutional investors as Blackstone in the housing market is contentious nonetheless. Representative Ro Khanna, a California Democrat and the author of the Stop Wall Street Landlords Act of 2022 denounced corporate landlords for snapping up affordable single-family homes and making it more difficult for ordinary Americans to become homeowners.
In other words, the role that will be played by big investment firms such as Blackstone will continue to be debated while the market continues to sort itself out. The very idea that their capacity for absorbing losses creates buying opportunities also raises serious questions about long-term stability and affordability in the housing market. For now, Florida’s housing market is in transition, and buyers and sellers are learning to navigate its challenges.
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