Miami-Dade's Condo Median Just Hit Exactly $400,000. Houses Went the Other Way.

Eleven straight months of rising sales hide a split: single-family homes are a 4.8-month seller's market, condos are taking 125 days to sell. Same county, opposite advice.

MIAMI REALTORS' July report, released August 17, shows total Miami-Dade home sales up 8.6% year over year to 1,935, the eleventh consecutive monthly gain. Look one level down and the county splits in two. The single-family median rose 3.79% to $685,000. The condo median fell 1.48% to exactly $400,000. Single-family homes took a median 88 days to sell; condos took 125.

The rest of the numbers

• Inventory fell. Active listings dropped 15.1% year over year, from 18,377 to 15,599.
• Cash cooled a little. Cash was 35.1% of closings, down from 38.1% in June.
• Luxury held. Sales at $1 million and above rose 15.5%, from 341 to 394. Condo sales between $400,000 and $500,000 rose 12.6%.
• Dollar volume rose 6.2% to $1.9 billion.

One caution: the association's August report was not out as of this writing. MIAMI REALTORS publishes around the 17th of the following month, so anyone quoting official August numbers today is not quoting the association.

My read if you are selling

A house in Miami-Dade is still a seller's product: under five months of supply, inventory shrinking, price rising. Price it right and you negotiate from strength. A resale condo is a buyer's product: roughly a year of supply, four months to a contract, and a median that just lost a round number. If you plan to sell a condo in the next twelve months, the building's milestone inspection and reserve position will decide your price as much as your finishes will, and pricing to July's comps rather than last year's is the difference between 125 days and a deal. New luxury towers are a separate market entirely: Cipriani Residences in Brickell topped off in July at roughly 950 feet, more than 80% sold from $1.8 million, in the same quarter the countywide resale median slipped. Know which market your unit is in.