Women in Real Estate Funding

What is happening to South Florida homes

Most of what you read about Florida property is written to sell you something. This is not. There is nothing to buy at the end of it. It is what the public record says is happening, and four things you can check about your own home for nothing.

What the record says

Florida has the highest foreclosure rate in the United States
For the first half of 2026, 0.27% of housing units — first in the nation. Not because people stopped paying. Because the carrying costs moved.
There are more condominiums for sale than there are buyers
Miami-Dade is at about 13.2 months of inventory and Broward about 9.84. Six months is a balanced market. Above that, sellers compete for buyers rather than the other way round.
Insurance is the quiet one
Around seven thousand dollars a year on an average Florida home. For a lot of families it has outgrown the mortgage payment itself, and it arrives whether or not anything happened.

None of that is a crash. All of it is pressure, and pressure is a different thing.

Why the condominiums, specifically

After Surfside, Florida changed the law. Buildings must have a milestone inspection at thirty years — twenty-five within three miles of the coast — and associations can no longer waive their structural reserves.

That was the right thing to do. It also means the bill arrived. Buildings that deferred repairs for twenty years are now levying special assessments, and individual cases in South Florida have run from twenty thousand dollars a unit to several hundred thousand.

Here is the part almost nobody is told: a building with an unfunded reserve, an open inspection or a live assessment often cannot get an ordinary mortgage at all. Fewer than one percent of condominium buildings across Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach are approved for FHA financing.

So the people buying them are the people who do not need a loan — close to half of Miami condominium sales are now all-cash, against about a quarter nationally. When financing disappears, property moves to whoever has cash. That has happened in every society that kept records, and it is happening here now.

Four things to check about your own home

All four are free. Not one of them requires speaking to us.

1 · Whose name is actually on the deed
More families than you would guess are living in a house the record still shows in a parent’s name. It is not carelessness — nobody tells you to look.
Everything they are changing about property taxes only reaches the person whose name is on the paper. And a house you cannot prove you own is one you cannot borrow against, sell, or insure properly.
Broward: bcpa.net. Miami-Dade: miamidade.gov/pa. Palm Beach: pbcpao.gov. Search your address. It takes a minute.
2 · Whether your homestead exemption is on the bill
Your tax bill arrives in November. Read the whole page, not just the number at the bottom.
If the exemption is not there and you live in the house as your permanent home, you have been paying more than you had to for as long as it has been missing. The appraiser’s office fixes it, the form is free, and nobody will ever write to tell you it is missing.
While the bill is out: paying in November takes 4% off. December 3%, January 2%, February 1%.
3 · Whether you have ever had a wind mitigation inspection
It costs a couple of hundred dollars. Straps, roof, shutters, the year it was covered.
On many Florida homes it takes a serious amount off the insurance premium — and no insurer will ever ring to suggest it.
Do it in December while everyone is asleep, rather than in May when everyone is panicking.
4 · If you are in a condominium: what the reserve study says
Ask the association for the reserve study, the milestone inspection report, and the last twelve months of board minutes. You are entitled to them.
A building that has funded its reserves is a completely different asset from one that has not, and you cannot tell from the lobby. If you are thinking of selling it decides your price. If you are staying it decides what is coming.
Ask in writing, and keep the reply.

If you are already behind

Do not wait until you have missed three payments to find out what your options are. They are widest at the beginning and narrowest at the end, and the difference is months rather than weeks.

There is help that costs nothing. HUD-approved housing counsellors are free by law. Find one at hud.gov, or call 800-569-4287.

And if somebody approaches you offering to take the house off your hands quickly, that is not necessarily a rescue. Find out what the house is actually worth and what you actually owe before you decide anything. You are allowed to take the time.

Why we wrote this

We have been doing this since 1989. The questions we are asked most this year are not about rates. They are from people who own something and have been made to feel they are failing at it.

You are not. The costs moved. Knowing exactly where you stand is the whole advantage, and it is free.

If you want to ask us something, text (954) 866-2171 — send an address and Money Penny will read you what the county has on it, or send a question and she will answer it. Any hour.

Nobody will put you on a list and chase you.

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