The Palm Beach real estate season was busy in the months after Trump’s election but the market lately has seen more volatility.
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If there were one word to describe the Palm Beach real estate scene for the season just ending, it might be “volatile.”
But other words also might be apt, depending on when you applied the label between Oct. 1 and April 30 — “busy,” “unpredictable,” “sputtering,” or even “surprising.”
And the common factor guiding the adjectives you might choose? President Donald Trump, the uber-wealthy town’s most famous resident, whose Nov. 5 election to his second term once again thrust Palm Beach into the international spotlight.
With a few weeks after the election, real estate activity in town picked up dramatically as homebuyers and sellers finally exhaled, thankful that the uncertainty about the outcome of the contentious race was finally over. Notably, Trump won every precinct in town.
With Trump in residence at his Mar-a-Lago Club during his transition period before Inauguration Day on Jan. 20, local real estate activity escalated, driven in part by some buyers who wanted to be close to the political action in Palm Beach, according to real estate observers.
They even gave the boost in sales and rentals a memorable nickname — “the Trump bump.”
The Corcoran Group’s fourth-quarter sales report summarized Palm Beach’s “dynamic real estate market” in October, November and December, noting “steady single-family home sales, a notable rise across all pricing metrics, and a significant shift in condo/co-op transactions at the high end, despite a decline in overall closings.”
But that energy didn’t last through the end of the season. Since the president’s April 2 “Liberation Day” announcement of plans to impose stringent tariffs on dozens of countries — and the increased global economic uncertainty over the Trump administration’s trade wars and the stock-market volatility that followed — the real estate picture in Trump’s adopted hometown has been much more mixed.
“We’re still seeing a pretty active market,” said agent John Cregan of Sotheby’s International Realty. “We still have buyers in the market. But they are just being a little more hesitant. It’s not a market where sellers can push prices.”
Cregan made his comments April 25, when the Palm Beach Daily News spoke with several real estate professionals about the state of the local market and the season that is drawing to a close.
Palm Beach sales of single-family homes up sharply this season
Even though the market sputtered after the announcement of the tariffs, the Palm Beach season overall saw far more single-family sales than in the same period last year — up by at least 60% in the first quarter alone, according to several sales reports recently released by real estate agencies and agents in business on the island.
The number of sales of condominiums, co-operative units and townhouses, on the other hand, remained about the same in January, February and March, according to the reports’ year-over-year comparisons.
Palm Beach houses, townhomes, condos and co-ops sold in the first quarter generated $752.7 million in sales volume, said the transactions report prepared by Sotheby’s International Realty. Add in the sales volume for the fourth quarter of 2024 — totaling $408.38 million — and the overall tally for the six months between Oct. 1 and March 31 hit $1.16 billion, sizable by any measure.
The first quarter of this year also saw a new median sales price record for single-family properties. At $13.9 million, it was the highest ever recorded for January, February and March, according to the report issued by Douglas Elliman Real Estate Report and prepared by Miller Samuel Inc. The median is the price at which half the properties sold for more and half for less. The median for the same quarter last year was $12.5 million, the Elliman Report showed.
First-quarter prices for condos were up slightly, according to a consensus of the sales analyses.
The season also saw eight residential deals close above $30 million between the end of September and May. That list was led by a private sale in which Estée Lauder billionaire William Lauder was said to have parted with two side-by-side — and vacant — oceanfront lots on the North End in a deal that likely exceeded $160 million, the Palm Beach Daily News confirmed. The buyer or buyer’s identity and the actual price paid in that hush-hush transaction has never been recorded at the Palm Beach County Courthouse, likely because of the way the deal was structured. None of the parties involved will discuss the sale.
‘Uncertainty’ in Palm Beach market
Sizable sales aside, real estate activity over the past few weeks has seen the island’s market reel, reflecting the stock market’s sputtering performance after Trump announced his tariffs — and then walked back some of them.
“We’ve seen some buyers with trepidation. They have been hesitant to make a decision amid the uncertainty,” said agent Jim McCann of Premier Estate Properties.
But not every home shopper is stepping away from a town long known for its natural beauty, handsome architecture, top-level security and tax advantages. Also drawing interest is the island’s proximity to West Palm Beach, which has seen its downtown area undergo a revitalization with new redevelopment projects breaking ground or in the planning stages.
Several Palm Beach agents and brokers, including McCann, reported seeing a post-Easter spurt of interest among buyers.
“More people seem to be saying, ‘We’re just going to have to live with this uncertainty,’” McCann said.
As a result, buyers continue to move forward with plans to close deals, McCann and others said, but only after carefully weighing all their options — and making sure that the price accurately reflects market conditions. As of April 30, the Palm Beach Board of Realtors Multiple Listing Service showed about 12 single-family houses and three townhomes were under contract, with their asking prices totaling about $217 million. Another 33 condos and co-ops were also under contract, with combined prices of about $94 million.
Asking-price reductions were not uncommon this season
In any event, some of the asking prices for those under-contract properties are lower than they were when the properties were first listed. This season saw wide-ranging price reductions that sometimes led to properties selling shortly after the asking price was reduced. Many of the active listings on the market today have had their prices reduced as well, with some undergoing multiple price price drops.
At least some of those properties that sold with lowered price tags were owned by sellers who had adjusted their price expectations to new realities after the coronavirus pandemic-sparked real estate frenzy, which sent home values skyrocketing, starting in the late spring of 2020.
The once-in-a-lifetime boom that came with the pandemic is now squarely in the rearview mirror, although today’s values are generally far higher than they were before the health crisis hit, real estate observers agree.
Meanwhile, the single-family market in January, February and March saw a surge in sales of houses priced between $10 million and $20 million, a mid-range price category that had lagged previously, according to the latest sales report prepared by Frisbie Palm Beach, led by agent Suzanne Frisbie of the Corcoran Group. In the first quarter, there were 19 sales in that price category. Compare that number to all of 2024, when there were 33 sales in that price range.
The properties that sold this season for between $10 million and $20 million included five that changed hands after the presidential election in the security zone that closes to through-traffic when Trump is in residence at Mar-a-Lago. One other house sold in the same neighborhood for a recorded $27.5 million, and another is under contract with an asking price of $18.95 million.
Two of the properties that sold in the Mar-a-Lago security zone were either on or face Woodbridge Road, the street immediately north of Trump’s private club. Buyers on Woodbridge Road enjoy a headline-grabbing perk: They get conditional access to Trump’s club without having to pay its initiation fee — said to be as much as $1 million — thanks to an agreement Trump worked out years ago with the town.
Across town in the North End, there was other price news, according to the first-quarter sales report written by broker Linda Olsson of Linda R. Olsson Inc. Of the eight non-waterfront homes sales during January, February and March, six deals closed at more than $10 million. “This is amazing,” wrote Olsson, referring to the fact that the North End has traditionally been home to some of Palm Beach’s least-expensive dry-lot properties.
Number of Palm Beach condos for sale has climbed over past year
Shoppers in the market for single-family homes this season found that the inventory available for sale in Palm Beach remained about the same when compared to last season. Even so, the number of listings remains far below the levels recorded before the coronavirus boom began, records show.
As of April 30, there were 92 single-family and townhouses listed for sale, the MLS showed. Another 12 residential properties were being marketed in the MLS’ “land” category, although seven of those properties also appeared in the single-family listings with houses ripe for renovation or replacement.
Another MLS search April 30 showed 223 condos and co-op apartments were for sale, a sharp increase since last year at this time, when there were 172.
‘Palm Beach is a great place to land-bank your money’
Evens as the market continues to adapt to new and changing post-pandemic realities, Palm Beach has retained its longtime reputation as a place where real estate values can be counted on to rise over the long term, real estate professionals agree.
Agent Dana Koch of the Corcoran Group noted that savvy and sophisticated buyers who are concerned about the state of the economy and Wall Street’s performance may see real estate on the island as a safe bet.
“People are looking to diversify their finances with hard assets like real estate,” Koch said. “Palm Beach is a great place to land-bank your money.”
Sellers, too, may also be taking a step back to re-evaluate their priorities, McCann added. “Some sellers may say: ‘I’m not in a rush to sell, and we’ll ride through these uncertain times.’”
Broker Christian Angle of Christian Angle Real Estate offered another key insight. “Palm Beach will always be a safe haven as far as investing in a new home,” he said, adding that he wasn’t speaking metaphorically.
So many Palm Beach homeowners, he said, feel their blood pressure going down the minute they cross the bridge into Palm Beach. That’s especially important to people in uncertain and stressful times, he added.
“People in Palm Beach sincerely decompress,” Angle said, mentioning the evergreen appeal of the island’s renowned restaurants along with pastoral walks on the Lake Trail and afternoons spent sunbathing on the beach.
“We have ups and downs in the market,” Angle said, “but one thing that is consistently true is that Palm Beach is a sophisticated, beautiful, welcoming place that puts its arms around you.”
(This story was updated to add more information.)
Darrell Hofheinz is a USA TODAY Network of Florida journalist who writes about Palm Beach real estate in his weekly “Beyond the Hedges” column. He welcomes tips about real estate news on the island. Email dhofheinz@pbdailynews.com, call 561-820-3831 or tweet @PBDN_Hofheinz.
