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Almost a third of home purchases fall through in Jacksonville

Rising mortgage rates are spooking buyers and wiping out home purchases.
Paul Sakuma
/
AP
Rising mortgage rates are spooking buyers and wiping out home purchases.

Home purchases in Jacksonville fell through last month at a higher rate than anywhere in the country, according to data released Monday.

Almost 31% of purchase agreements in Jacksonville fell through in October, the Redfin real estate brokerage reported. It was the second straight month that Jacksonville led the country in that regard.

Jacksonville also had one of the highest rates of price drops compared with the same time last year — another reflection of the dramatic slowdown in the housing market, Redfin said.

Nationally, pending home sales fell the most on record in October as rising mortgage rates spooked buyers, Redfin reported. Canceled deals and price cuts hit record highs.

But inflation is beginning to cool, and Redfin said buyers may return to the market if the trend continues. Prices may ease as listings linger on the market and competition slows, the report said.

The median sales prices for homes listed through Redfin fell 1.4% from September to October — to $397,549 — but the price was still 4.9% higher than last year.

Locally, the median sales price for a single-family home stood at $383,500 in October, 14.5% higher than the year before, according to the most recent data from the Northeast Florida Association of Realtors.

More homes are getting listed for sale, and homes are remaining on the market longer than earlier in the year, the association said. Plus a smaller percentage of sellers — 13.8% — got more than their listed price in October, the association says. That figure was down 58.5% since last year.

The number of closed sales increased 12.4% from September to October, which is unusual for this time of year, but "all other housing metrics point to a massive shift in the market as the new year approaches," the Realtors association said.

“As expected, the real estate market continues to stabilize, as we close out the month of October and move into the holiday season,” association President Mark Rosener said in a news release. "We are much more in line with the last normal pre-pandemic year of 2019, which is a good sign for both buyers and sellers."

Randy comes to Jacksonville from the South Florida Sun Sentinel, where, as metro editor, he led investigative coverage of the Parkland school shooting that won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for public service. He has spent more than 40 years in reporting and editing positions in Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Ohio and Florida. You can reach Randy at rroguski@wjct.org or on Twitter, @rroguski.