These HOA fees across Florida are skyrocketing out of control. In certain condo buildings, people are now paying as much as 3,000 4,000 a month on their HOAs. And the result is a mass selloff that's causing home prices to go down all across the state in Florida, but particularly in the zip code I'm standing in right now here in St. Petersburg. Prices are down almost 8% year-over-year. And this is an absolute freefall that's occurring in this housing market, everyone. People in Florida can no longer afford to own the real estate that they purchased over the last decade. And now there's a massive selloff taking place. And now across the state of Florida, we have almost 10 months of supply of condo buildings on the market, which is the highest we've seen since the end of the 2008 crash.
You know, I've been looking at different condos in my neighborhood in Florida that are for sale, and I'm shocked at how much the values are dropping. Like there's listings around the corner from me where the prices are down 20% in the last couple years and some of these condos are now selling for affordable prices like 270 $260,000. The problem is though that HOA fee does that HOA fee which you have to pay to the homeowners and condos association makes it just not affordable. There's a listing near me that's $270,000.
You would have to pay 2500 a month inclusive of HOA to buy that property with a mortgage. Well, it was recently on the market for rent at 2,000 a month and it couldn't rent at 2,000 a month. And so, if it can't rent at 2,000 a month, why would it sell at 2500 a month with the HOA? And another crazy thing that's now happening here in Florida is that a lot of outofstate investors and second and third homeowners are selling uh most specifically a lot of Canadians are now selling their Florida real estate.
There was just an article in the Wall Street Journal talking about how Canadian owners in America who come here for vacation or for 3 to 6 months out of the year during the warm weather. They're now selling their properties in states like Florida and Arizona. Some of these people who handle Canadian uh listings are saying that it's the most listings they've ever seen. In some cases, some of these brokers and lawyers are seeing six times as many listings from Canadian owners selling and foreign owners selling in Florida and Arizona. And this just isn't a narrative. Like when we look at the data on Reventure app, we're seeing the inventory absolutely skyrocket. So where I am right now is uh St. Pete Beach, which is on the west side of Penllis County. The beach is just a couple blocks that way. And you could see kind of around me. This is your quintessential beachside area in Florida. You got a lot of little bungalow homes.
A lot of these homes were built maybe in the 40s and 50s. A lot of these homes actually flooded during the hurricane last year. here. A lot of them are now on the market for a big loss, but a lot of these homes are owned by foreign investors, foreign uh second and third home owners, and a lot of them are now selling. So, for instance, this zip code is 33706. And if you guys want to follow along, open up the Reventure mobile app if you have downloaded it and type in 3376 into the search and it'll pull up the zip code I'm in right now. You could see that there's 410 homes for sale in this zip code. homes and condos, it's it's about an even split. And 410 homes and condos, that's the highest level of inventory in the data going back 10 years.
So, when you see that inventory go up that much, that's telling you that there's a housing downturn, that's telling you that prices are dropping and it's supporting this narrative of Canadian and foreign investors selling. Now, how much are values dropping? Well, if we switch on Revenge to home value growth year-over-year in this zip code, 33706. Again, if you want to follow along through February 2025, prices were down 7.7% year-over-year. The data is about to update for March. It's going to be an even bigger drop in March. I think it's going to be more than 8% down year-over-year uh in March in this zip code.
And so, this is just a real world example, everyone, of this housing downturn playing out. Like a lot of people here in the economy and housing market are still ignorant to the fact that home prices are dropping in many parts of America. In fact, in March, home prices dropped in 22 out of 50 states on a month-over-month basis. So, this downturn is spreading not just in the condo market, but also in the single family market. And it's not just in Florida anymore.
It's in many other states in the Southeast, in Texas. Even California is now experiencing month- over-month price declines. And these prices are going to drop more into the future because I have some good news for you folks. The Trump administration just announced that they are going to end the loss mitigation foreclosure backlog that is existing at HUD and the FHA. This is some big news.
I want to fill you guys in on this. Uh, I reported to you about a month ago, a month and a half ago, about how there's almost 400,000 seriously delinquent mortgages in the FHA mortgage program, which are blocked from foreclosure. What the Trump administration just announced is that starting in September of this year, September 2025, home borrowers will no longer be able to claim these loss mitigation options.
It's called loss mitigation. Basically, if you claim hardship, any type of hardship, economic or financial, you don't have to pay your mortgage interest. That's what the Biden administration did uh even after the pandemic was well over. Well, the Trump administration is now ending that. And the good news is we are going to see more listings hit the market as a result. There was many people who were actually fraudulently claiming hardship. Uh so they didn't have to pay their mortgage interest.
They're not going to be able to do that anymore starting in September. And so many of these people, I think, are going to start to sell their houses. Um especially the ones who are doing it under a fraudulent basis. That's going to mean more homes hitting the market in the summer and fall, which is going to mean more downward pressure on home prices, particularly in cities with the highest exposure to FHA mortgages.
So, the FHA mortgage, just so you guys remember, is that firsttime home buyer loan, 3 to 5% down. The cities that have the highest exposure to FHA mortgages include Las Vegas, Phoenix, Orlando, Riverside, California, as well as Tampa. Lots of FHA mortgages in those markets. So, I expect to see more inventory in those markets throughout the rest of the year. More downward pressure on prices. Also include Detroit on that list. There's some cities in the Midwest that also have a lot of FHA mortgages. And the good news is homeowners who don't pay their mortgage interest are no longer going to be able to abuse the system and not be foreclosed on. So, expect those foreclosures to also increase as the year goes on, which is actually a good thing. everyone, we need more foreclosures on the US housing market because that's going to bring more inventory and cheaper prices to the people who have been saving up their money over the last 3 or four years and have been uh responsible in terms of waiting to buy a house.
Now, I got to tell you everyone, we're in midApril here in Florida. It is starting to get hot. The UV index is now at like a 10 or 11 out of 12. I think it goes out of 12, meaning lots of UV radiation. Uh it's now getting up to the high 80s which actually feels right like nice right now near the beach but we're still in midappril and the temperature starting to get dialed up and I've actually noticed a big slowdown here over the last two weeks like in March down here in St. Petersburg uh in Penllis County was really busy a lot of spring breakers but like in the last two weeks this place is emptied out and it's actually kind of nice. Uh this is like the sweet spot of being in Florida, midappril, probably over the next month, where the weather's good and there aren't so many tourists. Uh so this is actually a really good time of year to be here.
What's also really interesting is that the baseball team in uh Tampa, actually was in St. Petersburg, was the Tampa Rays. They are no longer playing in their stadium because their stadium had the roof roof ripped off during the hurricane last year. And so normally there's a lot of baseball fans in downtown St. Petersburg in April going to baseball games. They're not here anymore. Uh Tampa, the Tampa Rays are now playing in a minor league stadium in Tampa that has like 8,000 people going to it. They're actually playing in the New York Yankees minor league stadium. So that could be another economic headwind for St. Petersburg specifically over the next year is they don't have the baseball team anymore. Uh, I actually kind of like it is it's nice and calm, nice and quiet around here. But, uh, I think a lot of the Airbnb owners might especially not like that the baseball team isn't here anymore.
Now, one thing that is good to see is some of these places near the beach are now starting to open up again. Um, for a while the hurricane shut down. A lot of the bars, a lot of the restaurants, a lot of the houses even you couldn't get into due to the hurricane. Well, now we're starting to see some life return to these areas. You see the bar right behind me is open. There's people there hanging out by the pool. But interestingly, check this out, everyone. We still have certain places, certain buildings are all boarded up. So, this is an apartment complex. I guess it's called Irene's Apartments. Irene's Apartments is not open. There's plywood on all all the windows, all the doors. This would have been an area that got flooded last year during Hurricane Helen. And if we actually walk across the street from Irene's apartments, you can see we got another uh location here.
This is called Woody's Waterfront. This is still closed. And this is still like a disaster area. If you look in here, you can see this place is bombed out, got flooded, and there's been no one here to renovate it. We're right next to the water here. So what happened during the hurricane was a storm surge came way up and then moved inland probably almost as high as you see the plywood on the first floor.
Uh this area got devastated. You see that trees down over there. The garage there is collapsed. There is a bar over there that is now open. They have a sign that says yes we're open. So there is a recovery occurring from the hurricanes. More places are open but there's still a lot of lot of damage when these hurricanes come to Florida. everyone. They have an initial impact that's really scary, but then they have an economic impact that lasts years. You know, this happened actually down in uh Fort Myers as well during Hurricane Ian. Fort Myers Beach is still recovering from Hurricane Ian almost 3 years ago. Home prices there are down 15 20%.
And so this tells you about the risk of buying real estate in Florida. And what I think a lot of people are now realizing who bought in Florida during the pandemic is that, you know, it wasn't everything it was cracked up to be. You know, Florida's a nice place to live, but to own real estate, it's a really hard place to own real estate because you got to deal with the climate issues.
You got to deal with the insurance costs. You got to deal with the HOA fees skyrocketing out of control. And it's just a lot of headache. It's a lot of headache, especially if you don't live here full-time. You know, the cost of ownership are going up. And so, that's why a lot of people are selling. And I think what's ultimately going to happen is Florida is going to become cheaper once again. It's going to become affordable again. It's already starting to become affordable. Home prices are down 3% across the state. They're down almost 10% in markets in Southwest Florida. They're down almost 10% in this zip code where I'm standing right now. But this is a process that's going to last multiple years, this Florida housing market correction, because things got to get a lot cheaper before I think the buyers feel the confidence to step into the market and support the market. But now I want to talk to you all about condos and HOA fees a little more.
Um because the whole reason we're having this crisis in Florida with the HOA fees is because of the Surfside building collapse in uh the Miami area back in 2021. It was a really tragic story. Uh older condo building there collapsed. Hundreds of people died. And after that happened, the state of Florida basically said that it's not acceptable for these older condo buildings anymore to be in disrepair and that all the older buildings needed to fill their reserves and do the maintenance on the building. Sounds sensible enough, right? The issue was though that all these old condo properties in Florida hadn't been doing the repairs and maintenance for decades, and they hadn't been filling their uh reserves to do that repairs and maintenance for decades. So, all of a sudden, in a matter of years, existing owners of these condo units got assessed with HOA assessments to cover three decades worth of work that didn't get done.
So, that's why some of the HOA fees are going up so high. I mentioned 3,000 4,000 a month. We are seeing that in certain condo buildings in downtown St. Pete. There's a building on uh One Beach Drive. It's one of the best locations in St. Pete. There's units there where the HOA fees are 3,000 a month. There's units there where the prices are down 50%. They've done 50% price cuts in that building. Some of the owners are taking big losses from what they bought it for four or five years ago. And so this this Florida condo market, it is an actual downturn. It is an actual crash where a lot of people are losing a lot of money. But one thing that is interesting about the condo downturn is it's not just Florida. Actually, it's all over the US. Today, I was on Zillow looking in Austin, Texas. And in Austin, Texas, I'm finding condo units that are back down to their 2017 value where the owners are losing hundreds of thousands of dollars in Austin.
Also in downtown Atlanta, the condo prices are dropping and dropping by a lot. So this is a nationwide trend that's occurring. And I think the reason why it's nationwide is yes, one's the HOA fees, but the other is that we built a lot of multif family apartments the last 5 years. We had a record number of multif family apartments built and still have a record number under construction.
So the more multif family units there are, the more competition there is for condos because essentially a new luxury apartment building often is better than an older condo building in terms of a place to live. And so when these condo owners then go to try to rent out their condo, they can't anymore because the vacancy rates are up. There's all this competition. I think that's the overall reason the condo market on a national basis is slowing. But single family home prices are also dropping and dropping by a lot in Florida. the entire market's getting hit. And I fear this could be a longer term trend, like a trend that's not just for one year or two years, but maybe is for four or five years.
And one alarming thing I just read today, everyone, I'm going to share this with you because it it shows you how Florida's housing market is not what you think it is. It's a news report about how uh schools in Tampa, school districts in Tampa and St. Petersburg are now laying off teachers. As many as 400 teachers are getting laid off in Penllis County, elementary schools, middle schools, high schools. You say yourself, why is that? Well, when you read into the article from the Tampa Bay Times, you realize that school enrollment in Penllis County is down by 13,000 over the last 7 years.
So, in 2015, there's 13,000 fewer children in Penllis County schools than there were in 2018. And when you stop and think about that, it's like it's like shocking because all we're told is like how much this area is growing. All we're told down here in Florida is how many people are moving here. But when you look at the data and you realize that the schools don't have any kids in them and they're having to fire teachers because of it, you realize that there's something about the growth story that isn't accurate.
And it actually there's actually very low family formation in Florida. A lot of the uh younger couples that are here are priced out and have to leave. Maybe they move to a state like Georgia or Alabama or Tennessee. Maybe they move to another county in Florida that's cheaper. So that's where they raise their family. On the other end of the spectrum down here in Florida, it's just, you know, it's a lot of people who are single or it's a lot of people who are divorced or it's a lot of people who are um retired and there's just no kids in the picture.
And the problem with no kids being in the picture is that that's going to impact the housing market in the long run. is the number one fundamental reason that people buy homes is for safety and stability for their family. That's the number one reason people why people buy homes. I actually pulled you guys and I asked you the question, what is the reason you're buying a house? Most of you said it's a good place to raise a family. So, if you don't have families being formed and you don't have children and you have a demographic crisis, it's going to negatively impact your local housing market. And that's why I think the demand to buy single family homes could be down for a while here in Penllis County and Florida and other parts of Florida because the main impetus to buy a single family home, the presence or future presence of kids isn't really a thing is actually going in reverse. And one thing I'm actually going to do more of in the future, guys, as I go on the road and travel and show you videos, I'm going to be using Reventure App in these videos more frequently.
And what I want you guys to do is I want you to follow along with me. So I'm here in this zip code 33706 St. Pete Beach, right? I want you guys to open up Reventure app and look up the data as I'm in this zip code. So we talked earlier like there's 410 homes on the market. Why is it a declining market? Well, it's because that's higher than the long-term average. I think if you look at this data with me on Reventure App while I'm, you know, explaining it, it will help you better understand what's going on in different housing markets and you can apply that same method of analysis to your housing market. Just hit the current location button on the Reventure mobile app. If you haven't downloaded the Reventure mobile app, do it right now. You can hit that current location button, immediately get taken to the housing market in your area. The current location button is on the top right.
You have to enable location services to access it, but it's super helpful. And then uh there's two different plans on the Reventure mobile app. The first is free. Under the free plan, you can access home value and inventory data for every market in America. Very good deal, very good value. And then once you're ready, you can sign up for that premium plan, which gets you access to our home price forecast score. You can see on every scorecard, there's the Reventure Price score. It's hidden if you're not a free if you're not a premium member, but when you become a premium member, you can then see what our score is.
In this uh zip code, I believe it's like a 30 out of 100, which is well below average. We think prices are going to drop about 6%. If you hit that prices up, prices down button, you could see how much we think the percentages for the price declines. I just think this is a great tool for all of you out there to better track your housing market. So, if you haven't downloaded the Reventure mobile app yet, do it right now. And also, leave us a review in the app store. Uh we just launched. We want to get more of your feedback. Leave us a review in the App Store right now. We would really appreciate that. Tell them what you think about the data and about the channel and about the app itself.
So until next time everyone, I hope you enjoyed this video. Condo prices are dropping, HOA fees are going up, and these price drops, they're going to occur more into the future. Just depends on which market you live in. Download the Reventure mobile app..