{"id":334537,"date":"2026-07-09T16:39:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T16:39:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/334537\/"},"modified":"2026-07-09T16:39:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T16:39:09","slug":"southwest-florida-home-inventory-drops-20-market-shifts-toward-neutral-wink-smart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/334537\/","title":{"rendered":"Southwest Florida home inventory drops 20%, market shifts toward neutral | WINK Smart"},"content":{"rendered":"

PUNTA GORDA, Fla. (WINK)\u2014 From North Port to Naples, Southwest Florida has been home to some of the coolest housing markets<\/a> in the country over the past several years. Now, a new report finds those prices are starting to stabilize.<\/p>\n

Inventory is starting to decline, pushing Southwest Florida somewhere between a buyers and sellers market, according to economists and realtors. Florida Gulf Coast University finds the number of home listings has consistently dropped over the last three months.<\/p>\n

In May, listings\u00a0declined almost 19.3% from last year<\/a>, according to the Regional Economic Indicators Dashboard. There were similar drops in April and March.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“It’s moderating,” said Amir Neto, director of FGCU Regional Economic Research Institute. “If you look into the supply and demand, I think we are moderating in both ends, and we’re finding newer equilibrium, so it’s a little bit less volatile.”<\/p>\n

Neto said home prices are continuing to drop – but not as quickly as before. Punta Gorda-based realtor Brian Helgemo said some sellers have exited the market. He described them as people who would like to sell, but don’t need to.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“They’re saying….we’ll wait a year, two years, three years for those prices to come back up again,” Helgemo said. “And you know, in Southwest Florida, they always go back up.<\/p>\n

\"Southwest<\/p>\n

Even though there are fewer listings, buyers still have plenty of options. Neto said inventory remains above pre-pandemic levels. Roughly 23,500 homes are currently listed in Lee County, according to data from Realtor.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Florida’s red-hot real estate boom during COVID 19 fueled more development in the region, Neto said.<\/p>\n

Some projects took years to complete, introducing new homes into the market even as fewer people moved to Florida<\/a>. Meanwhile, some people decided to leave after hurricanes increased homeownership costs.<\/a>\u00a0Housing inventory peaked in 2025 and has declined since, Neto said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

People are still moving to Southwest Florida. The coastal counties had 2,512 single-family home sales in May, according to FGCU. That’s a 4.2 percent increase from May 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Helgemo said several properties are getting multiple offers a week, which hasn’t happened for some time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Buyers are having to come in a little more realistic and not just throw offers at sellers,” Helgemo said. “So that’s helping everything.”<\/p>\n

Southwest Florida is approaching a ‘neutral market,’ Helgemo said, somewhere between buyers and sellers. But if a lot of properties hit the market this fall, Helgemo said it could swing back towards buyers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“We’re moving closer to a buyer’s market,” Neto said. “We are much closer to a buyer’s market right now, and that is a fact that I think the inventory tells that story.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PUNTA GORDA, Fla. (WINK)\u2014 From North Port to Naples, Southwest Florida has been home to some of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":334538,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210,3837,1917,115,121785],"class_list":["post-334537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news","tag-collaborator_gen_stories","tag-consumer","tag-news","tag-southwest_florida"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=334537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334537\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/334538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=334537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=334537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=334537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}