Now, Skykes, whose firm showcases multimillion-dollar deals in both Florida and the Northeast, said she’s watching two Americas diverge in real time.
In the Northeast, she’s seeing bidding wars return in commuter suburbs like Monmouth County, N.J., and mid-Long Island, where buyers still fight for an acre and an elite school district.
In Florida, by contrast, she described a market in withdrawal, nursing a hangover after a flurry of activity.
“Just a couple years ago, we were being love-bombed and told how great we were,” she said, citing Florida’s burgeoning status as “Wall Street South,” a new finance hub. Now, things are “flat” or even heading downward.
Home prices in Florida have fallen 5.4% year-over-year, dragged down by a glut of aging condos facing six-figure special assessments and post-Surfside safety mandates. Single-family homes, meanwhile, remain relatively resilient, she noted.
She characterized the Sunshine State’s housing scene as a cycle of boom, bust, and burnout. Yet, she’s always fueled by the belief that somehow, the next round will be different.
“Now we’re being told, ‘Oh, you’re too expensive,’ and kind of being discarded,” Skykes said. “You know, the conversation changes by the day, really.”
Noting that Florida has always been a boom-or-bust state, she sees signs of moderation rather than collapse.
“Rather than being the boom up here and the bust way down here like we saw in 2008 and 2009, the waves are becoming flatter,” she explained. While there may be a pullback in prices, “really, a 5% pullback is nothing when your house has appreciated 25%.”
For Florida, Skykes argued, even a flat market signals stability after years of breakneck appreciation—especially in Palm Beach, where home values have jumped as much as 200% in recent years.
### The Challenge of Dual Market Personalities
Skykes described jarring regional differences. In Florida, as an agent, you’re “just trying to really push and pull and drag deals together, you’re getting discounts of 5%, 10%, 20% off list price,” but then in the Northeast you find yourself going into a bidding war.
“It’s like having a multiple personality disorder.”
That volatility reflects a broader split between regions that overheated during the pandemic and those returning to normal. The migration wave that sent high earners south may have turbocharged Florida’s boom but also exposed its fragility.
Now, agents and homeowners alike are navigating two competing realities: the Northeast’s cautious recovery and the Southeast’s cooling after years of mania.
Skykes also outlined a bifurcation within the Florida housing market: while single-family homes remain robust thanks to demand for space among incoming families, condos face mounting challenges.
That’s difficult because condos are “really what has been driving down the Florida market,” and they are facing new hurdles from special assessments, strengthened structural regulations, and fallout from incidents like the Surfside collapse.
Pre-selling of new-construction condos continues apace, with West Palm Beach alone seeing many significant developments underway.
Skykes described yet another bifurcation within condos themselves. Florida’s exploding population is full of people who left Manhattan or Chicago and “wanted their own space.”
She said single-family homes are doing well, but condos are divided, and “within that bifurcation of condos, a secondary bifurcation.”
“Florida,” she concluded, “you have to always take with a grain of salt.”
https://fortune.com/2025/11/08/florida-toxic-relationship-real-estate-multiple-personality-disorder/