TAMPA, Fla.—Anthony Holmes was part of the great Florida migration. In 2021, he moved from Virginia to a gated suburban community in Tampa.
Now that he has had to leave, Holmes is another victim of a glutted housing market where buyers are increasingly hard to find.
He paid $550,000 for his five-bedroom home and spent another $50,000 on solar panels and interior improvements. When he had to move back to Virginia for work, Holmes expected to sell his house quickly. But since listing it in February, he has had no luck. He dropped the price five times to $583,900 and would be happy simply to break even.
“I can’t unload the thing,” Holmes said. “In eight months, I’ve had zero offers. No one even showed up to the open houses. Nobody.”
Across much of Florida and especially along the western coast, a surplus of inventory and dwindling buyer interest are slowing sales and keeping homes on the market longer. That is cooling off what had been one of America’s biggest housing booms this decade.
Tropical storms and hurricanes, increasingly hitting the state’s western coast, are making matters worse.
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