Palm Beach home prices fall 6%: report

Single-family home prices are dropping in Palm Beach, where high-end closings in the town’s Estate Section plummeted by 47 percent.

Palm Beach posted a 6 percent decline in average home sale price to $4.7 million from October 2013 to March 2014, according to the Spring 2014 Palm Beach Residential Market Report released by brokerage Brown Harris Stevens. The firm attributes the drop to a flurry of expensive Estate Section closings that occurred at the end of 2012, when sellers rushed to complete transactions before anticipated tax law changes kicked in. That artificially inflated the section’s figures between October 2012 and March 2013.

The town had 79 single-family closings between October 2013 and March 2014, which equaled the total amount of sales between October 2012 and March 2013. Homes spent an average of 194 days on the market, which represents a 30 percent year-over-year drop. New listings dipped from 124 to 120 during the same period.

Palm Beach year-over-year condo sales increased from 171 to 177, with the average days on the market rising from 195 to 198. The average condo sale price slipped 4 percent to $684,932. — Eric Kalis