Inside the hot Palm Beach luxury real estate market: Wall Street South

Palm Beach and West Palm Beach have been experiencing a very active real estate market.Both places are located within Palm Beach County in sunny South Florida, with the former sitting on a barrier island and the latter just across the Lake Worth Lagoon.Palm Beach County saw over 13,300 single-family home sales transactions and 9,900 condo and townhouse deals close in 2024, according to a report from Broward, Palm Beaches and St.Lucies Realtors. “Right now, South Florida real estate in general, but especially West Palm Beach, Palm Beach is extremely active,” Douglas Elliman sales associate John Wilson told FOX Business in an interview, adding the area has “bunches of new development.”There were 398 new signed contracts for Palm Beach County single-family homes and 335 for condos last month, a report from Douglas Elliman showed.

Some 1,600 homes were newly listed. Condo signed contracts and listings were both also up year-over-year in January.Palm Beach and West Palm Beach’s luxury markets have been particularly flourishing.“A lot of the, let’s say like $700,000 to $2 million, that’s sort of an interest rate driven market, so it’s not as much, where mainly what we’re dealing with on the island and in West Palm Beach, and we do a lot of new development, a lot of that’s cash,” Wilson said.He said he has “never seen anything like this” in the West Palm Beach market.“West Palm, I describe it this way … It was kind of like the outside of the island if you know what I mean and sort of quiet and really wasn’t over developed, but now, with all the developers and stuff coming here, this place is on fire, and it’s exciting because there’s just so much new things happening.It’s like a renaissance, if you will.”Wilson said demand in Palm Beach and West Palm Beach’s luxury markets had grown “exponentially” in recent months.“Right before the election, it was sort of like ‘wait and see.” Yes, there was activity, but I t...