It’s hard to imagine something more disruptive to a housing market than a hurricane.
That’s what the Tampa Bay metro area was faced with in October with Hurricane Milton, which made landfall in the area as a Category 3 storm. Milton set a record for tornado warnings with 129, and hundreds of homes were destroyed in Florida.
In the days leading up to the storm’s landfall on Oct. 9, housing markets in the Tampa area came to a complete halt as sellers took their homes off the market. Real estate agents in the area put their business interests aside, and many reported helping their clients board up their homes and ensure they were prepared for the aftermath.
But how has the housing market fared since the hurricane has passed? Data from Altos Research shows a dramatic pause for Tampa-area markets before the hurricane struck and an even more dramatic return after it was over.
The most eye-popping data is for new listings. The week of the hurricane, new listings fell by about 80% in five major cities in the metro area — Tampa, Clearwater, Largo, Brandon and Riverview. Clearwater lost 81% of its listings, the highest rate among the five cities.
These numbers would appear unmatchable if not for numbers posted the following week. After the hurricane passed, new listings in Largo jumped by a shocking 650% compared to the week prior. Clearwater (+400%), Tampa (+309%), Riverview (+271%) and Brandon (+175%) also saw significant recoveries.
Pending home sales tell a similar story. The week the hurricane hit, new pending sales in the same five cities fell somewhere between 79% (Tampa) and 45% (Brandon). But the following week, new pending sales jumped 185% in Tampa and by 183% in Brandon.
The volatility in new listings, however, didn’t have the same dramatic or immediate impact on overall listings. While all five cities showed an inventory drop during the weeks immediately before and after the hurricane, the largest declines were less than 10%.
It took longer for the markets to recover. Inventory fell modestly in the two weeks after Milton but began to rise at a healthy clip by the end of November. And home prices were practically unchanged by the hurricane.
Taken together, the data shows that while leading indicators suffered sharp drops at the time of the hurricane, they snapped back in even more dramatic fashion shortly afterward.
