The median price of a luxury home in Palm Beach, Florida, location of President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club, more than tripled in the third quarter from a year earlier to a record $16.5 million.
The new federal tax code that went into effect in 2018 capped the deductibility of state and local taxes, known as SALT, is boosting demand for high-priced real estate in low-tax states like Florida. Limiting the amount of property taxes that could be used to reduce federal tax burdens to $10,000 made it more expensive to own homes in areas like New York that have high property prices coupled with high taxes.
“The impact of the new tax plan and its impact on SALT tax in the northeast and west coast combined with the sharp decline in mortgage rates over the year has helped the market to show signs of improvement,” said Jay Phillip Parker, Chief Executive Officer of Douglas Elliman’s Florida Brokerage.
The 230% jump in Palm Beach’s median home price was the biggest increase in more than half a dozen Florida markets in a report issued Thursday by Douglas Elliman Real Estate and Miller Samuel. Palm Beach is where Trump and his family vacation in his property he has dubbed the “Winter White House.”
In Miami Beach, the luxury median sales price jumped 17% to a record $13,000,000, and in Fort Lauderdale, the median sales price of a luxury single-family home rose 30% to $2.1 million. The study defines luxury as the top 10% of the market.
In Boca Raton, the luxury single-family median sales price rose 33% to $2.2 million, and in Wellington, an inland market west of Palm Beach known as a place where billionaires go to train their horses in winter, the median sales price jumped 67% to $1.4 million.
In Coral Gables, the median sales price for a luxury single-family home rose 10.6% to $3.5 million and the median for luxury condos fell 8.5% to $1.6 million.
