But price of housing is a continued worry
Florida’s Business & Economic Mid-Year Report looks promising, the housing market reports its first positive shift in months, and bankruptcy filings are on the rise statewide. It’s all in this week’s Florida Economy News.
Mid-Year Report: The Florida Chamber of Commerce has released its Business & Economic Mid-Year Report for 2025, and the Sunshine State GDP has never looked better. So far, our state’s growth is outpacing the national average, and even its own 2024 growth by 1.4% over the first three months of the year – landing at a first quarter GDP of $1.76 trillion. The economic boom does bring its share of problems, especially in the housing market, where a 53% jump in the median housing price since 2019 has made it difficult for Florida’s burgeoning workforce to find a place to call home. While the Sunshine State’s current median housing price of $439,000 sits just under the national median at $441,000, the Chamber reported this as an area of worry, but one that if addressed, could propel Florida to a top world economic power. “To attract and retain a skilled workforce, housing in Florida needs to be affordable and accessible for the growing population,” according to the report. Florida was also recently ranked as the best economy and second-best workforce in the nation by CNBC’s 2025 Top States for Business, coming in at 3rd overall. Florida missed the mark on the cost of doing business, quality of life (both #22), and business friendliness (#23), but still holds a robust economy and very bright future. North Carolina took top honors as the best state for business.
Florida Housing – Over the Hump? As mentioned, housing is a contentious subject in the Florida landscape for several reasons – but this June the market for single-family homes showed an increase (2.8%) in sales for the first time since January. Falling prices might have nudged the market in the right direction, as Florida Realtors data shows the median single-family home sale price in June was $412,000, down 3.5% from June 2024. The slight hiccup in growth can be attributed to housing supply finally catching up to the droves of people moving to Florida. In the last few years, the Sunshine State has built more homes than any other state to answer the demand, but mortgage rates around 6%-7% and the end of pandemic-related remote work cooled the Florida craze down a bit. Cities like Tampa are reporting double-digit price drops, and Cape Coral has the highest number of vacant homes in any major US metro area. Experts are hesitant to call this first uptick a change in the tides – this may just be a gradual behavior shift and smoothing out of the market. Tim Weisheyer, 2025 Florida Realtors president, put it succinctly, “We’re seeing buyers start to settle into the reality that today’s market conditions are the new normal. If they want to own a home, this is the environment they’ll need to navigate and it’s a relatively stable one.”
Bankruptcy Filings Up: In the one-year period ending on June 30, Florida reported a 23.5% increase in bankruptcy filings (40,679 cases) from the year prior (32,933 cases). National bankruptcy filing rates increased 11.5% in this same period, but the federal court system said the change is not as worrying as it might seem at first glance. Nationally, for “more than a decade, total filings fell steadily, from a high of nearly 1.6 million in September 2010 to a low of 380,634 in June 2022. Total filings have increased each quarter since then, but they remain far lower than historical highs.” Bankruptcy filings in the report were organized by federal court district, with numbers as follows:
- Middle District of Florida – 23,442 filings (up 26.9%)
- Southern District of Florida – 14,930 (up 19.4%)
- Northern District of Florida – 2,307 (up 18.1%)
LMA Newsletter of 8-11-25
