As Behind The Hedges begins to turn its attention more toward Palm Beach as the air begins to chill in the Northeast, we wanted to check in luxury homebuilding. We reached out to Jill DiDonna, the chief marketing officer at GL Homes, one of the largest luxury homebuilders in Florida.
For over 45 years, GL Homes has created residential communities and built quality residences, which more than 100,000 people call home. Based in Sunrise, FL, GL Homes has several luxury communities built or under construction in Boca Raton, Palm Beach Gardens and other parts of South Florida.
What are you noticing about the market right now?
The demand for luxury homes is incredibly strong throughout South Florida; it’s normalized a bit since the peak of the ‘great migration’ of 2021 and 2022, but demand still exceeds inventory and we’re still selling homes at a brisk pace in some of our prime locations in Palm Beach County.
Boca Raton, in particular, stands out as a market that has seen a resurgence of demand from high-end homebuyers; there’s been an influx of young families from places like New York, Chicago and even California because of the A+ location. Boca sits between two international airports and enjoys proximity to high-end restaurants and shopping destinations, top-rated public and private schools, great parks and golf courses, and many Fortune 500 employers. We’ve sold more than 500 homes since 2022 at our Lotus Palm community just off Glades Road (starting at $1.4 million) and homes at our newly launched neighboring community, Lotus Edge, are also moving quickly.
How are the lower mortgage interest rates impacting sales?
Our buyers tend to be affluent and therefore not as rate-sensitive, so it hasn’t had a significant impact on our sales. (GL homes in prime Palm Beach County markets range between $900,000 and $3 million). A limited supply of high-quality existing home inventory has contributed to our strong sales; today’s buyers want contemporary on-trend homes with a lot of high-end details and fantastic amenities, so they are gravitating toward new construction single-family homes and condos.
What do you expect to see for the rest of 2024?
We anticipate a very active home-buying season for the rest of the year and into early 2025. Although November to April is typically the busiest homebuying “season” in South Florida, today’s homebuyers want year-round places to live in Florida, so our sales activity has also been consistent throughout the year.
A couple of trends we’re noting:
• There’s a westward migration of wealth in Palm Beach County; although there will always be demand for core downtown locations like Delray Beach and the island of Palm Beach, high-end product in those markets is limited, so many affluent buyers are choosing more suburban locations because it’s new, it’s still close to everything, and there’s less traffic and generally more space. We’ve sold over 130 homes at APEX at Avenir in Palm Beach Gardens so far this year, for example, which we attribute to the exceptional location, quality of the master-planned community amenities, and the fact that it’s close to three world-class golf courses.
• New condo rules signed into law this year are giving people pause about purchasing a condo, where association fees and special assessments are likely to increase. We see a lot of people particularly in the 55+ segment – gravitating from condos to single-family communities like our Valencia Grand community in Boynton Beach (starting $1 million) because of the amenities, social programming and the lower association fees.
This article appeared in the October 24, 2024, edition of Behind The Hedges inside Dan’s Papers. Read the full digital edition here. For more Palm Beach area real estate, click here.
at the GL Homes’ Lotus Palm and Lotus Edge
properties in Boca Raton.GL Homes
