Map Shows States Where Homeowners Are Desperately Trying to Sell Houses

A pending sale sign is seen in front of a home on August 21, 2015 in Miami, Florida. Some data suggests that sellers in the state may be quite motivated to sale their properties.

Florida appears to be where buyers can find a significant group of homeowners actively looking and “motivated” to sell their properties.

Newsweek compiled data on home listings posted on the real estate platform Realtor.com. We searched properties listed for sale for individual states, then filtered the search using the keyword “motivated seller” as of April 15.

The result showed that more than 273,000 properties were listed for sale in Florida as of April 15, and about 3,000 of those had a “motivated seller” description as part of their listing. This suggests that a little over 1 percent of sellers in Florida on realtor.com are “motivated” to sell.

Florida’s housing market has been grappling with dynamics that are proving challenging for homeowners in the state.

The high cost of homeowners insurance exacerbated by the increased frequency of climate-change-related weather disruptions has added to how expensive owning a property has become in the region. Some insurers are exiting the state, citing the elevated cost of servicing the area, though they could be new players entering the market which may offer options for residents.

Daniella Hale, the chief economist at Realtor.com, told Newsweek that climate risks related to floods and heat are elevated in Florida, which can make it expensive to insure properties in the state.

“That could be a factor motivating sellers in Florida,” she said.

Realtor.com also shared data with Newsweek showing states that are seeing overall price reductions—another way of gauging how willing property owners are to sell.

Hale suggested that while price reductions can vary, the southern parts of the country, including Florida, have seen a rise in shares of properties that have seen a cut in their prices. For the Sunshine State, as of March, this had gone up by 6.5 percent on a yearly basis, which was the biggest jump of all the states. Oregon came closest to Florida with a 6.2 percent rise.

Part of the explanation as to why sellers could be more motivated more generally is that as the Spring selling season commences, some sellers may want to take advantage of elevated prices that have characterized the market over recent months.

Hale pointed to a recent Realtor.com survey that suggested that sellers are looking to make a profit on their homes.

“Financial reasons are not the only motivation [but] that is the number one response people get for wanting to sell so high prices are likely factoring in for some people,” she told

Newsweek.

The poll also revealed that about 80 percent of homeowners were looking to sell because they wished they had done so sooner.

“They feel like they could have taken advantage of a hotter housing market if they had listed sooner, so that could also be a phenomenon explaining why sellers are highly motivated,” Hale said. “If they feel like the market is cooling, they might want to move sooner rather than later and be highly motivated to sell their property before conditions cool further.”

This dynamic may be shaping sellers’ actions nationwide but may be a factor in Florida as well, she said.

Another part of the country with more than a 1 percent share of listed for-sale homes with a “motivated seller” in their descriptor was the District of Columbia. Some southern regions, like Tennessee and Louisiana, had a little under 1 percent of homes with “motivated seller” keywords as part of their listing. Maine had about 0.8 percent of properties with that descriptor.

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