Things To Do In SW Florida

Housing prices in Central Florida hit a record high in 2024 and the supply of for-sale homes jumped, creating a more active real estate market than in recent years— at least for buyers who could afford to enter it, end-of-the-year data shows.

The median home sale price in the region was $380,000 in December, up 3.5 percent from a year earlier, according to the Orlando Regional Realtor Association. The data is for sales of single-family homes as well as condominiums, duplexes and townhouses in Orange, Osceola, Seminole and Volusia counties.

The number of houses for sale in the Orlando region also reached a six-month supply — meaning it would take that long to deplete the housing inventory based on current sales — in November, the first time it has done that in almost 14 years, the association’s data shows.

The supply of for-sale homes had been below that level — often far below — for years, bottoming out at less than a month’s supply in March 2022.  Generally, a six-month or more supply is better for buyers as it means they have more options and likely more room to negotiate prices. read more

By JOSH BOAK and ZEKE MILLER

PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — President Donald Trump on Saturday signed an order to impose stiff tariffs on imports from Mexico, Canada and China, drawing swift retaliation from the country’s North American neighbors in an emerging trade war.

The Republican president posted on social media that the tariffs were necessary “to protect Americans,” pressing the three nations to do more to curb the manufacture and export of illicit fentanyl and for Canada and Mexico to reduce illegal immigration into the U.S. The action fulfilled one of Trump’s commitments to voters but threw the global economy and Trump’s own political mandate to lower prices into turmoil.

The tariffs, if sustained, could cause inflation to significantly worsen, possibly eroding voters’ trust that Trump could as promised lower the prices of groceries, gasoline, housing, autos and other goods.

Trump declared an economic emergency in order to place duties of 10% on all imports from China and 25% on imports from Mexico and Canada. But energy imported from Canada, including oil, natural gas and electricity, would be taxed at a 10% rate. read more

By Aaron Leibowitz, Miami Herald

MIAMI — A Dubai-based developer has unveiled the details of an ultra-luxury project on the Surfside property where a building collapse in 2021 left 98 people dead and shattered a community.