Condos Are Back

There’s been a lot of press about record prices and tight availability for single-family homes, and those factors could be behind the sales explosion in condominiums and townhouses. More buyers are finding these units to be an acceptable Plan B to their more ambitious house hunting plans.

Sales of condos and townhomes have exploded over the past year as people who could work from anywhere moved across the country or scooped up a second home to enjoy on vacations near the beach or the ski slopes. Nationwide, there were twice as many condos sold in May 2021 as there were in May 2020, according to a Realtor.com® analysis of home sales data.

While the number of sales fell for both condos and single-family homes and just about all residential real estate in the first couple of months of the pandemic, condos fared far worse. There was a 46% drop in condo sales in May 2020, compared with the same time a year before. (Single-family homes saw a 32% drop in sales.)
After that, the story changed.

There was a rebound for both types of housing, and condo sales shot up starting in early 2021. By May, the number of condo sales doubled, far outpacing single-family home sales, which saw 70% growth over the same time.

Realtor.com took a deeper look into the condo turnaround by looking at cities that saw the largest median price growth from August 2020 to August 2021. To see if ski destinations and the Las Vegas Strip were more popular than locations with beaches and sunshine … 

Read More