RCLCO Real Estate Consulting, an advisory firm focused on the real estate industry, has officially released results from its mid-year survey of the top-selling master-planned communities (MPCs) in 2024. According to certain reports, the stated survey revealed that new home sales among the 50 Top-Selling Master-Planned Communities remained relatively steady, declining by less than one percent compared to the top-selling communities of mid-year 2023. Talk about the same on a slightly deeper level, the survey informed us on how new home sales among the 50 Top-Selling Master-Planned Communities continued the pace set by top communities in the first half of 2023. Next up, we got to know through the given report that sales among top-MPCs outperformed broader new home market. By that, the report referred to pace of single-family home sales nationally being 1.1% lower during the first half of 2024, as compared to the prior year. In fact, the month of June saw home sales, throughout the country, experiencing a 7.4% decline compared to 2023, while on the other hand, master planned communities held strong. Another detail we must mention here is rooted in the way Florida’s Lakewood Ranch achieved top spot when it came to selling all-ages community in the country, racking up an estimated 1,238 sales. On top of it, the estimations also claim that The Villages retained its place as the top-selling community overall. Enabling the latter to reach such a feat has predominantly been buyers aged 55 or above.
“New home sales in master-planned communities represent only a fraction of total sales in the country, but the trends and patterns we see there tell us a lot about the state of the housing market overall,” said Karl Pischke, Principal at RCLCO Real Estate Consulting. “Despite the current interest rate environment and softening builder sentiment in the near-term, the long-term strength of new home sales results from strong underlying demographics, particularly millennial households in their prime home buying years as well as retiring boomer households, and domestic migration trends across the country.”
Moving on, the survey has Sunterra in Houston, TX earning the third-place rank with 774 sales. This marked a 16% increase from the same time last year. Another Houston-based property that needs to be acknowledged is Houston MSA, which was the top-performing metropolitan area with 13 communities in the Top-50, representing over 4,500 sales, accounting for almost 24% of all sales among ranked MPCs. Finally, our last piece of highlight comes from the State of Texas representing about 39% of sales among ranked communities, followed by Florida at 36%, Nevada at 11% and South Carolina at 6%.
To give you some context on RCLCO’s national survey of master-planned communities, it has been conducted since 1994 to identify the top-selling MPCs through a rigorous search of high-performing communities. Here, the ranking is based on total new home sales as reported by each individual community, reports that RCLCO then uses to establish updated rankings from the previously released year-end results. All in all, such an initiative is meant to commend the most successful communities. At the same time, it is also designed to present a tool for monitoring the overall health of the for-sale housing industry; a means of locating markets with residential momentum; a process for highlighting trends affecting communities; and a medium through which to learn development best practices.
“Master-Planned Communities remain a ‘haven’ for consumers amid elevated interest rates and economic uncertainty,” said Gregg Logan, Managing Director at RCLCO Real Estate Consulting. “Sales among top-MPCs outperformed the broader new home market, as sales of single-family homes nationally were 1.1% lower compared to sales in the first half of 2023.”
