Closed sales, median prices, new pending sales and pending inventory were all up over this time last year, according to new a new report from Florida Realtors.

The spring market is off to a good start, but condo and townhouse sales continue to “steal the show,” selling at a rate that is more than double that of single-family homes, Dr. Brad O’Connor, Florida Realtors Chief Economist said in the press release. That makes the sixth month in a row that condo and townhouse sales rates have bested their single-family home counterpart.

It’s a perfect storm for condo and townhouse sales, due to the shortage of inventory in the single-family home category and the entry of millennials into the market, O’Connor added.

“However, in recent years, builders have not been building the classic single-family detached starter homes that young American families have long dreamed of one day owning; therefore, there aren’t enough of these homes available for resale to meet the overwhelming level of demand. Any that are listed frequently have bidding wars that price out many young prospective buyers,” he said.

Millennials are realizing that mortgage rates will eventually increase, and they want to start building equity now, O’Connor noted.

Pending single-family home sales were up a whopping 48.2% from last year, but that’s substantially lower than the staggering 126.4% increase for condos and townhouses. Those oversized stats are due in part to the pandemic-driven drop in pending sales in March of last year, according to O’Connor.

“It might be more useful, then, to compare this March’s new pending sales to those from two years ago, in March 2019,” he added. “And when we do that, we find that new pending sales were up by a very satisfying 14% for single-family homes and 47% for condo-townhouse properties.”