Broward Condo Buyers Hold the Leverage: 54.7% Paid Cash in 2026

Most of the attention in South Florida goes to Miami-Dade, and the Broward numbers get read as a footnote. That is a mistake in 2026. Broward's existing condo segment is sitting in genuine buyer territory while its single-family segment is doing the opposite, and the gap between the two is wider than anything I see one county south. The September 2026 county snapshot from MIAMI REALTORS and RWorld, reported by the Key West Citizen, puts a hard number on who is actually buying, and the answer changes how a financed offer should be written. If you are weighing the new side of the market instead, start with our Broward luxury condo pipeline and the SB 4-D assessment guide.

The Cash Number That Defines the Broward Condo Market in 2026

More than half of every existing condominium that closed in Broward County in September 2026 was bought without a mortgage. The precise figure from MIAMI REALTORS and RWorld is 54.7 percent. Across all Broward property types cash came in at 38.8 percent of closings, up from 36.5 percent a year earlier, and single-family cash share was only 24.9 percent. So the cash concentration is a condo phenomenon, not a county-wide one.

For scale, the National Association of Realtors puts the national cash share at roughly 27 percent of closings. Broward condos are running at double that. The reasons are structural: international buyers, retirees arriving with equity from higher-priced markets, and the simple fact that a condo with an open assessment question is hard to finance, which pushes those units toward buyers who do not need an underwriter to agree with them.

Inventory Is Tightening While Condo Supply Stays Buyer-Friendly

The confusing part of the Broward data is that inventory fell and the market still favors condo buyers. Active listings dropped 14 percent year over year to 13,933 at the end of September 2026, the eighth consecutive month of tightening. Single-family inventory fell hardest, down 18.1 percent to 4,351 listings, while condo supply declined 12 percent to 9,582. Supply fell on both sides, but sales fell faster on the condo side, so months of supply still reads as a buyer's market.

Source: MIAMI REALTORS and RWorld September 2026 Broward County snapshot. Total Broward residential closings fell 9.7 percent year over year to 1,825.

What a Financed Buyer Has to Do Differently in Broward

Here is the position I take with every financed client looking at a Broward condo this year. You are not losing to a higher price. You are losing to a shorter close and a buyer who cannot be declined. The 93 percent median of original list price that condos received tells you sellers are already discounting; the 69 median days to contract tells you they are waiting a long time for the discount to work. That combination is negotiable room, and it is wasted if your offer reads as conditional.

Three things change the outcome. Shorten the financing contingency to the shortest window your lender will actually commit to in writing, not the longest one the form allows. Attach proof of funds and a full underwriting pre-approval rather than a pre-qualification letter. And screen the building before the unit, because an association with a thin reserve or an open milestone inspection will stall an underwriter no matter how clean your file is. Our guide on evaluating condo building financial health is the checklist I use, and the true cost of ownership breakdown is where I make buyers model the carrying number before they make an offer.

What These Broward Numbers Do Not Cover

This is the caveat I wish more people read before quoting a months-of-supply figure at me. The MIAMI REALTORS and RWorld report says plainly that its data set does not fully capture the region's pipeline of new construction, pre-construction, and condo conversions, because those sales are largely transacted outside the MLS. So the 10.2 months is a resale measure. It is not a statement about new development, and it is not a reason to assume the new side of the Broward market is equally soft.

• The 10.2 months of supply describes existing condominiums only, not new Fort Lauderdale development or Hollywood pre-construction.
• The 54.7 percent cash share is a resale statistic. Pre-construction contracts run on deposit schedules, which is a different financing question entirely.
• Mid-market activity is not uniformly weak: condo sales priced between $500,000 and $600,000 rose 8 percent year over year, to 43 transactions from 40.
• Upper-tier single-family held up, with $1 million and above sales up 2 percent to 180 closings.
• County-level supply hides building-level reality. One tower with an open assessment can read very differently from the one next door.

Read against our Miami months of supply tracking, the useful conclusion is not that Broward condos are cheap. It is that the leverage in Broward's resale condo segment is real, it is concentrated among buyers who can close without a lender, and a financed buyer who removes uncertainty from the offer can take a meaningful share of that leverage back.

How I Read Broward for Clients in 2026

When a client asks me whether Broward is a buyer's market, I tell them the honest answer is that half of it is. The condo side is, the single-family side is not, and a headline that averages the two is useless for the decision in front of them. What I do is pull the building's financials before we discuss the unit, then write an offer whose strength is speed and certainty rather than a number we both know the seller will counter anyway.

"When more than half the condo buyers around you are paying cash, your offer is not competing on price. It is competing on whether the seller believes you will actually close, and that is something a financed buyer can win."

Gerardo Gonzalez, Licensed Real Estate Agent at Compass

If you are looking at a specific Broward building this quarter, reach out and I will pull its reserve study, assessment history, and recent closed comparables before you write anything. That review takes a day and it is the difference between leverage you can use and leverage you only read about.

Gerardo Gonzalez

Luxury Dade Group at Compass