The Fort Lauderdale Buying Season Is Worth About Six Days. The Year You Buy In Is Worth Seventeen.

Broward homes took a median of 73 days to sell from November through April. From May through October they took 79. The same March figure moved 17 days in two years.

What Actually Changes in Season

More homes come to market. That part of the story is true, and the numbers are bigger than most buyers expect.

Across the last three years, January brought an average of 4,226 homes to the Broward market. August brought 3,285. That is 29% more choice in January than in August.

Widen it to the whole season and the gap holds. November through April averages 3,895 homes arriving each month. May through October averages 3,428.

So if your complaint is that nothing good is available, the season is a real answer. You are shopping a wider field.

What Barely Changes

Here is where buyers get the season wrong. More homes arriving does not mean more homes sitting there waiting.

Count the homes actually on the market in any given month and the season almost disappears. November through April averaged 14,971. May through October averaged 15,053. The off season was slightly larger.

The reason is simple. Homes arrive faster in season, and they also leave faster.

The pace figure says the same thing quietly. Median days on market runs 73 in season and 79 out of it. Six days.

The Motivated Summer Homeowner Is Mostly a Myth

This is the belief I argue with most. A buyer tells me they will wait until July, when homeowners are desperate and nobody else is looking.

I checked it against the county data rather than my own impression. In 2026, between 22.1% and 25.2% of Broward homes on the market cut their price. That range covers all nine months through September.

The low month was July. The high month was March.

That is a three point spread across an entire year, pointing the wrong way. Homeowners do not become three times more flexible in August. A few of them do, and they are the same few who would have been flexible in February.

The Year Outweighs the Month

Now the number that should actually change how you think about this.

Take March, the fastest-selling month in each of the last three years. In March 2024, the median Broward home sold in 56 days. In March 2025 it took 67. In March 2026 it took 73.

That is 17 days of change in the same calendar month, across two years.

Inside 2026, the swing from the March low to the September high was 13 days.

Read those two numbers together. Which year you bought in moved your negotiating position more than which month you bought in. The market you are standing in matters more than the season you are standing in.

Neither one matters as much as whether the home itself is a good buy. A well-bought home in a crowded February beats a badly bought one in a quiet August, every time. The season is a rounding error against a bad street or a fixed bridge. It is a rounding error against a price nobody else would ever pay.

I am not going to put a seasonal discount percentage in this post. The county series does not separate the season from the trend cleanly enough. Any number I gave you would be soft.

When Waiting Actually Makes Sense

Waiting for summer to get a deal is a weak reason. Waiting for these is not.

Your own timeline requires it. A lease ending, a school year, a home of your own to sell first. Buy when your life can absorb the move, not when a calendar says to.

Your financing is not settled. A written quote from your lender beats a verbal number. If that conversation is not finished, the month is not your problem.

The specific thing you want is not available. If you need 80 feet of frontage with no fixed bridge, supply is thin year round. Waiting for the right home is different from waiting for the right month.

You have not seen enough to recognize value. Buyers who have toured twenty homes negotiate better than buyers who have toured four. That is worth more than six days.

What does not justify waiting is the hope that a season will do your work for you. It will not. The buyers who do well here are ready when the right home appears. The month does not matter.

I have spent 17 years selling in Fort Lauderdale. The buyers who got the best outcomes were almost never the ones who timed a season. They were the ones who knew exactly what they were looking at when it showed up.

If you are weighing whether to buy now or wait, bring me the specific homes you are considering. The MPH Team will tell you which ones are worth it in any month.