Island brokers say 2026 is off to the busiest start they have seen since the height of the pandemic property boom.

There is no mania like in 2021. Buyers this year are savvy and selective, but they are showing up in sufficient force to break records.

Closings have been strong – Dale Sorensen Real Estate agent Tripp Hernandez said island sales were up 45 percent in January, from 99 last year to 144 this year – but the most exhilarating news is the number of new contracts that have been written.

“We had 184 properties go under contract in February last year, houses and condos, according to BrokerMetrics,” Hernandez said. “This year the number was 299! That is massive. A huge, huge number for this little area.”

The 60-percent jump made February the best month in at least the past two years for new deals – and March was even better.

“Looking at the island and the mainland, not including Sebastian and Fellsmere, under contracts were up 90 percent in March compared to last year,” Hernandez says. “Closing were up 26 percent.”

“March ended up being the best month in the 75-year history of our company by two metrics,” said AMAC Alex MacWilliam broker Buzz MacWilliam.

“The two main things I track monthly, quarterly and yearly, are the number of new contingent contracts signed and the number of closed sales.

“In both cases I look at the number of transactions, the dollar volume and the company dollar – the amount coming to the brokerage.

“In March, our agents wrote $62.6 million in new contracts, the most ever for us in a single month. We also had a record-breaking number of sales over $1 million, with 19 sales at or above that amount.

“The number of new contracts written was the second highest we have seen, with 67. Newer agents were doing deals. Longtime agents were making deals. It was a very good, robust first quarter.”

“I have my skates on,” said Douglas Elliman broker associate Sally Daley, who told Vero Beach 32963 she wrote three contracts in a 10-hour period on one auspicious day in March.

“That is this market,” she said. “It is busy, busy, busy! I haven’t been this busy since 2021.”

“The other day, I had a showing at 10 a.m., then another at 12 p.m., another at 1 pm and then one at 2:30 p.m.,” Hernandez said. “I was all over the county all day long with no time for a lunch break. It feels like that right now. Buyers are here and they are excited!”

Good as March was, Hernandez, who is known to be a student of statistics with a deep knowledge of the Vero Beach market, said April will be even better when all the numbers are added up.

“April will far surpass March,” he said.

“We are chugging right along,” said MacWilliam. “Business is very strong and should stay that way through mid-May.”

In fact, the good times are guaranteed to keep rolling at least through May and June, as the record number of contracts written in the first four months of the year close. A few will fall out, but most will reach the settlement table, channeling optimistic money into upbeat island brokerages.

MacWilliam said the surge in sales has been broad based. “We have sold everything from a $50,000 condo in Vista Royal to a $4.5-million property on the island.

“The busiest market segment has probably been that million-dollar-plus part, homes from about $1.5 million to $3 million in Central Beach. Condo sales have been very robust, too.”

Island agents and brokers said the extraordinary upsurge in sales has been driven mainly by pent-up demand, along with a belated alignment of buyer and seller expectations

For years after the pandemic market, which was the biggest property boom in history, sellers clung to the idea that their home must be worth much more than they paid for it, or what it was worth last year, with peak sales and the rate of price appreciation seen in 2021 setting expectations.

At the same time, once the boom faltered and national media automatically began to speculate about or forecast a coming housing crash, buyers pulled back on the hand brake. Some have been waiting for 2010-type discounts for years, but those big discounts never came, at least not in Vero Beach.

Home appreciation has moderated and prices are down slightly from the peak, but the bottom never fell out of the market the way it has tended to after prior property booms.

Now, finally, both buyers and sellers are becoming more realistic, with more buyers pricing their homes realistically instead of aspirationally, and sellers accepting that pandemic prices are here to stay.

Buyer sentiment also has been weighed down in recent years by uncertainty surrounding elections and the economy, as well as domestic and international turmoil.

Now though, fed up with waiting for prices to fall and the economy to stabilize, buyers are finally putting doubt aside and plunging in, getting back on track with their dreams of a Florida vacation home or retirement.

“You can only delay life for so long,” said Daley. “Add in the fact that it was the worst winter ever in the Northeast, and people are finally making the move they have wanted to make.”

Rhode Island had a record amount of snow this winter and other Vero feeder markets from Boston to Connecticut to New York City and the NYC suburbs were buried by blizzards. Shivering residents with deep-seated dreams of palm trees and sunshine who had been waiting for crash finally shrugged off their hesitation and jumped on a plane to Vero to look for a house or condo.

Hernandez and Daley said the increase in flights at Vero Beach Regional Airport has been another big plus, with JetBlue joining Breeze Airways at the terminal, providing direct flights to an increasing array of airports in the northeast that make it easy for buyers to come and look and for snowbirds to maintain a two-home lifestyle.

A final factor, according to Daley, is the perennial and growing appeal of Vero Beach and the barrier island.

“Most of my buyers are self-vetted,” Daley said. “They have looked around and decided that they want to be in Vero. They arrive at the airport with that mindset and say, ‘let’s see if we can find a house we like.’”