"When you have $100 million sales sitting in the same market as much smaller transactions, the averages can get wild very quickly." Larry Mastropieri said that on the Discover South Florida podcast this spring while discussing Palm Beach's single-family market, but the line describes the island's condo market even better. In Q1 2026, the average condo sale price on Palm Beach Island fell 14 percent to $2.4 million, even as sales volume climbed 39 percent year over year. Read on its own, that looks like a market cooling off just as buyers show up in force. It isn't. It's two condo markets, moving in opposite directions, averaged into a single misleading number.
The one condo market that's actually two
Break the island's condo data down by location and the picture changes entirely. In-Town condos, the Midtown stretch near Worth Avenue and the Intracoastal, averaged $3.7 million in Q1 2026, down 14 percent from the year before. South End condos, along South Ocean Boulevard's older oceanfront corridor, averaged $1.5 million, up 19 percent over the same period.
| Segment (Q1 2026) | Average price | Year-over-year |
|---|---|---|
| Palm Beach Island single-family | $19.6M | +18% |
| Palm Beach Island condo, blended | $2.4M | -14% |
| In-Town condo | $3.7M | -14% |
| South End condo | $1.5M | +19% |
A buyer shopping the island-wide condo average would conclude the whole product type is losing ground. A buyer who knows to ask which end of the island they're looking at gets a very different answer, and a very different negotiating position depending on where they land.
Condominium Row's first new building in nearly 20 years
The South End's strength has a specific cause, and it has a street address. In May 2026, the Palm Beach Town Council approved the demolition of two aging oceanfront buildings, the Ambassador and the Edgewater, at 2720 and 2730 South Ocean Boulevard. In their place: a three-building, five-story project with just 41 residential units, replacing the 135 that exist on the site today. The stretch of South Ocean Boulevard where this is happening carries a local nickname, Condominium Row, and locals also use Sloan's Curve, a well-known bend in the same road, as a landmark for the corridor.
What makes this approval notable isn't the unit count. It's that ground-up condo construction on that stretch of the South End hasn't happened in close to two decades. Getting there required 21 separate zoning variance requests, and the town still has design elements to review before shovels move, including landscaping, stone attachment detailing, balcony railing design, mechanical penthouse screening, and vehicular gates. This is not a done deal in the sense of a certificate of occupancy on the horizon. It's a done deal in the sense that the market now has a concrete signal that new, modern, flood-resilient product is finally coming to a corridor that has been selling nothing but decades-old stock for a generation.
That signal is very likely what's showing up in the South End's 19 percent price gain. Buyers pricing older units nearby are pricing them against a future where a brand-new building with today's engineering standards sits a few doors down. Whether that's ultimately good news for the buildings that aren't being replaced is a separate question, and one worth asking before you write an offer on anything adjacent.
Why In-Town keeps losing to a house
The In-Town side of the ledger has a cause too, and it isn't about condos getting worse. It's about what condos are competing against. At the $3 million to $5 million price point, In-Town buyers increasingly have the option to buy land instead, and on Palm Beach Island, plenty of them are choosing to.
Mastropieri put his own preference bluntly on the same podcast appearance: "I would rather own the dirt and control the asset than own a unit in a condo building, where I have less control. Owning the land gives you flexibility, optionality, and potentially more long-term appreciation." That preference is showing up in the data. Island-wide single-family sales volume rose 36 percent year over year in Q1 2026, average prices climbed 18 percent to $19.6 million, and price per square foot hit $3,674. Days on market for single-family homes actually fell, to 136, even as prices rose, which is not what a market running out of demand looks like.
Single-family inventory tells the same scarcity story from another angle. As of August 25, 2026, there were only nine single-family houses on the island listed between $40 million and $60 million, according to reporting from the Palm Beach Daily News. One of those nine, a $55 million listing at 220 Jungle Road, sits on a dry lot with no ocean or lake frontage at all. Developer Richard True, who redeveloped that property, put the scarcity plainly to the Palm Beach Daily News back in 2022: "There's no inventory." Four years later, the numbers still back him up.
Put those two threads together and the In-Town condo softness stops looking like a demand problem and starts looking like a substitution problem. Buyers who can afford a $3 million to $5 million condo can often afford a comparable piece of land instead, and a growing share of them are taking that option. Older In-Town buildings aren't competing with newer condos anymore. They're competing with dirt.
What this actually means if you're pricing a condo now
If you're looking at an older In-Town building, the age of the structure is the first thing to interrogate, not the last. Florida law requires condominium buildings three habitable stories or higher to follow a milestone inspection schedule, and associations must complete structural integrity reserve studies on a statutory timeline. Those reports are part of the association's official records and must be provided to potential purchasers under state guidance. Ask for both before you get attached to a unit. The same forces that made the Ambassador and Edgewater candidates for teardown rather than repair, age and structural cost, are present in varying degrees across every pre-2000 building on the island, and the reserve study will tell you where a given building actually stands.
If you're looking at the South End, understand that you're buying into a corridor with a construction story still in motion. The 41-unit project still needs design approvals before it breaks ground, which means the timeline for new comparable sales in that specific pocket is measured in years, not months. That's useful to know whether you're trying to buy ahead of the reset or trying to sell an older unit before nearby construction becomes a daily disruption.
Either way, expect to compete with cash. Financing on the island moves slowly relative to how fast serious offers close, and sellers in this price range routinely favor the buyer who can remove financing contingencies over the one who bids higher but needs a lender's timeline.
FAQ
Does the 2720/2730 South Ocean Boulevard project mean older South End buildings nearby will lose value once it delivers? The data doesn't answer that yet, and it can't. The project still needs to clear additional design review, so there's no firm construction timeline. What the approval does confirm is that new ground-up product is coming to a corridor that hasn't seen any in close to 20 years, which is already showing up in how buyers are pricing what's currently for sale there.
I'm looking at an In-Town condo priced around $3.5 million. Should I also be looking at houses? Given what the Q1 2026 data shows about buyers substituting land for condos at exactly that price point, it's worth at least seeing what a comparable-sized lot or smaller house costs in the same neighborhood before you commit. You may find the condo makes more sense for your needs, but you'll be negotiating from a better position knowing what the alternative actually costs.
Palm Beach Island rewards buyers who ask which market they're actually in before they ask what something is worth. If you're weighing an In-Town condo against South End product, or a condo against a house entirely, Marine Rollins can walk you through the reserve studies, the pending approvals, and the comps that matter for your specific stretch of the island. Schedule a private waterfront consultation to start.
