Condos are back.

It’s taken nearly half a decade, but the financial, psychological and regulatory aftershocks of the deadly condominium collapse in Surfside, Florida, seem finally to have subsided.

Condo sales have risen dramatically up and down the island this season with gated communities like the Moorings and John’s Island leading the way.

“Our condo market has been so much more robust this year than last,” says Moorings Realty Sales Co. broker associate Collier Proctor. “We have had almost double the number of closed sales, year to date, as we had last year at this time, and the pending numbers are even more remarkable.”

By mid-March last year, Moorings Realty, which handles most sales in the expansive country club community, had sold just eight condominiums. This year they have closed 15.

There were five pending sales at this time last year, compared to 13 this year, a 160-percent jump.

For icing on the cake, the median sales price is up a solid 10 percent, fueled by record sales in several of The Moorings condo neighborhoods, including a residence in The Galleons that was listed for $2.6 million and is now under contract.

“It has been amazing,” says Proctor, who expects strong sales through the rest of season.

Ten miles north of The Moorings in John’s Island, the number of condo sales closed or pending is up more than 300 percent compared to last year at this time, from four to 13, according to John’s Island Real Estate Company broker Bob Gibb.

One of those sales set a record price for a condo on the barrier island.

“It was two units combined into a single 5,200-square-foot residence that sold for $10.8 million,” says Gibb, noting that the per-square-foot price was more than $2,000.

“Buyer activity is the story,” says Gibb. “It is as good as I have seen it in a long time.”

Condos currently listed for sale on John’s Island Real Estate’s website range from $750,000 for a 1-bedroom, 1-bath, 590-square-foot unit to $4.8 million for a 3-bedroom, 3.5-bath, 2,400-square-foot oceanfront residence.

Islandwide, not including JI, 54 condo deals had closed as of Friday, up from 35 at the same time last year, a 54-percent increase. Pending sales were up 74 percent, from 42 last year to 73 this year.

Zeroing in, during February, the number of condos going under contract in 32963 was up an astonishing 284 percent compared to last February, according to Dale Sorensen agent Tripp Hernandez.

“The market is very strong,” Hernandez says.

With the pace of sales picking up, condo inventory is shrinking. The Moorings Realty Sales Company had 43 active condo listings on Friday, down from 57 a year ago, according to broker Marsha Sherry.

“Historically, we always figured that normal inventory was about 10 percent of our 700-plus condos,” Sherry says. “We aren’t close to that today, but the good news is we do have inventory and there are some deals to be had.”

She gave an example of a condo that sold a substantial discount because the person who inherited the property wanted a quick sale. That sale pulled down comps and precipitated handwringing in the neighborhood, but the buyer was a local builder who renovated the unit and put it back on the market for $1,295,000, a record price for that particular condo development.

“It is under contract,” says Sherry. “They have never cracked a million in that community up until now.”

At John’s Island, Gibb says he has more condos than houses listed but that the number is not high by historical standards.

Islandwide, condo inventory was down year over year, from 269 to 199, as of last week, according to data provided by Douglas Elliman broker associate Sally Daley.

The current rebound in sales comes after almost five years of fear and confusion as new state regulations passed after the Surfside collapse pushed condo fees up at a shocking rate at the same time as insurance rates were skyrocketing.

The state legislation, which was rushed and badly flawed, had to be revised several times as higher costs imposed by new laws threatened to drive some retirees from their homes.

The laws mandated detailed “milestone” inspections by engineers or architects, which were costly in themselves. Condo boards then had to come up with money to make needed repairs when flaws were found in buildings, imposing heavy assessments on residents. On top of that, associations were required to fully fund their reserves to pay for repairs and replacements expected in upcoming years, pushing monthly fees still higher.

Concerns about condo safety and much higher carrying costs slowed sales dramatically statewide. On the island, condo sales plummeted at The Moorings, with only 38 units sold in 2022, the year after the collapse, compared to 70 sales in the prior year.

Now, insurance rates have stabilized and most of the inspection and repair issues worked through. The laws have been amended to take some of the financial pressure off residents and associations, allowing them to spread costs out and giving them more options to meet requirements. HOA fees are much higher in many cases but the confusion and uncertainty about safety and carrying costs has been cleared up.

“Buyers now have good intel on which to base a buying decision,” says Daley. “They have information from engineers that they would never have been able to get in the past as an individual purchaser. The reports have been filed and the deficiencies, if any, have been corrected, or there is a game plan to correct them, with all the costs transparent. Everything is known.”

“Dealing with all the post-Surfside issues has been a slow, arduous process,” says Gibb, “but I do believe we have worked through at least 90 percent of that.”

Lower purchase costs are driving sales, too. During the dark days after the Surfside disaster, which killed 98 people in an instant, condo prices fell statewide in conjunction with slowing sales.

As always, price trends vary widely from neighborhood to neighborhood, but 32963 condos have mostly dropped between 10 percent and 20 percent from the peak, with a few down more than that, according to multiple sources.

“I’d say our condo prices are down about 10 percent from the peak and fairly steady at present,” says Gibb. “We may have to soften a little bit to work through our inventory.”

Pent-up demand is another force powering the upsurge in condo sales, on both the seller and buyer side. People who would have sold but couldn’t find a buyer or get the price they needed after Surfside are re-emerging and buyers are tired of putting their Florida retirement or vacation home plans on hold.

“There are typically a lot of older residents in condo communities who either have to go at some point, or really want to, and the unit needs to be sold,” says ONE Sotheby’s International Realty agent Richard Boga.

“You can only put your life on hold for so long,” says Daley.

“We believe there is pent-up demand,” says Proctor. “It is not that the fundamentals have changed that much, but there is now a mindset like, ‘OK, now I can buy. I feel comfortable putting my money into this.’

“Besides Surfside, we had an election year and then tariffs that created uncertainty, but people are tired of waiting. I may be more bullish than some, but I think we will see more transactions going forward. There are a lot of people who have wanted to buy over the past couple of years who still haven’t, and I think they may get motivated toward the end of season.”

Sherry notes that underlying appeal of Vero Beach and especially its country club communities haven’t changed.

“We have a beautiful ocean to river community with a wonderful club here at The Moorings,” she says. “It’s not a bad place to live.”