The biggest risk to Florida’s housing market may be falling immigration rather than the widely discussed slowdown in domestic migration or even the condo regulatory crisis and mini supply shock that’s followed.

Consider recent developments. From about 2020 through 2022, American retirees and increasingly mobile knowledge workers drove Florida real estate prices higher, a trend that coincided with booms in places such as Phoenix, Arizona; Austin, Texas; and Boise, Idaho. In the following years, other pandemic superstar cities saw their gains begin to fade, but immigrants and other international buyers helped keep Florida’s transaction volumes and housing values buoyant. Immigrants took the baton from retirees, hedge fund workers and tech bros, and it’s still in their hands.