What housing slowdown?

Forget, for a moment, what you’ve heard about a housing correction. Home sellers continued to rake it in at the fastest pace in more than a decade in the second quarter of the year. Record-high home prices helped them to sell their properties for about 55.5% more than what they originally paid for them, according to a recent report from real estate data provider ATTOM.

That translated into the average home seller earning a $123,869 profit on the sale of their condos and single-family abodes over a short time span. Sellers in the second quarter spent only an average of 5.87 years in their homes before putting them on the market, according to the report.

“Home sellers in the second quarter continued to benefit from the rapid growth in home price appreciation the country has experienced over the past few years,” Rick Sharga, ATTOM’s executive vice president of market intelligence, said in a statement. “While price growth may slow down as higher mortgage rates dampen demand from prospective homebuyers, home sellers should continue to profit.”

In addition, all-cash purchases made up just over a third, 35.4%, of sales in the second quarter. That’s the highest percentage in eight years.

Sellers in Florida experienced the biggest increase in their paydays over the past year as Americans flocked to the Sunshine State during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the Fort Meyers, FL, metropolitan area, sellers received on average about 90.9% more than what they paid for their homes—compared with 47.1% a year earlier. The city, on the Gulf Coast of the state opposite from Palm Beach, FL, is a popular retirement and vacation destination.

(Metros include the main city and surrounding towns, suburbs, and smaller urban areas. Only metros with at least 200,000 residents and a minimum of 1,000 sales of single-family homes and condos in the second quarter were included.)

“Florida has seen a huge influx of out-of-state purchases from both traditional homebuyers fleeing from high-priced, high-tax states like New York and from investors looking for affordable fix-and-flip and rental properties,” Sharga tells Realtor.com®. “This influx was fueled in part by employees now having the opportunity to work from home, and opting for a more affordable location which also offered a high quality of life. Florida home prices were a relative bargain compared to states like New York, New Jersey, and California.”

The rest of the metros with the highest year-over-year jump in profits were Naples, FL, where sellers made profits of 83.1% compared with 40.4%; Ocala, FL, at 85.2% compared with 44.4%; Gulfport, MS, at 30.8% compared with 6.5%; and Yuma, AZ, at 77.8% compared with 42.7%.

Meanwhile, profits fell annually in only 20, 11%, of the 183 metros that ATTOM analyzed.

Seller profits in Salem, OR, about 50 minutes southwest of Portland, dropped the most, from 87.5% in the second quarter of last year to 55% in the second quarter of this year. It was followed by Hilo, HI, from 140.8% to 110.5%; Boise, ID, from 122.8% to 100.1%; Salisbury, MD, from 57.1% to 48.6%; and Albany, NY, from 35.4% to 28.3%.