What the Cushion Is
The cushion is not a discount a buyer extracts. It is padding sellers build in, and the record shows it when the closing lands. A ten percent median means the county's tower sellers, as a group, open about a tenth above where they land. The number is remarkably stable across bands, which says the habit is cultural rather than rational. The exception varies instead. The tenth of closings with no cushion cluster in buildings and lines where scarcity does the negotiating, the pattern we keep meeting in the island's tightest buildings.
The Cushion by Price Band
BeachesMLS recorded closings, deduplicated across boards
Two readings matter. First, the cushion barely moves with price. It holds near nine percent from the entry band through five million, then narrows slightly above, where sellers price with better advice and buyers negotiate with conviction. Second, time and cushion travel together. The median closing waited about ten weeks, and in our files the listings that cleared fastest were the ones priced inside their own cushion from day one. The market does not reward the padding. It simply waits it out.
Using the Number
For buyers, the cushion sets the opening conversation, not the closing one. A building's own recent closings against their original asks give the real number for that address. That page briefs every offer we write, paired with the structure disciplines from The Well-Built Offer. For sellers the lesson is sharper. Pricing inside the cushion is not leaving money on the table. It is skipping the ten week tax the padded listings pay, and the recorded set says the skip usually costs nothing at all. The building pages in our condo ledger carry the per-building record.
Bottom Line
The county's towers open about ten percent above where they close, wait ten weeks, and land where the comparables said they would. Buyers should negotiate from the building's own recorded cushion rather than the county average. Sellers should price as if the cushion were already spent, because the record says it will be.
For both sides of a tower negotiation: the building's last six closings against their original asks are the whole conversation. Bring that page, and the rest is scheduling.
Figures are recorded BeachesMLS condominium closings at or above $1 million across Palm Beach County's coastal municipalities, October 2025 through October 2026, deduplicated across boards. The cushion compares each closing's original list price to its closed price. Medians are used throughout, and leases are excluded.
Original list price reflects the listing as first entered. Pre-listing price history and off market negotiations are not visible to the feed, so true seller expectations can sit above the recorded numbers.
BeachesMLS recorded closings via our licensed feed, pulled October 13, 2026.
