The Quarter
The island's blended median fell year over year, and the drop reflects the mix of what sold rather than any loss of value. The quarter carried a heavier share of apartment sales, and apartments are the island's lower-priced product. The real measures of the quarter are volume and composition. Sales rose 58 percent. Closings at twenty million dollars and above more than doubled. Each product held its own price levels while the count grew, the sign of a market gaining depth at steady prices, which our 2026 outlook flagged as the island's best case for the year.
Source: BeachesMLS, closed residential sales, Town of Palm Beach, Q2 2026
Two Products, Two Quarters
Each product had a clean quarter of its own. The house market closed 41 sales against 32 in the same quarter last year, at medians that held the island's repriced levels. The apartment market supplied the growth: 110 closings against 64, the deepest apartment quarter since mid-2022, as owners finally listed in numbers that matched the demand. The table keeps the products separate because a blended median on this island mostly describes the mix of what sold, and separating the products is the first rule of reading Palm Beach data.
Source: BeachesMLS, closed residential sales, Town of Palm Beach
The Quarter in the Five-Year Record
The winter season's contracts reach the closing table in the spring, so a second quarter collects the season's results and the honest comparison is against other second quarters. This one produced more sales than any second quarter except 2021's, and homes went under contract faster while the count grew, 81 median days to contract against 88 in the same quarter last year. A market that adds half again as many sales while speeding up is drawing on demand that was already in place. What had been missing was sellers willing to sell at the island's repriced levels, and this spring more of them listed.
Source: BeachesMLS, closed residential sales, Town of Palm Beach, second quarters
Source: BeachesMLS, closed residential sales, Town of Palm Beach
The Top of the Market
The top of the market was the quarter's real headline. All of the six largest closings were houses, led by a $55.1M estate sale in April, and the 13 closings at twenty million dollars and above were the most the island has recorded in any quarter since the start of 2021. The county showed the same pattern all spring: the wealthiest buyers kept buying, and the island's estate section remains their preferred address. No single sale set a record. The six largest closings all fell between $28.9M and $55.1M, and a top end with that much depth is a healthier signal than one exceptional deal.
The largest closings also clustered on the map, further than the table shows. They sat in the estate section and along the ocean blocks south of Worth Avenue, the island's old money addresses, while the north end supplied most of the quarter's count. That division, the largest sales in the south and the most sales in the north, has held since the frenzy ended, and it matters when weighing any individual comparable sale: the island's two ends can have different quarters without either one changing course.
The First Half
The quarter completes a strong first half: 261 island closings against 184 in the first half of 2025, volume of $1,595.4M against $1,255.2M, and a count of sales at twenty million dollars and above that is already close to the busiest full year in the record. Sales will slow through the summer, as they do every year, and the question for the second half is whether the stronger apartment turnover holds through the quiet months or proves to have been the season's last surge. Island sellers rarely reduce prices in summer, so the answer will show in the number of sales rather than in prices.
The composition of the half is worth remembering. The apartment market supplied the growth in sales while the house market supplied the growth in dollars, and both held their price levels while doing it, so the island's two markets strengthened at the same time rather than one drawing buyers from the other. For an owner weighing a second-half listing, that is the most useful fact in this report.
The Summer Ahead
Island sales always thin from July, so falling counts over the summer will mean little on their own. Three readings will matter more: whether apartment turnover stays above its averages of the past few years, whether the estate section keeps closing sales at twenty million dollars and above through the quiet months as the county's golf communities now do, and whether sellers arriving for the fall season price against this quarter's firm per-product figures or against the blended median that fell. The first two measure momentum. The third will decide how next season starts.
Bottom Line
The island's second quarter delivered the combination the years since the frenzy had not: 58 percent more sales, more than twice as many closings at twenty million dollars and above, and firm pricing within both products. The blended median fell only because the mix of sales shifted toward apartments.
For owners weighing a listing this year: Buyers paid the island's established prices at every level this quarter when the home was right. A listing priced against its own product, house against houses and apartment against apartments, meets the deepest market the island has seen since the frenzy.
This report covers every residential closing recorded in the Town of Palm Beach from April 1 through June 30, 2026 (156 sales), compared against the same quarter of 2025 (99 sales), with context from the town's complete closed record since January 2021. All figures run through June 30, 2026. Houses are single family residences. Apartments combine condominiums and co-operatives. Medians are used throughout and are reported per product wherever the products diverge, because the island's blended medians move with the mix of what sells. Days on market measure list date to contract date.
The quarter rank counts recorded closings per calendar quarter since Q1 2021.
All data sourced from BeachesMLS via the Spark API.
