The pandemic taught Northeast Florida sellers that a home bought last year could be sold this year for more. This piece tests whether that is still true. It follows single family homes that closed in 2023 or later and then closed again within two years, and asks a simple question of each pair: did the second sale clear the first?
For homes resold after a 12 to 24 month hold, the ordinary quick move rather than the renovation flip, 27.3% of January to August 2026 resales closed below the price the seller had paid. In the same months of 2024 it was 14.3%; in 2025, 23.3%. The median gain in that group fell from 8.9% to 6.9% to 4.7%, which after a typical 6% of selling costs is a loss for more than half of them.
How the pairs were found
The realMLS archive carries no street address, so a repeat sale cannot be matched the way a county appraiser would match it. It does carry coordinates from 2023 onward, so the method keys each closing on its latitude and longitude to five decimal places plus its living area, and requires the year built to agree within one year across the two legs. That last test matters: production builders often geocode every home in a phase to one community point, and two different homes of the same floor plan would otherwise look like one house sold twice. Only pairs whose second sale is a resale count, the hold must be at least three months, and the window is held to January through August of every year so the eight months of 2026 are compared with the same eight months of 2024 and 2025.
That yields 550 matched pairs across the three years, about 1 to 2% of each year's resale closings. It is a proxy, and a small one, and the numbers below should be read as the direction of a trend rather than a census of every quick resale in the region.
Two different kinds of quick resale
The pairs split cleanly at twelve months. Homes resold in under a year are mostly renovation projects: their median gross gain was 47% in 2024, 53% in 2025 and 63% in 2026, spreads no unrenovated home earns in a flat market. Homes resold after 12 to 24 months look like ordinary moves, with single-digit median gains in every year.
The renovation group is shrinking. It was 134 of 190 pairs in 2024 (71%), 119 of 235 in 2025 (51%) and 48 of 125 in 2026 (38%). The flips that still happen post larger gross gains than they did, which is what you would expect when only the deeper renovations of cheaper homes pencil at a 7% mortgage rate. Their below-prior share rose too, from 6.0% to 10.4%, so the lower gold bars in the chart do not describe an easy trade; they describe a smaller, more selective one.
The ordinary-move group is where the change is clearest. 14.3% of 12 to 24 month resales closed below the prior price in 2024; 27.3% did in 2026. Against a 6% hurdle for commissions, closing costs and make-ready, 41% of that group failed to clear it in 2024 and 56% failed in 2026. A seller who bought in early 2024 and needs to move in 2026 has, more often than not, not recovered the cost of the move.
Why the combined number overstates it
Put both groups together and the below-prior share goes from 8.4% in 2024 to 20.8% in 2026, a headline that is partly true and partly composition. Because the flip share fell from 71% to 38%, the combined figure leans harder on the group that loses more often. The within-group numbers are the honest ones: each group is losing more often than it did, and the ordinary-move group is losing a lot more often. The combined 20.8% is quoted here so that anyone recomputing it from the archive gets the same answer, not as the lead.
Where the losses are
By county, quick resales of any hold length closed below the prior price 34% of the time in St. Johns in 2026, 21% in Clay and 13% in Duval. Duval's low share reflects its flip-heavy mix: about two thirds of its matched pairs since 2023, and 26 of its 53 in 2026, were sub-12-month resales, and its median quick-resale gain was still 44% in 2026. St. Johns pairs are mostly 12 to 24 month moves bought at 2023 and 2024 prices in a county whose median price has been flat to down since, and its median gain in 2026 was 2.5%. Nassau, Putnam, Baker and Bradford had too few pairs to report.
What the data cannot tell you
The archive records the two closing prices and nothing about what happened between them. Renovation spend, seller concessions on the second sale, the mortgage rate on either leg, whether the seller moved by choice, and any rental income in between are all invisible. A pair matched on coordinates and living area can still, rarely, be two units on one parcel with the same floor plan. Nothing is controlled for condition, lot or financing, and the coordinate field only begins in 2023, so no comparison with the 2021 to 2022 resale market is possible from this archive. It describes homes and closings only, never the people who sold or bought them.
How agents can use this data
- Run the break-even before you list a home bought in 2024 or 2025. More than half of 12 to 24 month resales in 2026 closed less than 6% above the prior price. A seller expecting to walk away with equity from a two-year hold should see the prior closing price, the likely close, and the selling costs on one page before the sign goes up.
- Price a quick resale to the current comps, not the prior purchase. The 2026 median gain in the ordinary-move group was 4.7%; the market is not going to bridge a 2024 purchase price plus costs on its own. A listing priced to "get back what we paid" is the overpricing pattern the archive already punishes with longer days on market and deeper cuts.
- Treat a sub-12-month resale as a renovation comp, not a market comp. Those pairs closed a median 63% above the prior price in 2026 because the home changed, not because the market did. When a buyer's agent sees a home that sold last year for far less, ask for the permit history before treating the earlier price as evidence of a markup.
- Expect the St. Johns quick-resale seller to be underwater more often than the Duval one. A third of 2026 St. Johns quick resales closed below the prior price. That is a pricing conversation about the home's purchase year and the county's price path, not a judgment about the seller.
Whichever way you use the numbers, cite the source: Momentum Research analysis of data provided by realMLS, January to August 2024 through 2026, deemed reliable but not guaranteed.
What this measurement does not do
It does not identify cause. It does not say what any one home will resell for. It describes homes and closings only, never the people who live in them or the people who bought or sold them, and it should be read alongside a current comparable-sales analysis rather than in place of one.
People also ask
Can you sell a house after one year in Jacksonville without losing money?
In the closings we measured, most sellers still cleared the prior price, but the margin has narrowed. Among Northeast Florida single family homes bought in 2023 or later and resold 12 to 24 months after purchase in January to August 2026, 27.3% closed below the price the seller had paid, up from 14.3% in the same months of 2024, and the median resale closed 4.7% above the prior price, down from 8.9%. Those are gross figures: after roughly 6% of selling costs, 56% of that group did not break even in 2026, against 41% in 2024.
How much do house flippers make in Jacksonville in 2026?
The archive records prices, not renovation budgets, so it can only show the gross spread. Homes bought in 2023 or later and resold within 12 months in January to August 2026 closed at a median 63% above the prior purchase price, up from 47% in 2024, but there were far fewer of them: 48 matched pairs in 2026 against 134 in 2024, and sub-12-month resales fell from 71% to 38% of all quick resales. The flips that still happen are bigger renovations of cheaper homes; 10.4% of them closed below the prior price in 2026.
Which Jacksonville area counties have the most quick resales selling at a loss?
St. Johns County. Among quick resales of any hold length in January to August 2026, 34% of St. Johns closings were below the prior price, against 21% in Clay and 13% in Duval. The St. Johns pairs are mostly ordinary moves rather than renovation flips and were bought at 2023 to 2024 prices that the 2026 market has not grown past. Samples are small, 38 St. Johns pairs and 53 Duval pairs, so the county ordering is more reliable than the exact percentages.
Method and limits
Source: data provided by realMLS. Closed single family sales in the authoritative counties of Duval, St. Johns, Clay, Nassau, Putnam, Baker and Bradford. Records are deduplicated on listing id plus close date. Repeat sales are keyed on latitude and longitude rounded to five decimal places plus living area, with year built required to agree within one year across the two legs and the two listing ids required to differ. The second leg must be a resale (NewConstructionYN false); the first leg may be either. Hold is the number of days between the two close dates divided by 30.4, and must be at least 3 months and under 24. The window is January through August of the resale year on every year. 550 pairs: 190 resold in 2024, 235 in 2025, 125 in 2026.
Price change is the second close price divided by the first, minus one, gross of renovation, concessions and transaction costs. "Below the prior price" is a change under zero; the 6% hurdle is a round approximation of commissions and closing costs, not a measured figure. The coordinate field is populated in the archive from 2023 onward, so purchases before 2023 cannot be matched and no comparison with the 2021 to 2022 resale market is made. County figures are reported only where a year has at least 20 pairs.
Nothing is controlled for size, lot, location, condition, renovation or financing. Cause is not identified. Homes are described by their closing prices and dates only.
Related reading on the same archive: whether a new roof adds value in Jacksonville, how far below asking homes really sell, what overpricing costs a seller and the ongoing Jacksonville housing market tracker.
All figures on this page are per Momentum Research analysis of data provided by realMLS and are deemed reliable but not guaranteed. Equal Housing Opportunity.