Downtown West Palm Beach - Palm Beach Island Experiences Rare Sellers Market For Condos

In this episode of Miami Condo Mondays™, the hosts explore the Mar-a-Lago effect as buyers flock to Downtown West Palm Beach and Palm Beach Island seeking proximity to the nation's power structure.Miami Condo Mondays™ features Peter Zalewski of the Miami Condo Investing Club™ and veteran broker Jenny Huertas of CVRRealty.com in a weekly deep dive into South Florida condo real estate.Recorded in Greater Downtown Miami, the podcast delivers an hour of high-level analysis on preconstruction condos, market trends and investment strategies for the tricounty South Florida region of Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach.The show leverages more than 60 years of combined institutional knowledge as Zalewski provides the macro perspective and Huertas offers on-the-ground micro insights from her daily experience in the trenches.The show streams live every Monday at 4 pm on the social media accounts of both hosts to provide an authoritative look at the latest shifts in the condo market.Episode OverviewIn this episode of the Miami Condo Mondays™ podcast on Aug. 4, 2026, co-hosts Jenny Huertas of CVR Realty and Peter Zalewski of the Miami Condo Investing Club™ examine why Downtown West Palm Beach - Palm Beach Island stands alone as a Sellers Market for condos while every other major market in the tricounty South Florida region of Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties remains a Buyers Market.The hosts credit the divergence to what Zalewski first identified in February 2026 as the "Mar-a-Lago effect," the pull exerted by President Donald Trump's near-weekly visits to his Palm Beach Island estate, located across the Marjorie Merriweather Post Memorial Causeway from Downtown West Palm Beach. During the 66-minute episode, Huertas and Zalewski identify two additional forces driving condo sales in the Downtown West Palm Beach - Palm Beach Island market, a planned Vanderbilt University campus in Downtown West Palm Beach and an active push by New York Developer Stephen Ross—who owns the Miami Dolphins football team—to reinforce the corridor as "Wall Street South."The election of Zohran Mamdani—a self-described Democratic Socialist—to Mayor of New York City has reportedly only bolstered interest in South Florida and especially the Downtown West Palm Beach - Palm Beach Island market. Pundits are referring to the New York-to-South Florida relocations as the “Mamdani Migration.”The Downtown West Palm Beach - Palm Beach Island market is defined as Southern Boulevard (including a portion of the road known as President Donald J. Trump Boulevard) north to Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard (on the mainland) and/or Dunbar Road (on the barrier island), and the Atlantic Ocean west to I-95.Huertas frames the underlying dynamic bluntly, arguing that money and power tend to gather in the same place, and that a limited supply of land on Palm Beach Island only sharpens the effect.The hosts provide examples of the trend with the latest statistics, pointing to months of supply well under equilibrium and a wide gap between asking prices and closed sales prices.Zalewski also flagged an unusual reversal in which Vintage condos that are at least 30 years old are commanding higher sale prices than Modern units that are no older than 29 years, along with a rental market where landlords asking top dollar are waiting far longer than those who price their units to lease.Huertas and Zalewski close divided on where the Downtown West Palm Beach - Palm Beach Island market heads next. Huertas said she would wait until after the midterm elections in November 2026 before committing capital, wary that a shift in the nation’s power structure could unwind the very dynamic driving demand. Zalewski countered that he remains skeptical of buyers paying such steep premiums for condo units in the Downtown West Palm Beach - Palm Beach Island market regardless of the electoral outcome in Washington.