There are some boxes you must check to have a housing bubble.

Easy Debt

Low rates where anyone can get a mortgage are at the center of any housing bubble. Navarre, Florida didn’t just have low rates in 2020-2021; Navarre also has a lot of active duty military that have mortgage benefits, and are basically guaranteed a loan. Easy debt is part of the Navarre, Florida economy

High Rents

Rents are outrageously high in Navarre, and they are climbing.

Prices Outweigh Wages

It is impossible to live and work in Navarre. There is no way to get a job in Navarre and buy a home in Navarre.

Speculation

Housing bubbles see people coming in droves to buy a home for what it may be worth in the future. These homeowners are checking real estate platforms checking their property values regularly as if it were a liquid asset. The Navarre housing bubble is a direct result of speculation from posts on social media by amateur wannabe short-term rental investors.

What saved people?

If this is a housing bubble, why isn’t the market crashing? Why is their continued development? Why aren’t countless properties in foreclosure?

There are foreclosures, but what saved people was fixed-rate mortgages. Many of these people locked in their low mortgage rate in the early 2020’s. The housing crisis of 2008-2009 was filled with predatory adjustable-rate mortgages where people were lured in in similar ways with low rates, just to have their mortgage rate raised later. That’s what lead to markets crashing. Everyone lost their homes at the same time.

That same thing could (and likely would) have happened this time had it not been for fixed-rate debt. There is no doubt in a 6% mortgage rate market, lenders would have raised rates on all these people rather than collecting half or less of that.

Why hasn’t the market crashed?

The language of a housing bubble is deceiving. We are waiting for the “bubble to pop” or “burst”; we are waiting for the market to “crash”. All of this implies a sudden stop.

In reality, housing bubbles are more like a giant object moving at a high rate of speed; they can’t just stop. They slowly grind to a halt. This is the situation in Navarre, Florida: the housing bubble is slowly grinding to a halt.

How much longer will it last?

This is difficult to say, but if looks anything like the 2008-2009 crisis, I would say we are going to continue to see these problems as well as property values declining for at least another one to two years.