NewsWhy the condo sale next door may not be the best comp
Check your condo comps before you price that deal. Two units on the same floor can have totally different buyers. Distance inside a building does not equal distance on the map. Fannie Mae rules put actual buyer behavior above geographic proximity.
Look closely at the door across the hall before you pull that appraisal. In South Florida high-rise markets like Miami and Fort Lauderdale, real estate goes vertical instead of horizontal. Consider two units on the 24th floor of the same building with the exact same square footage. One faces east with an ocean view, while the other faces west looking out at the city. On paper they look identical, but to a buyer they are completely different properties. Then reverse the situation entirely. A unit several floors above or below yours might sit in the same vertical stack, face the same direction, and share the exact same view. On a physical level, that apartment is further away than the neighbor next door. On a market level, it might be much closer because buyers do not shop in circles. Fannie Mae defines the market area by where buyer demand originates, placing actual behavior above simple geographic proximity. Freddie Mac recently eliminated its old 1-mile distance parameter because a fixed radius is never a reliable proxy for real neighborhood boundaries. When you evaluate properties, price per square foot alone is simply not enough. The industry has plenty of data on closed sales, tax records, and asking prices. What is missing is a standardized relationship layer showing which towers buyers truly treat as direct alternatives. If your subject property disappeared tonight, the real question is which property the buyer would consider tomorrow.