The residential real estate data is now in for the month of March, so we have updated our charts.  Our first chart shows how the growth of inventory in both the single-family home and condo/townhouse market has tapered off a bit.  Possibly because the property owners that have reached a point of positive equity have already hit the market.  Recent reports from Realtytrac show that 31% of all Florida homeowners are seriously underwater.  That means the mortgage amount is at least 25% greater than the estimated value of the property.  The property owners that are underwater on their mortgage have lost the incentive to short sale their property with the expiration of the mortgage debt forgiveness act and will most likely just ride out the foreclosure process that now averages over 1,200 days in South Florida.

In the month of March, there were 5,634 houses listed for sale on the market, up slightly from February and 7,951 condo/townhouse properties on the market.  Now, let’s take a look at the average selling prices.

The average selling price of a single-family home was $332,392 in March, which was down from $341,779 in February.  As for condo/townhouse properties, the average selling price was $174,304 in March, up from $165,904 in February.

How about the pace of new foreclosure filings?  Yes, it still remains strong.  In March, there were 1,543 foreclosure actions filed against single-family homeowners in Broward County.  That figure is up from 1,378 in February.  As for condo/townhouse foreclosure filings, they rose from 402 in February to 488 in March.

Just to add some additional perspective, we have been tracking the pace of all sales, compared to the new foreclosure filings in the Fort Lauderdale / Broward County area.  We know that distressed property sales have lagged the new foreclosure filings, so we needed a larger number to compare the foreclosure filings to.  In March, there were 2,642 residential transactions closed, but 2,031 new foreclosure filings.  Basically, the pace of new foreclosure actions filed should not be keeping pace with the total number of sales.