Price action hit a wall in the South Florida residential market.  Today we will look at the median sale prices of single-family homes and condos in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Boca Raton and surrounding areas. Existing home sales  on a national level look like they are exhausted as well.   South Florida was ground zero during the last housing crash, will it be the same in the next correction?

Price action- condos

We have repeatedly discussed how prices peaked around June of 2018 in South Florida.  This chart reinforces our view.  What’s interesting is how short sale prices have been trending up.  This is more evidence that South Florida is still dealing with distressed properties from the last housing crash.  You would think that ten years into a “recovery” we wouldn’t have to monitor this segment, but think again.  Here is a look at median sale prices of condos in South Florida for January:

• Traditional sales – $187,250 (down 11% since June 2018)
• Foreclosure sales – $142,000 (no change since June 2018)
• Short sales – $174,750 (down 11% since June 2018)

Price action – houses

Traditional sales in the single-family home segment appear to have flat-lined.  They have been stagnant since last spring.  The only outlier in these numbers are the short sales and their big price jump since June.  There are higher priced short sales being completed which lifts the median prices periodically.

• Traditional sales – $355,000 (down 1% since June 2018)
• Foreclosure sales – $275,625 (down 2% June 2018)
• Short sales – $325,000 (up 25% since June 2018)

Foreclosure activity

Can you believe that we are still talking about foreclosures ten years into this fabulous recovery?  January was a fairly active month with 1,074 new filings.  During 2018 the average number of new filings was 1,325.  There are still plenty of seriously delinquent mortgages  lingering out there from the last housing crash, so don’t expect this problem to go away anytime soon.

Here is a quick look at the foreclosure filing numbers since 2015: