Right now we just have the single-family inventory, sale prices and breakdown by transaction type through February, so let’s get started.  First, let’s look at the single-family housing inventory for the Broward County market.  You will notice that we are still hovering along the multi-year lows and the available inventory dropped to 4,446 units available for sale in February 2013.

Next, let’s look at the average sale price.  In February the average sales price of a single family home in Broward County rose above $300,000 for the first time in years.

In February, the average sale price was $307,385, up from $275,100.  The fact of the matter is that the supply has dwindled to record lows with all of the foreclosure abatement programs and all of the houses that are currently in foreclosure being held off the market due to the robo-signing litigation.  With minimal supply and record low interest rates thanks to the Fed keeping rates low through their Zero Interest Rate Policy (ZIRP), we sure hope that prices would increase.  If not, we are really in trouble!

As for a breakdown of  home sales by transaction type in the Broward County / Greater Fort Lauderdale market, here is a quick glance.

In February 2013, traditional, arms-length transactions were 63% of all single family home sales in Broward County for a total of 615 sales.  Foreclosure (REO) sales were 15% of the total at 144 and short sales were 22% of total sales with a count of 210 transactions.  Foreclosure inventories will start to grow again now that the national mortgage settlement was finalized in April 2012.  As that shadow inventory starts to climb again, we will see the short sales and REO/Foreclosure sales gradually make up a larger percentage of the overall transaction numbers.  Just so we don’t forget the exisiting foreclosure numbers (just for single family homes) in Broward County, here is a quick reminder below.  As of February 12, 2013 there were 34,271 single family homes in foreclosure in Broward County.  This number does not include the 12,164 condo/townhouse properties in the County that were in foreclosure on the same date.

Realtytrac just released some interesting data on “Zombie Foreclosures” which are the properties that are bank-owned and have been abandoned.  The report shows that Florida has 90,556 zombie foreclosures.  At some point, these properties (about a third of all foreclosures), along with the other foreclosures (another two-thirds or a few hundred thousand in Florida) will eventually make their way to the market.  Florida is a judicial state, so the average foreclosure takes over 800 days to complete, so this problem will be with us for awhile.  I think the most disturbing part of the zombie foreclosure data is that Florida (with 90,556) outnumbers the next highest state of Illinois (31,668) by almost 3X and even California (28,821).  Both Florida and Illinois are judicial states and California is non-judicial.  Otherwise, I am sure the California number would be higher, but they are more efficient at clearing foreclosures.