The trend of declining available inventory and rising prices looks like it has remained intact for now in the Broward County / Greater Fort Lauderdale area.  We will take a look at the single-family housing segment first. Available inventory for sale appears to have found a bottom for now, after years of decline.  In April there were 4,089 houses available for sale and that number rose slightly to 4,135 houses for sale in May.

The average sale price in Broward County climbed to $348,423 in May as seen in the next chart.

What types of deals are closing?  Here is the breakdown by transaction type.

You will notice that traditional, non distressed-sales still make up the bulk of closed sales.  In May, the breakdown in Broward County single family home sales was as follows:

• There were 1,031 traditional “arms length” transactions, or 70% of all closed sales
• There were 161 foreclosure/REO sales, making up 11% of all closings
• There were 268 short sale transactions, which accounted for 18.4% of all closings

A few factors that will impact the market going forward are the the overwhelming amount of foreclosures in the Broward County market and the recent spike in interest rates, as evidenced by the 10-year bond chart.  First, here is a chart of over 38,400 foreclosures in the single-family home segment scattered throughout Broward County as of late April.  When we update this chart, there should be over 40,000 houses in foreclosure (not including all of the condos).

Next, here is a chart of the 10-year bond.  This is going to have a serious impact on mortgage rates and housing affordability going forward.

Finally, for anyone who thinks that we are “out of the woods” with underwater mortgages, take a look at this heat map from Corelogic, it clearly shows Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach County have well over 55% of all homes with mortgages in a negative equity position.

Once we have the latest foreclosure data for the area we will post it.  Until then we will continue to analyze the housing and condo markets for Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach County Florida.