Let’s take a quick look at how the condo/townhouse market finished the year in the Broward County, Florida market.  First, let’s see the average sale price.

The average sale price in the Greater Fort Lauderdale / Broward County market dipped slightly in December 2012 to end the year at $147,035.  What is surprising is that since supply is so restricted, you would think that prices would continue to climb higher.  Here is the supply chart:

The chart of available inventory shows a 60% decline from January 2010 when supply hit almost 9,000 units (8,985 to be exact).  In December 2012, that figure has dropped to only 3,515 condo/townhouse units available for sale.

So where are all of the condo and townhouse properties in the Greater Fort Lauderdale market?  Maybe if we take a look at the next chart showing how many condominium and townhouse properties are currently in foreclosure throughout Broward County:

As of January 21, 2012, there were  12,072 condo/townhouse properties currently in some stage of foreclosure in Broward County. Some of the Cities with over 1,000 condo/townhouse properties currently in foreclosure are Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood, Pompano and Coral Springs.

Finally, we will see what impact the halt on foreclosures had on the available supply of distressed properties.

Back in May of 2010, 48% of all condo/townhouse properties listed for sale were either a short sale or foreclosure.  That percentage has gradually dropped to only 16% in December 2012.  You will see from the graph that as more distressed properties are listed, they are typically “gobbled-up” and closed rather quickly.  As the amount of distressed properties that are active and closed increases, we should see prices drop accordingly.  The fact of the matter that if there are over 12,000 condo/townhome units in foreclosure in Broward County, but only 3,505 condo/townhomes listed for sale, we still have at least a few years left before a true “recovery” will take place.  Just some quick math:

• With 16% of the listings “distressed” in nature, let’s assume they are all listed
• Let’s remove that component (16% of from the 12,072 condo/townhomes in foreclosure)
• 12,072 – 1,931 = 10,141
• Wow, so if we assume that all of the condo/townhomes in foreclosure are listed (which they are not), that means there are only 10,141 units that are in foreclosure and not currently listed for sale.  Much better!

Our goal at Allied Realty Group is to help educate buyers and sellers with accurate market information.  We will gladly spend hours pouring over market data to provide insight to the true market conditions.  We hope that our charts and graphs help buyers and sellers of real estate to spot market trends and help them make well-informed decisions.  For years, real estate was a sure bet and you couldn’t go wrong.  These days, real estate as an asset class needs to be viewed differently.  You need to understand that there are various headwinds that will continue to impact your real estate investment.  In our next post, we will review the new foreclosure filings in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach County Florida and show how these new filings will suppress real estate prices going forward.  The shadow inventory of foreclosures will need to drop and the pace of new foreclosure filings in South Florida will need to subside before a true “recovery” will take place, and there have been no indications of that yet.

Next on our blog we will look