As we receive the year-end single-family housing data for Broward County, Florida, we see how the decreasing inventory impacts prices.  The average sale price of a single family home in Broward jumped to $321,429 at the end of 2012.

Inventory has dropped to a mere 2,702 homes listed for sale at the end of 2012 after reaching a high of 6,451 houses available for sale back in September 2010 before foreclosures were halted.

So where are all of the houses for sale in Broward County, or more importantly, where will the inventory come from?

This is a good place to start.  As of this week, there are 34,745 single family homes in Broward County that have received a foreclosure notice.  That does not include the thousand of properties that are not paying their mortgage and have yet to receive a foreclosure notice. In simple terms, there are currently 12.8 times as many houses in foreclosure than there are houses listed for sale in this area .  This figure does not include the over 12,000 condo/townhouse properties currently in foreclosure, we will talk about them in our next post.

Here is a quick look at the trend in distressed-property sales for the single-family home market.

Back in May of 2010, 51% percent of all single family homes listed for sale were distressed properties (either short sale or foreclosure).  The active distressed property listings have dropped to 20% of properties and the closed sales make-up only 15% of all sales, which is another factor contributing to the short-term price increase.

We will be analyzing more data points over then next few weeks, including condo prices, distressed property trends and the current foreclosures in that segment.  Also, we will chart the data for the 2012 pattern of new foreclosure filings in Broward County which will show that filings remain elevated and show no sign of subsiding anytime soon.  As much as the media likes to talk about a housing recovery, we will help you interpret the data that will clearly illustrate a different scenario.  Stay tuned!