WORLD PROPERTY CHANNEL ®

(MIAMI, FL) -- There is good news and bad news today on South Florida's foreclosures front for all categories of shelter.

The bad news: A new report from Bal Harbour, FL-based Condo Vultures® LLC shows foreclosure actions in the tri-county South Florida region jumped by 25 percent in the third quarter ending Sept. 30 on a year-over-year basis, reaching 22,411 lis pendens filings in Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties.

Broward, where Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood, and Pompano Beach are located, led the surge with 11,196 foreclosure actions filed between July and September 2009 compared to 7,960 actions filed during the same period in 2008, according to the report produced using the Condo Vultures® Foreclosure Database™.

Miami-Dade, where Miami Beach, Key Biscayne, and Sunny Isles Beach are located, experienced a 22 percent increase in filings to 4,366 notices of default actions in the third quarter of 2009 compared to 3,569 actions in 2008. The notices are the first step in the repossession process.

Palm Beach, where Boca Raton, West Palm Beach, and Delray Beach are located, experienced a seven percent increase in the third quarter of 2009, reaching 6,849 actions. In the third quarter of 2008, Palm Beach County had 6,390 foreclosure actions filed, according to the report.

Peter Zalewski

The good news: "Foreclosure actions continue to rise in South Florida -- just at a slower pace than earlier this year," says Peter Zalewski, a principal at Condo Vultures®.

"Consider that notice of default actions in South Florida increased by 42 percent in the first quarter, 33 percent in the second quarter, and now 25 percent. It is anyone's guess what will happen in the last quarter of the year as the South Florida economy is showing small signs of leveling out."

In the first nine months of the year, South Florida has experienced 74,574 foreclosure actions, putting the region on pace for about 99,500 filings. At the end of the second quarter, South Florida was on pace to experience about 102,000 foreclosure actions.

By comparison, South Florida registered nearly 33,000 foreclosure actions for the year in 2007 and 75,000 in 2008, according to the report.

Even though the number of foreclosures continues to increase,  that has not translated into more properties going up for resale, according to a recent report from CondoVultures.com.

In South Florida, there are 71,229 residential resale properties on the market as of Sept. 28, representing a drop of 34 percent from 107,527 single-family houses, condo units, and townhouses for resale in November 2008.

Palm Beach County's inventory has fallen by 27 percent to 21,752 residential resale properties compared to 29,607 some 10 months ago.

Broward's resale inventory stands at 22,394 residences as of Sept. 28 compared to 36,926 in November 2008. This is a drop of 39 percent.

Miami-Dade's residential resale inventory totaled 27,083 properties on Sept. 28, down 34 percent from 40,994 properties in November 2008, according to CondoVultures.com.

"The South Florida housing market has reached a fork in the road," Zalewski says. "Going forward, the decisions of the federal government and the banking industry will more than ever ultimately determine where the housing market goes from here."  

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