CBS 4 reports from Florida. “These numbers are sobering: If you are a homeowner reading this right now, when you wake up in the morning, the value of your house will have dropped about 45 dollars. And that’s if you sleep just 8 hours. When a homeowner is losing $5.70 an hour right now, renters actually are the ones who are making money. The average home value in South Florida has dropped $100,000 in just two years. That’s roughly $4,100 a month, $136 a day.”
“‘I knew it was softening,’ said investor Philip Logue. ‘I just didn’t realize how quickly, how fast the market was dropping.’”
“When Logue put his Coral Gables house on the market, he thought for sure it would sell. He started at $650,000 in 2006. A couple of years later, and a $175,000 price drop. He’s now renting the house out.”
“‘I was really surprised,’ said Logue. ‘Especially at the end when we really dropped our pants down and I felt we were giving it away, and we still couldn’t sell it.’”
“Broker Ray Jourdain isn’t surprised by the numbers. ‘Can you afford the payments? Can you have the insurance, the property taxes, the monthly payments with a normal 20% down sale? Does it work for the average person? And when that happens, when we hit that, that’s when we hit the bottom,’ he said.”
The Miami Herald. “In Miami-Dade and Broward counties, the median existing home price fell an average of 20.5 percent in June to about $299,300. The number of home sales in Miami-Dade fell 6 percent in June from last year, while for-sale listings grew by 24 percent.”
“In Miami-Dade, 984 condos and single-family homes were sold in June, of 43,188 properties listed in the MLS. In Broward, June sales were 1,230 of 39,703.”
“In the three-month period ending June 30, more than 10.13 percent of borrowers in Miami-Dade with first mortgage loans were behind on payments by 30 days, up from 5.61 percent last year. In Broward, the delinquency rate was 9.34 percent, up from 5.15 percent during the same three-month period a year ago.”
“Robin Hood, who lost her job last year, had to put her home near South Miami on the market in January. Not yet behind but barely scraping by, she failed to persuade the lender to negotiate new terms. Having to compete with cheap foreclosures in the neighborhood has made attracting even window shoppers difficult. She’s on the edge of giving up.”
“‘I don’t think you can fault them because if I was a buyer, I’d be looking for bargains, too,’ said Hood. ‘I have to sell, and it just so happens to be in a market that is destroyed.’”
The Daily Business Review. “As more (condo) units go into foreclosure, communities – especially newly built or converted projects – are struggling with rising nonpayment of association fees. Beleaguered board members are ratcheting up legal pressure on lenders.”
“Colin Hendrick, president of Surfside’s Carlisle On the Ocean, is also going after delinquent lenders. Last month, the association began foreclosing on five condos owned by delinquent lenders, said attorney Ralph Ruocco, with Glazer & Associates in Hallandale Beach. The lenders are often trustees for the bondholders who invested in a securitized mortgage pool, according to public records.”
“Glazer & Association last month successfully forced the sale of a bank-owned condo at the luxury Residences at the Bath Club in Miami Beach. The condo at the Bath Club sold for $1.45 million during the height of the condo boom. At last month’s foreclosure auction, the unit sold for $438,100.”
“Ruocco predicts more lenders will lose properties to auctions because they didn’t make maintenance payments on time. ‘Their organization is horrible,’ he said. ‘Their left hand doesn’t seem to know what the right hand is doing. Banks’ representatives call me to ask me who the prior owner of a unit was because they are trying to figure out who internally is responsible for talking with me.’”
“Hendrick hired Ruocco’s firm more than a year ago, when the Carlisle was $300,000 in debt. At that time, only 30 owners were paying the maintenance fees, Hendrick said. ‘It was so bad, we had no idea how we were going to pay the electrical bill,’ he said.”
The Sun Sentinel. “Price cuts still ruled in June as South Florida’s housing slump trudged into its 30th month. Palm Beach County’s median price for existing homes was $334,300, off 12 percent from $377,900 a year ago, the Florida Association of Realtors said Thursday. Sales fell 3 percent, to 744 from 764 during the same period last year.”
“Individual sellers are struggling, in part because they can’t drop their prices as low as lenders, said agent Kulbeer Sanghera. ‘How can sellers compete with the banks on price? They can’t,’ Sanghera said.”
The Palm Beach Post. “The median price of an existing condominium in Palm Beach County fell 24 percent from June 2007 to $153,200 last month, according to the Florida Association of Realtors. The median price of an existing condo in Martin and St. Lucie counties fell 28 percent to $165,000.”
“The median price of an existing home in those two counties fell to $160,800 from $237,100 in June 2007 – 32 percent.”
“Inventory remains the elephant in the room in Palm Beach County, which has more than 22,000 properties listed for sale, according to IPRE.com. At June’s sales pace, that’s nearly a 17-month supply, Jack McCabe, CEO of McCabe Research and Consulting in Deerfield Beach pointed out.”
“‘Foreclosure sales will accelerate in the next 24 months,’ predicts McCabe. ‘As long as they do, there will be continued pricing pressures and we are going to continue to see price declines.’”
“Treasure Coast home prices have fallen more than $100,000 from their high point nearly three years ago, said mortgage broker Jim Sahnger. Qualifying income for a median-priced home has fallen $18,000 in the past year.”
“‘For Treasure Coast home buyers, monthly payments have declined $500 on a median-priced home, putting 10 percent down,’ he said.”
The News Journal. “Sales of existing houses and condominiums along with median sale prices in the Volusia and Flagler county market continue to decline.”
“‘The aura out there is not good in Florida,’ sand Nancy Dance, president of the Daytona Beach Area Association of Realtors. “We are waiting to see what the buyers will accept, waiting to see the sellers to be more realistic than the values that skyrocketed in ‘05 and ‘06. We’re waiting to try and find the level price. It will take awhile to lower costs and appraisals.’”
“‘This (declining housing industry) will still take awhile to turn around,’ said Jimmy Millhollin, head of the Flagler County Association of Realtors. ‘Many homeowners are still in trouble. One-quarter of our sales are short sales or bank owned.’”
The Herald Tribune. “Both the Sarasota-Venice and Charlotte County-North Port markets pushed to post-boom pricing lows during June as the region’s rampant foreclosure phenomenon made itself felt.”
“The median sales price in Sarasota-Venice dropped 20 percent to $235,500 from the same month a year earlier. It was the lowest median seen in the market since April 2004, and, because sales from Manatee County were not included because of technical difficulties, the true median is likely even lower.”
“The drop pushed prices out of the relatively stable band of $240,000 to $270,000 that they had maintained for nearly a year, data released Thursday from the Florida Association of Realtors showed.”
“The $141,000 median in Charlotte County-North Port — a 29 percent drop from $199,000 in June 2007 — was the lowest price since November 2003.”
“‘What’s happening is that the sale of all this foreclosed property is causing prices to fall,’ said Art Schwartz, a retired University of South Florida finance and real estate professor who lives in Sarasota. ‘Banks just want to get these properties off their books.’”
“‘Five years from now, people will point back and say this was the moment when they could get the greatest deals,’ Schwartz said. ‘And if mortgage rates start rising again, which may happen if the Federal Reserve starts reacting to inflation, people of the future will really be kicking themselves.’”
“There is a 78.4-week supply of single-family homes on the market, more than three times the normal 24-week supply, the Team DuToit numbers show.”
“‘For every three foreclosures that we’ve seen, there are seven more to go over the next 24 months,’ said consultant Jack McCabe. ‘It will take three years before we see price appreciation in the market, and I think prices will drop another 10 to 15 percent.’”
“The market clearly departed from fundamentals on the way up, said Bill Seider, a real estate attorney with the Williams Parker law firm in Sarasota.”
“Now it looks like it is departing from fundamentals on the way down. He pointed to the sale of a three-bedroom home in the Southgate neighborhood for $195,000. The same house sold for more than $400,000 during the boom.”
“‘That house has got to be worth $250,000,’ Seider said. ‘There are a lot of bargains out there.’”
The News Press. “Lee County real estate agents sold slightly more homes in the first half of this year than a year ago – but the future’s uncertain for the rest of the year. Most of the homes sold these days are low-end houses being sold by financial institutions that got them back in foreclosure and that’s reflected in the June figures released Thursday, said Steve Koffman of Century 21 Sunbelt Realty in Cape Coral.”
“The county’s median price of an existing single-family home dropped 19 percent in June to $172,400 from May’s $212,400, and June’s median price was off 32 percent from a year ago, when it was $253,900. It’s the first time since November 2004 that the median price fell below $200,000.”
“Prices and the number of sales have generally been declining since the market reached an all-time high of $322,300 in December 2005 at the height of the housing boom in Southwest Florida.”
“Expect a seasonal slump as the market heads into summer doldrums, but ‘I think the number of sales is sustainable,’ Koffman said.”
“‘The average person couldn’t afford a house and now they can,’ he said. He has a new house listed in north Cape Coral for $104,000 – about a third of what it would have gone for at the height of the boom.”
“At issue, Koffman said, is whether surging unemployment – now at 7.5 percent – and a local economy ‘in shambles’ will dampen demand for homes.”
“‘There is concern whether there are enough of those people,’ he said.”
From Hernando Today. “County commissioners didn’t need another reminder of the bleakness of the Hernando County economy. But they got one Tuesday after hearing twin reports from economic experts who gave a snapshot of current conditions.”
“‘This is just an ugly period of time,’ said Henry Fishkind, an economist with Fishkind & Associates. ‘This is the absolutely worst recession I’ve seen since 1975.’”
“Lee Ellzey, CEO of Pasco-Hernando Jobs & Education Partnership, started things off by saying 35 to 40 percent of Hernando County’s workforce leaves the county to go to work. Most of them travel south to Hillsborough, Pinellas and Pasco counties.”
“David Hamilton, also with the PHJEP, said much of the economic decline locally was fueled by the decrease in construction jobs, once the mainstay of the county economy. Construction jobs in Hernando County reached a peak in May and June 2006 and have declined steadily since then, Hamilton said.”
“‘We have lost 1,100 jobs in construction,’ Hamilton said. By contrast Florida lost 75,000 jobs during the last 12 months, mostly in construction.”
“More people in Hernando County are employed in the retail trade industry than any other sector, Hamilton said. Unfortunately, those jobs typically are low-paying.”
