banktime.com

National real estate tracker Zillow.com has shown the value of houses and other properties in South Florida plummeting again, continuing a trend that is by now several years old. This area of the Sunshine State ranks among the twenty worst in the whole country for home values having fallen significantly lower than the houses in question are worth. The sad part is that experts say that the Greater Miami-Ft. Lauderdale market has yet to bottom out, meaning that darker days are still probably ahead for this troubled region. Despite optimistic forecasts that things are getting better, the nation’s overall housing market remains very challenged – this is something being proven time and again in the areas of the U.S. that were hardest hit by its ravages.

Zillow lists the mean property value in Miami-Dade county as a smidge below one hundred forty-five thousand dollars, or twenty-one percent less than 2009 (the worst year of the recession by far). Adjacent Broward county has seen an almost fourteen percent drop in home values, down to a mean price of around one hundred thirty-nine thousand dollars. Since the height of the real estate boom in 2006, home prices have dropped fifty-five percent and fifty-four percent on average in Miami-Dade and Broward counties respectively. An alarming forty-four percent of all single-family homes in South Florida have negative equity, meaning that the property is mortgaged for more than the home is actually worth. That number has not budged since the beginning of this year, and with property values continuing to drop, the number of upside-down homeowners will only grow by leaps and bounds. An according forty-four percent of all homes sold in this region during the month of June were disposed of at a loss, undoubtedly by homeowners desperate to escape what is very obviously a sinking ship. Miami-Dade saw forty-seven percent of all sold homes let go at a lost, and Broward home sales lost forty-six percent on average in the month of June.

The scary part is that the South Florida region is not even the worst in Florida for property crisis. The Tampa and Orlando regions of the state have both been affected even worse by the ravages of the real estate collapse, according to Zillow. The fallout has been far-reaching and tragic, with many homeowners’ home equity loans and lines of credit being severely scaled back, if not closed completely. Homeowners looking to tap into new home equity products report that it is almost impossible to access a loan or line of credit in this day and age, because banks simply are not willing to take the risk. This effect is amplified significantly in areas of the country where the real estate disaster is much worse, like all of Florida.

As someone who lives in the Sunshine State, I can report that things are indeed really bad around these parts. You can’t ride down a street in any residential neighborhood and not see bunches of for sale signs, or the tall grass and disheveled upkeep that are the trademark signs of foreclosure and abandonment. It seems that there is at least one of these houses on every block, and it’s worse in certain neighborhoods. It certainly feels like it will be a long time before meaningful economic recovery comes to rescue Florida’s homeowners.