Florida’s foreclosure crisis
Florida Housing Crash, Mortgages, The Economy, Real Estate June 10th, 2008
Things keep getting worse in Florida when it comes to the housing market. According to the Miami Herald:
Foreclosures surge in Florida
California and Florida lead the nation in foreclosure filings, and more than one in 10 Florida homeowners are in trouble.
Rapidly declining property values touched off a new wave of home-loan delinquencies in Florida during the first three months of the year and pushed 77,000 homeowners into foreclosure, a signal that turmoil in the housing market is far from over.
The state ranked second in the country in failing loans, according to a report released Thursday by the Mortgage Bankers Association. California led the nation with 109,000 foreclosures. The states with the next highest numbers — Texas, Michigan and Ohio — saw no more than 24,000 foreclosures during the same period.
”The problems in California and Florida are extraordinary,” said Jay Brinkmann, vice president for research and economics with the MBA. “They are the main drivers of the national trend.”
Florida’s foreclosure rate stood at 4.61 percent of about 3.5 million loans examined in the report, representing roughly 163,000 homes. That compares to 1.03 percent of 3.42 million loans in the same period a year ago, or roughly 35,200 homes.
Overall, 11.6 percent of Florida property owners were more than 30 days past due on a mortgage payment or in foreclosure, suggesting more trouble ahead.
In the first three months of the year, the Miami-Dade County Clerk’s office recorded 11,768 lis pendens filings, which include initial foreclosure filings but also liens by condo and homeowner associations. It is nearly half the number filed for the entire year in 2007. In Broward, the number was 10,797.
More recently, 4,478 were filed in Miami-Dade County in April and 3,837 in Broward.
The figures represent the continued fallout in markets that saw some of the fastest home price appreciation, new construction and heavy speculative buying during the boom years.
