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Three Cents Worth: Midyear Snapshot On Improving Magic City Housing Market

[This week, real estate appraiser, Curbed graph guru, blogger, and podcaster Jonathan Miller puts in another installation of his Three Cents Worth column, with his unique perspective on Miami's strange real estate market]

This week I thought I'd give a quick look at the last 18 months - the period where Miami transitioned its US image from poster child for distressed real estate back to a luxury real estate location. If these are thrown into one bucket, the drop in lower priced distressed activity unreasonable skews the overall market higher so I thought it would be good to break out the market like we do in the market reports we prepare for Douglas Elliman.

I show this on four charts illustrating demand (sales), supply (inventory), price and market share. Each chart breaks out non-distressed and distressed (foreclosures+short sales) sales. For the sake of simplifying I combined condo and single family residences. Now, on to the charts:

Number of Sales: Non-distressed sales nearly doubled over the period as distressed sales slipped. However the continued backlog of distressed sales will continue to be a steady presence for a while. It is quite amazing to see the level of sales surge despite the small amount (36.5%) of transaction that include mortgage financing.

Inventory: Both types of inventory are showing a steady downward trend. Non-distressed inventory fell 15.7% as sales surged and distressed fell 52.9% as the combination of few foreclosures in general and a backed up court system has dropped volume considerably despite the slide in sales.

Average Sales Price: Non-distressed sales price has steadily increased (23.5%) and shows seasonality. Distressed sales average sales price increased 9.1% and showed no seasonality.

Market Share: Non-distressed and distressed sales market share went from parity to a wide spread. Non-distressed sales comprised 67.2% of all sales in the most recent quarter.

Rising sales and prices, falling inventory, fewer distressed sales. Yes, the market continues to improve. And, far from the poster child days of gluttony gone wrong, Miami's a city of players again.
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· Three Cents Worth archives [Curbed Miami]