Thursday, Aug. 19, 2010 may not live on as a day of infamy in U.S. History. But it is destined to do so in the annals of South Florida real estate. That's the day lenders passed the 100,000 foreclosure threshold in the tri-county region.
So far this year, lenders have repossessed more than 33,600 properties in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach Counties, including the 317 on that fateful day last week when it surpassed the benchmark 100,000-unit level, according to CondoVentures.com, a Bal Harbour-based consulting firm.
This year's total already surpasses the 30,400 tri-county properties taken back in 2009 and the nearly 26,350 repossessed in 2008, according to CondoVentures, which takes its figures from government records.
"To get a grasp of South Florida's real estate crash, consider that lenders have repossessed an average of 75 properties per day since January 2007, which is a span of more than 1,300 days," said Peter Zalewski, a principal with the consulting firm.
Another way to look at it is that lenders have taken back about four out of every ten properties in the region in which a foreclosure filing has been initiated.
