Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Miami Re-Busting!

Today’s inductee into the “Re-Busting” lineup is Miami, one of the few epic super-bubble metros.

During the boom the stories coming out of the Miami housing market immediately became legend.

Tales of pre-construction condo flipping, yearly new construction inventory being added at three or four times the historic rate and over 30% annual appreciation worked to drive the mania to epic heights.

But, as we now know very well, the party ended in 2006 and the price line (as seen by the Radar Logic data) has been in a serious tailspin ever since.

In fact, the decline has been so significant that even the massive government stimulus couldn’t stop the dire reversion.

In spring 2009 buyers in the Miami market appear to have taken the first time home “buyer” tax gimmick as a signal that prices had bottomed out… animal spirits were back on!

Prices showed the most notable increase in three years climbing sequentially for the better part of three months.

But alas… the “organic” recovery was not quite underway.

Prices peaked out in mid-summer and declined throughout September falling below the prior low.

Worse yet, short of a feeble blip in prices going into the first expiration of the housing tax gimmick, prices have continued to decline reaching the current level some 51.14% below the peak seen in 2006 and dropping at an annual rate of 13.03%.