Just under 50 percent of Miami-Dade homeowners are underwater on their mortgages, meaning the value of their mortgage exceeds the value of their home, according to data from Zillow.com. That rate is the highest in South Florida, topping Broward County, where 46 percent of homeowners are underwater. In Palm Beach County, 40 percent of homeowners are underwater. [more]

Miami continues to be the strongest apartment market in South Florida, according to a second-quarter report from Marcus & Millichap. With plummeting vacancies and the “gradual restoration of rents to former peaks,” Miami-Dade County is leading the tri-county area, in large part due to increased tenant demand. Further expansion in service employment will help lead to a projected 60-basis-point decline in the vacancy rate this year to 4.1 percent. [more]

Foreclosure activity in Miami-Dade jumped 77 percent in April compared to the same period in 2011, according to data from RealtyTrac. On the whole, South Florida foreclosure activity rose 38 percent in April, the fifth consecutive month of double-digit increases after 13 straight months of decreases. [more]

The total number of residential listings in Miami-Dade County that pended in February rose 29 percent compared to the same period in 2011, according to a report from the Miami Association of Realtors. There were a total of 3,685 listings that pended last month. [more]

A new proposal by Miami-Dade County seeks a section in the proposed gaming law that would require up to 18 months of local government review, according to the South Florida Business Journal. If approved, it could mean a substantial delay for the Genting casino plan in downtown Miami. The change additionally calls for a revision in the weighting process for casino applications. According to Miami-Dade County, it would mean each applicant for a casino resort would have to undergo a review after an initial examination by the new gaming commission created under the law. [SFBJ] [more]

The city of Islandia in Miami-Dade County will soon disappear off the map, following a move to abolish the city by a Miami-Dade County Commission. The reason? It has just six residents who live in five houses. Islandia, once a potential development site whose plans were shut down after the establishment of Biscayne National Park, was founded in 1951, but Miami-Dade County now calls it “a city on paper only.” The city is located on Totten Key south of Elliott Key. [SFBJ] [more]

Ratings agency Fitch has downgraded its outlook for several Miami-Dade County bonds to negative from its previous ranking of stable, citing a weak housing market among the reasons for the decreases. Some of the bonds that received the downgrade were public service tax revenue bonds and public facilities revenues bonds. Fitch said that “the county’s weakened financial profile” was greatly affected by the area’s “severely stressed housing market,” and that it expects “further fiscal deterioration” in the county if “a persisting budgetary imbalance” isn’t corrected. [SFBJ]

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The Miami-Dade County property appraiser reported that the 2010 estimate of taxable value in the county is $192.48 billion, a decline of 13.4 percent compared to the 2009 figure of $222.14 billion, according to Eye on Miami. Taxable value refers to a percentage of the assessor’s appraisal according to a state-prescribed formula, after any exemptions are removed. In 2008, the value was $245.6 billion. The new construction taxable value in the county is estimated at $2.63 billion, a significant decline when compared to $8.379 billion the previous year. Homestead had the highest recorded decline in the
county with a 29.9 percent decrease from 2009. [Eye on Miami]

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Miami-Dade, Palm Beach and Broward counties staged a substantial comeback in March, according to a report just released by the real estate research group MDA DataQuick, with total home sales reaching 8,658 for the month, up 43.3 percent from February. Although sales tend to spike during that time of year, according to DataQuick, the uptick is significantly higher than what is typically seen across the three counties. This could be due in part to the first-time homebuyer tax credit, according to the report, which may have spurred some buyers into action before the deadline last Friday. [HousingWire]

Thousands of South Floridians are among the nation’s foreclosure victims who’ve learned the hard way that troubles spawned by that procedure don’t end when they lose their home. John King, a Coral Gables resident who defaulted on his mortgage and was foreclosed upon, found out last month that a Miami-Dade County court gave debt collectors permission to seek an additional $44,000 stemming from the litigation. Lenders, reeling from the collapse of boom real estate markets like South Florida, Las Vegas and California, are now pursuing their right to seek the unpaid mortgage balances of homeowners who have defaulted. Ben Hillard, a former investment banker who now is a real estate and corporate attorney at Hillard & Rogers in Largo, said banks are now able to pursue what are called deficiency judgments with greater frequency as they adjust to the realities of a market cratering. [Business Week]