Miami-Dade still clearing out foreclosures in September: report

Once a hotbed of foreclosure activity during the housing crash, Miami-Dade County continued to drain its backlog of lender-owned properties in September, according to a newly released report.

The report from real estate research firm CoreLogic shows the county’s foreclosure rate fell 36 percent year-over-year to 2.2 percent. Delinquencies, the precursor to foreclosures, also dropped by 33 percent to 5.3 percent in the same time period.

South Florida as a whole was once the nation’s king of foreclosures, boasting a rate of one in every 269 homes in 2013. Those properties were were some of the first to be snapped up by investors as Miami-Dade began recovering from the housing crash, eventually giving way to higher home prices and stronger home ownership.

Even so, the county still has far to go before it beats the national rate of 0.9 percent.

And while worry is brewing that Miami-Dade is facing another residential market crunch, market watchers have contended that several factors are protecting the metro from another foreclosure onslaught.

Its historically high rate of all-cash home purchases means homeowners have more equity protecting them from banks, and new developments typically require 50 percent deposits, meaning buyers are more reluctant to walk away from their units. — Sean Stewart-Muniz