If you follow Key West Real Estate, one of the things which makes for good reading is the list of Realty Trac's notices of "Notice of Defaults"/Pre-Foreclosures which are updated throughout a month.
This past weekend, 13 Key West homes were added to this list. (When the page opens, type in the zipcode: 33040. A list of 243 "defaults" will list from most recent to oldest.)
At this time, 17 Key West homes with a $1,000,000 or more mortgage are in pre-foreclosure or have been foreclosed upon. You can find these 17 by clicking on the column market "Amount". By the way, many homes's "Amount" is blank. Thus the list of million dollar plus homes in Key West now in default is most likely higher than just the 17 showing.
The local NAR is publicizing that inventory is diminishing. What the NAR conveniently forgets to tell homebuyers is how many bank owned/short-sale foreclosed upon homes are not being shown on the MLS at this time.
It still makes more sense to rent down here, unless, of course, some panicked homeseller can see the handwriting on the wall and agrees to sell you his/her property at 1995 prices.
Right now, I continue to see one home/condo after another which was bought in 2004 through 2007 sell for prices in 2009 for less than it was bought. And we are moving the trendline down to 2003 prices very, very soon. (I've recently seen a sale of a home which was bought in 2008 sold at a smaller price this year. I will write about it soon.)
The trend is still downward in pricing. What the local NAR is not telling on "sold" homes is what the original price or previous prices were. Instead, when a house sells, the NAR only publicizes the most recent listing price was.
And then there's the old trick of manipulating data where a house has one "listing price" drop after another from the original price, finally, to only have the homeseller rip the home off the market. Then when that home comes back on the market it will show a brand new "original" price way below the old "original" price. Hence, new drops in listing price will disguise the real fall from what the owner was trying to get. Meaning a home buyer will know not just how panicked the seller is.
Therefore, I've constructed my own Exel spreadsheet on which I type daily changes in listing prices so I can gauge what is really happening to the data without manipulation.
Thus, in the future, I will show you things the local MLS is hiding.
Mark my word, home prices are not bottoming in Key West. Only non-observant people are paying full listing price in this environment of cascading Notice of Defaults, soon to blow up Option ARMs resetting, commercial Real Estate blowing up, credit card defaults rising, and job unemployment rising.
Pay attention, dig deep. If you can find a foreclosure for 1995 prices, snap it up now. Otherwise, it still makes much more sense to follow the falling prices in rentals around the Keys.
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