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Last Thursday, lenders reached 100,000 foreclosures in the tri-county South Florida region since the real estate crash began in 2007, according to a report from Bal Harbour-based consulting firm ""CondoVultures.com"":http://www.CondoVentures.com, which takes its figures from government records. That's an average of 2,300 per month.
Peter Zalewski, a CondoVultures principal, put it in perspective. ""To get a grasp of South Florida's real estate[IMAGE] [COLUMN_BREAK]
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,"" he said.
Zalewski added, ""For context, consider that lenders are repossessing about 40 percent of all South Florida properties where a foreclosure filing has been initiated by a lender.""
Zalewski said he expects the number of bank repossessions to decrease since foreclosure filings for the year are down by roughly one-third in 2010 compared to 2009.
Bank-owned properties represent only about 6 percent of the 68,500 residences on the resale market in the region as of August 16 despite the sharp increase in repossessions, according to Condo Vultures Realty LLC. South Florida's residential inventory has increased for nine of the last 11 weeks-a 5 percent jump since May 31.
Lenders have repossessed more than 33,600 properties in the area in 2010, reports CondoVentures.com. That figure already surpasses the number of tri-county properties taken in 2009 and 2008 combined.
