Reporting on the winning and losing headlines, South Florida Law Blog brings you the break down and what this means to the Florida homeowner.

While South Florida is #1 for mortgage fraud and foreclosure settlement talks between banks and the Obama administration appear futile at best, this week’s new was not all doom and gloom.

Check out Oppenheim Law’s and Weston Title’s picks in the week’s winners and losers for Florida foreclosure, real estate and the economy.

Winners

Pending home sales up 18% in Miami-Dade
Pending home sales rose 18 percent in Miami-Dade County over the course of the past month, according to new data released today by the Miami Association of Realtors.

Pending home sales, which include single-family home and condominium unit sales, were also up 3.24 percent month-over-month in March, the figures show.

“Increased pending sales reflect the existence of pent-up demand and should result in strengthening home values as distressed housing inventory continues to be absorbed,” said Jack Levine, chairman of the board of Miami Realtors.

Hiring Shows Growing Strength
The American job market is starting to show some muscle, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The jobless rate, our most politically salient measure of economic health, edged down to 8.8% in the fourth consecutive monthly decline despite the fact that more Americans entered the job market.
“It’s a very solid report that shows the labor market gaining momentum,” said David Greenlaw, an economist with Morgan Stanley in New York.

The public sector remained a weak point, as local governments shed 15,000 jobs last month in an effort to close budget gaps, but many other sectors showed strong growth, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Professional and business services gained 78,000 jobs. Factories added 17,000 jobs, while health care added 37,000. Over the past 12 months, health care has added an average of 24,000 jobs a month.

Losers

South Florida is #1 for Foreclosure Fraud
South Florida is first in the country for the number of mortgage fraud suspicious activity reports per capita, according to a new report from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and The South Florida Business Journal.

The region, which recorded 11,833 such reports last year, also leads the nation in Medicare fraud and auto insurance fraud.

Overall, mortgage fraud reports rose significantly in 2010, with 70,472 reports filed last year, up from 57,507 in 2009.

In Foreclosure Settlement Talks With Banks, Predictions of a Long Process
Little was settled in the first round of foreclosure settlement talks, according to The New York Times.

As negotiations begin over new rules for homeowners who are in default, experts all agree that progress is going to take time.

But lengthy negotiations work to the banks’ advantage, according to The Times.

“The banks’ strategy is to run the clock,” a Georgetown University law professor, Adam Levitin, said. “The chances of a settlement that meaningfully reforms mortgage servicing and makes the banks pay an appropriate price for illegal conduct are rapidly slipping away.”

Draw

Subprime Bonds Are Back

As the economy recovers, long-term investors are willing to take on more risks and subprime and other residential mortgage bonds that helped trigger the financial crisis are back in vogue, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The stock market ended its best first quarter since 1999 last week, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average closing up 6.41% on the quarter.

The willingness to take on risk is helping ordinary borrowers, too, by leading banks to make more nontraditional loans, such as jumbo mortgages, and to charge lower interest rates for them.

While it is encouraging that the markets are continuing on an upward swing, cautious optimism is needed any time subprime bonds are involved.

So, while it looks like housing values keep dropping around the country and new construction is also off, South Florida real estate may have hit rock bottom or close to it.

It seems that South Florida’s position as an international location is encouraging foreigners to swoop in and purchase homes and condos that based on an international standard are outright cheap.  Of course; a strong stock market, a dollar that is fairly weak and the prospect of huge government defecits that forshadows inflation, only helps.