| | | Timing is everything.
In South Florida, hardest-hit markets now enjoy the biggest gains in home values.
During a five-year run of real estate prosperity, some South Florida communities that bore the brunt of the excruciating housing collapse are enjoying the biggest spikes in value, homeowners and brokers say.
Margate, Oakland Park and Lake Worth are among seven cities in Broward and Palm Beach counties where median home values have more than doubled compared to 2012, according to Zillow, the real estate website.
In Oakland Park, for example, the median value in April was $189,600, 107 percent higher than it was in April 2012, at the start of the housing recovery.
Near the peak of the pre-recession boom in April 2006, the city’s median had ballooned to $259,000 before plummeting 65 percent, one of the worst slides in Broward.
Richmond, Va., transplants Lynda Somers Donahue and her husband, J.D., bought a home last year two blocks off Federal Highway near the Funky Buddha Brewery in Oakland Park.
The couple paid $397,000, but Donahue, a real estate agent, estimates the two-bedroom home with a den already has gained $50,000 in value with only minor improvements, including new cabinets in the kitchen and spruced-up terrazzo floors in the bedrooms.
More at sun-sentinel.com
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