Posted on Wed, Jun. 27, 2012

The rest of the country seems to be accepting the Case-Shiller housing index as a bearer of good news about real estate, rather than a downer. But in Miami, the numbers have been looking up since the end of 2011.

April also brought some strong numbers for South Florida, as the Herald’s real estate reporter Martha Brannigan reported in today’s paper.

Here at the Economic Time Machine, we’ve crunched the numbers a bit more to look at how South Florida (which Case-Shiller calls “Miami”) compares to the rest of the major cities. The region enjoys the country’s third-best rebound this year, tying Denver for a 3 percent gain and behind Minneapolis (4 percent) and Phoenix (9 percent).

South Florida finished fourth in the biggest bounce from the bottom, up 6 percent from a trough hit in late 2011.

None of the good news, though, can erase the grimmest statistic for South Florida homeowners. South Florida suffered the third worst housing bubble in the country, dropping 51 percent from peaks hit in late 2006. Only Phoenix (down 57 percent) and Las Vegas (down 62 percent) did worse.

The gains in recent months narrowed that plunge just a bit. Now South Florida property values are down just 48 percent from the bubble days.

The Miami Herald’s Economic Time Machine tracks 60 local indicators in an effort to chart South Florida’s recovery from the Great Recession. By comparing current conditions to where they were before the downturn, the ETM attempts to measure how far back the recession set the economy. The answer so far: June 2003. Visit ETM headquarters at miamiherald.com/economic-time-machine for the latest updates.