Outlook for Florida's Real Estate Market: Overcast But Clearing?

In foreclosure-wracked Florida, there are tiny signs of life. The state's foreclosure rate dipped in January. Earlier this month, all eyes were on Miami when the Super Bowl XLIV came to town. And recently, the deep freeze in real estate lending seems to have thawed.

An investor group buying a 63-unit condo project on Brickell Avenue in Downtown Miami recently secured financing from a local bank, according to CondoVultures LLC, a real estate consulting firm in Bal Harbour, Fla. Granted, the $5.5 million mortgage for the new buyers works out to $68 per square foot -- quite a drop from the $126 per square foot price that was the basis for the building's original purchase price of $10.2 million in August 2009.

Still, these events amount to cheery news for the southern Florida's beleaguered real estate market.