FL

The Miami New Times reprots from Florida. "Crossing the Lehman Causeway into Sunny Isles Beach, you might wonder if you've been sucked into an interstate wormhole in the space-time continuum and landed in downtown Miami. Construction cranes perch atop a skyline that, though dominated by high-rises, still strains upward. Lucy Collins purchased her apartment at the low-slung Kings Point Imperial, in late 2005 when the market was hot. 'You can't go wrong buying this property,' she remembers being told."

"Thanks to an adjustable rate mortgage, she now pays almost twice what she used to spend on rent for a similar apartment, more than $2000 a month, and the bill is rising."

"'I've already borrowed $12,000 on my credit cards just to keep going,' Collins says. She is even considering cashing in her IRA, as well as looking for a job at Home Depot. 'Instead of working less as I get older, I'm having to work more. I want out. I'm thinking I would just leave the state.'"

The Sun Sentinel. "Marge Dwyer was in 'total shock' when she heard she wouldn't be getting the money to pay off her mortgages. The Maryland native, who lives here seven months out of the year, was to receive more than $1 million for her two mobile homes in the (Briny Breezes) seaside community."

"'It's horrible,' she said. 'I still can't believe it's happening.'"

"The $510 million deal fell through Monday after the town refused to give Ocean Land an extension on an Aug. 10 deadline and the developer pulled out of the deal. Between her two units, Dwyer would have made about $1.6 million on the sale."

"She planned to pay off about $1 million she owed on three properties in Delaware, three in Maryland and a condo in Delray Beach. 'I'm mortgaged up to my eyeballs,' Dwyer said. 'I'm going to have to start selling [my properties] off just to survive.'"

The Palm Beach Post. "The $510 million Briny Breezes deal, which fell apart yesterday, always had more than its share of surreal touches. For starters, there was the incongruity of a trailer park nestled amid some of the priciest oceanfront land in the world. Then there was the idea of deep-pocketed developers securing a $510 million deal for an entire town with nothing more than a $500,000 deposit."

"Silver-haired Briny residents visiting the Post’s editorial board recently and swearing up and down that they didn’t want to sell, but they voted to sell anyway. One even broke down in tears, in between trying to figure out how to make her BlackBerry stop ringing."

"Looking to scoop up some prime Miami Beach real estate? This could be your year. Nine properties valued at a million dollars or more have gone into foreclosure on the Beach since the beginning of 2007."

"According to research, these include a prime, vacant 10,500 square foot waterfront lot on Hibiscus Island ($3 million) as well as several condos that haven’t even been completed."

The Herald Tribune. "Foreclosure filings during the first half of 2007 totaled 2,303 in Sarasota County, up 198 percent from the same period last year. Manatee and Charlotte counties also posted increases of more than 100 percent for the time frame, RealtyTrac reported."

The News Journal. "In a sign that deterioration of the Volusia-Flagler area housing market may be accelerating, foreclosure activity on local homes soared in the first half of the year at rates far exceeding the troubling increases nationally and statewide."

"The number of foreclosure-related filings shot up 156 percent in Volusia County from the first six months last year to 2,623 in the first half this year, according to Realtytrac. In much less populous Flagler County, the total number of filings was smaller, 600 in the first half this year, but represented a staggering 408 percent increase over the year-earlier pace, the company said."

The News Press. "Housing permits in Cape Coral fell to their lowest level in more than a decade in July, according to a city report released Wednesday. Meanwhile, activity in unincorporated Lee County slowed drastically following a surge in June caused by a deadline to avoid the tripling of road impact fees."

"In Cape Coral, only 45 permits were pulled for single-family homes last month, a far cry from the 858 recorded in March 2006 at the height of Southwest Florida’s real estate boom."

From Florida Today. "The pain in the local housing market isn't limited to Realtors and people trying to sell their homes. Construction workers also are getting their share. Brevard County has lost a big chunk of its construction jobs during the past year, as a result of the slumping housing sector."

"'We recently merged our Space Coast and Palm Bay divisions in response to reduced demand in the current housing market,' said David Barin, president of Mercedes' Space Coast Division. 'Like other builders, we have had to lay off and transfer some employees as the industry searches for equilibrium.'"

"Martin Carrizales was laid off with other workers last week from his job as a roof designer after 11 years. 'They just told us one day, and we were gone,' said Carrizales. 'They said, 'It's just the market. No one's building, no one's buying.'"

"The number of mortgage foreclosures in Brevard has continued to rise, with 385 foreclosure filings in June, the most for any month in at least 51/2 years, according to the Brevard County Clerk of Courts. During the first half of 2007, there were 1,975 mortgage foreclosures filed with the clerk's office, compared with 1,144 for all of 2005 and 1,868 for all of 2006."

"Alan Hunter, a housing market analyst with Metrostudy in West Palm Beach, expects housing prices in South Florida to continue to fall for another year, in some places as much as an additional 20 to 30 percent, stemming from artificially inflated prices and an excess of housing construction. 'Prices just got way out of line with what people could afford,' Hunter said."

"The median single-family home resale price in Brevard fell from a peak of $248,700 in August 2005 to $198,000 in June, a 20 percent drop."

The Times Union. "The St. Joe Co. reported an operating loss for the second quarter Tuesday, as the slumping housing market reduced demand for the company's residential real estate projects. St. Joe reported a loss from continuing operations of $5.3 million, or 7 cents a share."

"'It was a difficult quarter, reflecting the current market,' said CEO Peter Rummell. 'It's a tough time for the housing industry nationally, and it's tough in Florida,' he said."

"While St. Joe officials expressed optimism about the future, Wachovia Securities analyst Christopher Haley expressed caution for the short term in a research note Tuesday. 'We note that such optimism has been offered by management in the recent past, only to have the existing weak market conditions persist longer than expected,' Haley said."

From Florida Trend. "Some owners are paying the price for homes built in a hurry during the boom years. In addition to contractor abandonment cases, Florida is seeing a rash of construction defect and delay cases as the housing boom deflates, according to attorneys around the state."

"'Because so much was going up so quickly, you had subcontractors on the job who didn’t have experience building a 30- or 40-story high-rise on the ocean,' says Stacy Bercun Bohm, a construction attorney in Fort Lauderdale. 'You had subcontractors here from other parts of the country getting in on the boom, but they had no experience with environmental factors such as salt air and the humidity here.'"

"Some cases may represent desperate attempts by condo investors to get out of preconstruction contracts by claiming substandard work. But many involve contractors who cut corners as costs boomed and the housing market began to wane."

"Orlando home inspector Richard Tan says the situation is the same inland. He tells story after story of substandard work by both custom luxury builders and cookie-cutter home building corporations. 'My reports used to be 20 to 30 pages long, but lately they’ve been hitting 50 to 60 pages,' he says. 'And these are brand-spanking-new homes.'"

The Orlando Sentinel. "Central Florida's only publicly held financial institution posted its first loss in more than a decade Tuesday, falling into a multimillion-dollar hole triggered by real-estate failures in Florida's slumping housing market."

"It was the latest hit Federal Trust has taken during the past year as fallout from the housing slump has taken its toll on the banking industry. The thrift's profit fell more than 65 percent in the first quarter after a 23 percent decline in 2006. It was the 17th-largest bank in the region in 2006."

"'Federal Trust and a lot of other smaller banks are probably suffering more than bigger banks right now,' said Rod Jones, an Orlando banking lawyer and a former state regulator. 'But even the big players such as Bank of America and Wachovia are being hit hard. And we may not have seen the bottom of that yet either.'"

"Florida's economy, and thus the state government's finances, is in worse shape than predicted and will take a longer time to turn around, state economists revealed Wednesday. The state is not in a recession, economists said, but only because that's a term they reserve for describing national fiscal woes."

"Amy Baker, coordinator of the Florida Legislature's Bureau of Economic and Demographic Research, said of the state's economy: 'By almost any way you calculate it, if you looked at the housing market and all its related pieces, the finance piece, the Realtor piece, the building piece and the sales piece, by pretty much any measure, that is akin to a recession. It's just we don't define it that way.'"

"The economists blamed Florida's troubled real-estate market, saying sales of existing homes and housing starts are down, which keeps the overall economy stagnant."

"Worse, they said, there is no sign of a recovery before 2009. 'While Florida is not in a recession, it looks very much like a recession,' state economist Frank Williams said. 'We're not expecting to see a big comeback like you would coming out of a recession.'"

"'There won't be a day, there won't be a 'Eureka' moment but more of a period of time,' said economist Amy Baker. 'This will be a fairly long adjustment.'"

The Tallahassee Democrat. "Baker said Florida's housing boom was bigger and longer-running than most states enjoyed. Therefore, she said, the correction has been a longer, steeper fall that looks likely to last a while."

"'It was a windfall or a boom, we were in a bubble,' she said after the conference meeting, 'so you're seeing the growth rates in a bubble that were not sustainable, ever. This was inevitable.'"

The St Petersburg Times. "Throughout the past couple of years, Tampa was tops at producing happy workers. How the mighty have fallen. The Hudson Employment Index, which tracks worker confidence in 11 major cities, ranked Tampa second to last in its July measurements."

"What's turned us into such pessimists? 'It's got to be something related to the whole real estate market,' says Fritz Eichelberger, who runs (a) local techie networking group. 'Companies here don't want to pay any money,' said David Rudd, a business development specialist at Manpower in Tampa, 'and the government wants to charge more money to live here' in property taxes."

The Naples News. "There’s no arguing that this is a tough time to be in the real estate business. Inventory is up, sales are down and agents are finding themselves with way more free time than they’d like to have. But some say there is good news to be had if you look closely enough."

"'People have to understand that if they bought for $150,000 several years ago and had it listed for $450,000, and now in order to sell they have to sell for $350,000, they did not lose $100,000,' said Realtor Joe Pavich Sr in Estero."

"Of course, making a profit under that scenario assumes the seller didn’t use his home equity 'like a debit card' a few years ago when interest rates were at historic lows and property values were at historic highs, he added."

"And Realtors say buyers are out there, they’re just hovering until they feel confident the market has reached bottom."

"'My impression is there’s a huge pent-up market of buyers out there, but they’re all waiting for the media to say something positive before they jump in,' said Wes Brodersen, broker in Bonita Springs."

"Brodersen believes much of the blame for the current market belongs on the shoulders of the media. 'I’m beginning to believe the media actually has an agenda with this,' he said. 'The market we’re in now started two years ago, but I’ve been reading about it for three years. Can you say self-fulfilling prophecy?'"