A pair of reports from Florida. "Only 221 builders applied for new-home permits in Port St. Lucie last month, compared with 752 in June 2005 and monthly averages above 500 each year since 2003. The city's new-home starts have dwindled nearly every month this year, with 375 permits issued in February and 325 in May."

"City officials knew this slowdown was coming. They just didn't expect it to hit so hard, so suddenly. 'I think things were overpriced,' assistant building official Bob Kymalainen said."

"With a seven-month supply of vacant homes on the market in St. Lucie County, real estate analyst Brad Hunter in West Palm Beach doesn't expect the slowdown to subside any time soon. If the slowdown continues, the building department will abandon its six-day workweek in favor of five days, Kymalainen said. Three new inspectors planned for the upcoming budget year won't be hired."

The Herald Tribune. "After three years of happy times and quick sales, real estate foreclosure is back. The U.S. real estate market has cooled, and foreclosure rates are notching upward and are almost certain to head higher. The distress isn't limited to Joe Six-Pack. Many pros and semi-pros are starting to wish they owned fewer homes than they do, especially if they bought recently."

"In May, there were 1,441 homes listed in North Port, but only 80, or 5.5 percent, sold, says Dave Hofer, who keeps statistics on the area. In Port Charlotte things were worse: 1,543 listings and 72 sales, or 4.6 percent."

"Down in Venice, George Huhn, a commercial real estate broker with an investor following, helped a couple of banks by taking over problem loans in 2001-02. Now, banks are starting to call him again, asking him to relieve them of problem first mortgages they held onto, before they become foreclosure actions."

"Banks do it for two reasons. 'No.1, for reasons of negative publicity and image, the banks don't want to be involved in foreclosure actions,' he said. Secondly, during the boom years, some lenders all but disbanded the departments performing the difficult work of foreclosure. 'Now they are looking at some hard choices, and what they are electing to do is outsource, and that is where we come in,' Huhn said."

"Even the pros and semi-pros in the Sarasota Real Estate Investors Association are feeling some distress these days. At one recent meeting, investor Peter Magnuson acknowledged the issue in a pep talk to the 75 or so members present. 'There's a little bit of blood in the streets,' Magnuson said. 'I think that is the people who overcommitted themselves and are looking for a way to unwind what they got into.'"

"'People who bought these pre-construction deals hoping to make big money on them and now they're stuck with them and it is eating them out of house and home,' he said."