The Herald Tribune reports from Florida. "A downtown Sarasota property once slated to become a luxury condominium sold Thursday for $555,000 at a no-reserve, open-air auction. That price was nearly $200,000 less than the developer paid two years ago for the same piece of dirt and probably half what the land might have commanded during the peak of the real estate boom."

"'Sounds like he was operating on the greater fool theory,' said Peter Magnuson, a Sarasota real estate investor, of the property's owner. 'It may be a ridiculous price, but somebody else will pay a more ridiculous price later.'"

"'Thirty-five thousand vehicles per day drive by here,' said auctioneer Michael Peters, attempting to squeeze a few more thousand out of the 20 or so people sitting in folding chairs under a white canopy tent. He then pointed out that the land was officially valued at more than $700,000 by the Sarasota County Property Appraiser."

"But it didn't work. The sacrifice sale is the latest indication of a real estate market that has gone into a severe correction after a boom that started in 2002 and pushed prices to sweeping highs by early 2005."

"'Clearly, there are a number of planned projects that are behind schedule, and some that people have dropped out of,' said John Harshman, a Sarasota commercial real estate agent and downtown expert."

"By buying the vacant Sarasota land in November 2004, the buyer paid nearly the most he could have, said Marvin Rose, a residential real estate consultant. 'That was just about the peak of the Sarasota market,' Rose said. 'Sarasota came down in early '05, or started to come down.'"

"The average price of a condo in the Sarasota MLS acted like a roller coaster in the past couple of years. From $414,200 in August 2004, the price hit $526,000 in August 2005, before descending back down to $436,000 in August."

"The auction price on the property worked out to a current downtown bargain of $71 per square foot. 'Probably $100 a square foot is what people have been pegging in on downtown properties,' said Joe Hembree, a Sarasota commercial real estate agent."

"The property was likely the first piece of prime downtown Sarasota land to be sold through an open auction during this real estate cycle, Harshman said."

"The event was advertised as an 'absolute auction.' That means that no matter how low the bid was, the buyer would be obligated to accept it, said Peters, the auctioneer. 'That's what an auction is all about.'"