The Daily Business Review reports from Florida. "No one can point to any single reason for Palm Beach County’s drastic downturn in home prices, but real estate players identify a slew of contributing factors."

"Susie Van Pelt, an agent in North Palm Beach, has a listing for a waterfront condo at Flagler Pointe in West Palm Beach priced $5,000 less than the year-old purchase price. The unit isn’t selling even though the price is $80,000 less than a comparable three-bedroom water-view listing in the same building."

"With the huge supply of homes on the market, some sellers are in a panic. The people who are forced to sell are the ones dragging down the median price, said (realtor) Kim Stevens in Boynton Beach. Stevens recently sold a Lake Worth home that was appraised at $380,000 but sold for $318,000. Two years ago, she said the home would have sold for more than $400,000."

"Based on the current market index, Palm Beach County has a 47-month inventory backlog."

"A surge of new Palm Beach County construction is contributing to the flooded market, Stevens said. After buying land at boom-high prices, investors and builders cannot afford to sit on the sites. 'We got caught up with a lot of inventory,' said Bregman, who represents clients who bought up tracts of land during the heyday. 'When the merry-go-round stops, there is a lot of product out there.'"

The Herald Tribune. "George Fischer's for-sale sign is one of roughly 7,600 in the Sarasota MLS. That is more than double the 3,700 homes listed for sale in mid-November 2005. Neither figure counts condominiums. That number of condos for sale, too, has more than doubled in the past year."

"Meanwhile, real estate brokers are having trouble making these puppies play. They are closing on houses at the rate of 73 per week. At that speed, it would take two years to get rid of just today's inventory."

"In response, sellers have gradually, painfully lowered their prices, to the point where the median price is nearly back to 2004 levels."

"Fischer has not even managed to get a lowball offer. 'It is almost as if there aren't any true buyers out there, or there is no urgency,' Fischer laments. 'Because there is such a glut on the market, people feel they don't need to make a decision, because the house will always be there.'"

"'The activity has just died,' said Peter Magnuson, a Sarasota real estate investor who chairs a local real estate investor club. 'People have lost money, and they just haven't realized it yet.'"

"It is people who bought at the peak, like Fischer did in May 2005, who are hurting. Fischer paid $320,000 in May 2005, just as the market was topping out, and then put $30,000 more into the place, for an outlay of $350,000, not counting monthly carrying costs. So even if Fischer gets his asking price, and even without counting any closing costs except the 3 percent commission, he would be in the red on the deal."

"'It is going to happen more and more in the next two to five years,' said Stan Geberer, an economist at a real estate consulting firm. 'Almost everybody who bought in 2005, if they try to sell in 2006, is going to be upside down.'"

From Florida Today. "A total of 512 housing construction permits were issued countywide in October, according to statistics from the Home Builders & Contractors Association of Brevard. October's total, which includes single-family homes, condominiums and apartments, was the highest monthly number in Brevard since 554 permits were issued in April. However, it was lowest total for October in five years, the association's monthly report shows."

"The median sales price for an existing single-family home in Brevard was $212,400 in October, down from $238,200 a year earlier, according to a report Tuesday from the Florida Association of Realtors."

"Franck Kaiser, CEO of the association, said builders are trying to sell off their inventories of new homes left over from a flurry of construction, which ended not long after the surge in local housing prices ended last year."

"In Brevard, home sales have slowed in part because many homeowners have been trying to sell their homes at last year's higher prices, said (broker) Betty McCluskey. 'People can't get over a year ago when they saw their neighbors getting such big numbers' for their homes, McCluskey said."

"To stimulate the local housing market, builders and others are hoping to persuade county commissioners to delay a scheduled increase in a county transportation impact fee on each new single-family home. The delay could help the market, said Dave Armstrong, treasurer of the Florida Homebuilders Association and a local home builder."

"'Right now, the animal is wounded and we don't want to kill it,' Armstrong said about the housing market."