The Bradenton Herald reports from Florida. "Fortune Magazine has named Bradenton/Sarasota in its top 10 housing markets ready for a fall. Ranking the area number seven, the magazine projects local home prices will tumble 4.8 percent in 2007. Home prices started to see a correction as early as the last quarter of 2005 and buyers are being more realistic when pricing their properties, said broker Milt Flinn. Fortune's prediction is akin to 'looking out the rear window.'"

"The latest numbers released by the Florida Association of Realtors found the median home price for October at $277,900, down 18 percent from the $340,700 median in 2005."

"'I think we all need to take a look at our individual greed temperature,' said Rod Rawlings, VP of corporate development for Re/Max Gulfstream. 'Sellers now who realize there is no way they can lose money on the sale of their house are more likely to price according to what the market allows.'"

"The best bet for selling a property in an area that has multiple homes on the market is to price a home in the bottom of that area's price range. 'It takes two to make a transaction and the buyers have been sitting back waiting for the market bottom and I think they're coming back now,' Rawlings said."

The Orlando Sentinel. "Ed Wittenberg moved into a ghost town. At the fringe of the 60,000-retiree community, the well-landscaped homes in his Villages neighborhood stood empty. The front windows of home after home revealed empty living rooms. No one else lived there."

"'I was alone, but not lonely,' Wittenberg said. 'I did wonder if I was getting any neighbors. I wondered if it was selling down here.'"

"The Villages home-building machine put the brakes on during 2006. This year home building in the retirement mecca is on pace to drop by about 40 percent from 2005. 'It's slowed dramatically,' Sumter County Planning and Development Director Robbie Rodgers said."

"This year, the master-planned community went from a high of 529 building permits pulled in January to only 76 in November. Each month saw fewer permits pulled. The surplus of empty homes from last year leaves vacant neighborhoods and isolates new retirees such as Wittenberg."

"Frustrated would-be Villagers lament that their retirement dreams are shackled to a soft housing market. 'People can't sell their houses up North or anywhere,' Lorri Lewis, a South Florida real-estate agent. 'I already lost $60,000 on my house in Vero Beach,' Lewis said."

"Experts said the ghost neighborhoods of The Villages are symptomatic of the new-home market across the country. As the market cools, home builders face excess inventory while competing with a flood of existing houses for sale."

"Lewis rented in The Villages for 21/2 months. She is spending Christmas in The Villages with friends. She already dropped the asking price on her Vero Beach home and plans to drop it again until it sells."

"'I've met too many people who have bought here and can't sell their homes,' Lewis said. 'It's just a matter of patience.'"

"Marj Fada could not wait any longer. At least 165 other people from her hometown of Mansfield, Ohio, already have moved here. 'I had been coming down here for five years,' Fada said. 'The homes down here have doubled in price.'"

"When she retired, she immediately bought a Villages home, sight unseen, and put her Ohio property on the market. That was September. She has taken her home off the market for December and January to save on real-estate-agent costs while she covers two mortgage payments."

"She thinks The Villages' momentum will return and allow her to resell her home when the market rebounds. 'Even if it doesn't work out for me here now, I don't think it was a bad decision,' Fada said. 'I can always come back.'"