Bloomberg reports from Florida. "In the middle of the biggest glut of condominiums in more than 30 years, Miami developers keep on building. 'Florida is the epicenter for all the problems that exist in the housing industry,' said Lewis Goodkin, a property adviser in Miami for the past 30 years, who also foresees a recession. 'The problems we have now are unprecedented and a lot of people will get burnt.'"

"Thirty-seven new high-rise condos and 20,000 new units are being built in Miami's 1,040-acre downtown, where sales fell almost 50 percent in May, according to the Florida Association of Realtors. The new units will join the 22,924 existing condos in Miami-Dade County that were for sale in April, according to (consultant) Jack McCabe."

"'Have you been to Miami lately?' Florida Governor Charlie Crist said at a homebuilders' conference last week in Orlando. 'It's like we have a new state bird: the building crane.'"

"Florida's robust economy of 2001 to 2005 was driven by the thousands of well-paying jobs related to the real estate market and homeowners who used home-equity loans to pay for items such as boats and big-screen TVs, McCabe said."

"'All those jobs are going away now, and we're seeing the trickle-down effect in declining sales in big-box retailers and home-furnishing manufacturers,' McCabe said. 'Florida is headed to a recession.'"

"Puig Development Group, a closely held company that converted rental apartments to condos, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on May 29. The Hialeah, Florida-based Puig and its subsidiaries controlled 2,900 units in Florida, including 980 condos, worth about $210 million, said Ronald Glass of Atlanta-based GlassRatner Advisory & Capital Group LLC, chief restructuring officer for the Puig properties."

"'Puig got a little overzealous and a little overly optimistic, and was caught when the market slowed,' Glass said."

"Florida banks posted a 43 percent jump in the first quarter in loans no longer paying interest compared with the last three months of 2006, while the number for banks nationwide rose 13 percent, according to the FDIC."

"Loan payments that were one to three months overdue to Florida banks increased 30 percent in the first three months of 2007 from the fourth quarter of last year."

" Miami condo sales fell to 599 in May, a drop of 46 percent from a year earlier, according to the state realtors association. Condo sales in Orlando have plummeted 80 percent, said (economist) Mark Zandi. 'The statistics are scary,' said Michael Wohl, a partner in a Miami developer that has stayed out of the condo market. 'There's going to be a lot of blood in the water in the next 18 months.'"

"Lenders typically require enough advance sales to cover the cost of a construction loan. Customers' deposits, however, don't always mean the sales will close, said Ian Bruce Eichner, a developer whose latest Miami Beach condo tower is scheduled to open in November."

"'The market is as close to a depression as Miami has seen in 30 years,' Eichner said. 'There's a gargantuan supply of homes and the overwhelming preponderance were built for speculators, not for people who are living there.'"

"As much as half of those putting down deposits for Miami condos are speculators looking to flip units, or sell them quickly for a profit without living in them, said McCabe."

"With sale prices falling, McCabe said he expects up to 50 percent of them to walk away from their deposits in the next 18 months rather than complete the sales. 'What's going to happen to all those units?' Eichner asked. 'God only knows. You couldn't give me a piece of property in Miami for nothing. I like sleeping at night.'"

"Condo developers encouraged short-term investors, whose deposits helped them secure funding, Goodkin said. 'The developers didn't get to start building until they had a certain number of contracts signed, so anyone putting down money was good for them,' Goodkin said."

"Many 'flippers' closed on their units and now can't sell them, said Michael Cannon of Integra Realty Resources-Miami Inc., leaving completed condo towers with floors of dark windows and empty balconies."

"The Jade Residences at Brickell is an example, Cannon said. The 338-unit, 48-story waterfront tower opened in August 2004 with buyers willing to pay as much as $5 million snapping up all the units. Now, the new owners have listed 112 condos for sale and 17 units totaling $15 million are in foreclosure."

"The skyline of Miami is visible from Key Biscayne, the barrier island where John Rosser lives. Some nights the real estate broker scans the new buildings and sees more dark windows than lighted. 'This is dumbfounding to me,' Rosser said. 'It's a building boom in the middle of a housing bust.'"

The Naples News from Florida. "A standing-room-only crowd turned out Thursday night to tell Collier County officials, for nearly three hours, that a planning moratorium is premature. They may have been successful, or it could have been that planning commissioners themselves walked in questioning the intelligence of the plan. Either way, it was defeated."

"Richard Davenport, of Waterways Homes, said Collier County is already in a de facto moratorium because of the business climate resulting from rampant real estate speculation a few years ago."

"'A planning moratorium ordinance sounded sort of innocuous. A planning moratorium ordinance is not innocuous. It’s playing around with peoples’ lives and livelihoods,' Davenport said."

"Developer Walter Crawford wondered why county officials believed the greater Naples area population is increasing."

"A friend told Crawford to tell the county to 'wake up and smell the recession.'"

"'In my world, people are moving north...to Tennessee, to North Carolina, they’re moving to the mountains,' Crawford said."

"Lou Vlasho, VP of the Naples Area Chamber of Commerce, said this proposal would damage every business in Collier County. 'The economy of this community is idling at best right now,' Vlasho. 'When you’re in a valley, that’s not when you turn off the gas.'"

The State from South Carolina. "Home sales are bottoming out in South Carolina, real estate experts say, and should rebound slowly starting next spring. In June, typically a hot home selling month, sales slipped in 14 out of 15 S.C. regions."

"So far this year, sales statewide are down 8.3 percent. The coast continues to get hammered, while several other scattered areas also saw decreases."

"'I’m reluctant to label it a slump,' said Mark Vitner, senior economist for Wachovia, the Charlotte-based banking giant. 'The problem is, two years ago sales were unbelievably and unsustainably strong. In a slump, sales would have dropped another 50 percent.'"

"Despite consecutive months of double-digit statewide sales drops, Nick Kremydas, CEO of the S.C. Association of Realtors, said he expects sales to creep up in coming months. 'It seems the worst of the soft landing has occurred,' he said."

"Todd Beckstrom, an agent in Chapin, said he is seeing more inventory on the market than normal because houses are being built faster than they are being sold."

"Kremydas said the market, driven up mainly by investors along the coast two years ago, is continuing to normalize as speculators have pulled out en masse. With the investors gone, a more realistic home market is emerging, he said."

"Beckstrom said another factor affecting the coast is the number of second homes there. 'Second-home markets are affected first when people get a little iffy,' he said. 'I think it’ll come back. We’ve had a slight correction.'"

"Median home sales price — the point in the market where half the homes sold for less and half for more — slid 2.2 percent statewide in June to $166,000. Hit hardest last month was the Anderson area, which saw sale prices plummet 31.5 percent."

"Kremydas said the overall market in South Carolina is still good, despite the declines. 'There’s no signs or indications that we need to be panicking about anything. Going into the next year and as we round out this decade, I think we’re going to see just another explosion.'"