The Wall Street Journal reports on Florida. "Investors played a big role in pumping up home prices during the housing boom. Now, they account for an outsize proportion of loan defaults, mortgage bankers and builders say. Sazzad Khandakar is among the nation's distressed home investors. In early 2005, he bought a $410,000 condominium and a $390,000 newly built single-family home, both in Orlando, Fla."

"'Everybody around me bought an investment home in Florida,' Mr. Khandakar said. 'Florida was all over the news; my friends were doing it....I didn't want to miss out.'"

"He planned to keep the condo as a second home and sell the detached house for a quick profit. For the condo, Mr. Khandakar made a 10% down payment, but he borrowed 100% of the cost of the house, assuming that its rapid price appreciation would soon provide him with equity."

"Instead, prices began falling, and he has been unable to sell the home or find a tenant. Now, Mr. Khandakar said, he is behind on both loans. 'My credit is shot for the next six or seven years,' he said, and he has run through $100,000 of retirement savings. 'It will take me another five to 10 years to recover that,' he added."

"Many home builders say they tried to rein in sales to investors. Dom Cecere, chief financial officer of KB Home said...many investors bought anyway. 'People do infiltrate whether you like it or not,' he said."

"'For a while it went their way, they bought two or three homes and continued to roll the dice,' said Mr. Cecere. 'But that goes the other way when the prices go down.'"

"In the end, some investors may have made money by flipping a series of houses, and lost out only on their last investment, which they couldn't sell before the market collapsed, Mr. Cecere said."

The Orlando Sentinel. "Realtors say the market has become even more frustrating in recent weeks, though, as lenders have tightened credit standards, making it tougher for everyone to get a home loan, regardless of income."

"It is particularly tough now for first-time home-buyers at the lower end of the price scale and for borrowers looking for 'jumbo' loans of more than $417,000, said Roseann Lutz, broker agent (who) specializes in the Four Corners area west of Walt Disney World."

"'Those are the ones they had the most trouble with,' she said. 'The biggest challenge is getting a buyer qualified for a loan,' because lenders are now 'being particular about who they give loans to.'"

"Aside from that, she said, many potential home buyers are still on the sidelines, not even looking at homes, while would-be home sellers continue to flood the market with properties, seemingly oblivious to the slowdown and hoping to cash in on the past five years' worth of paper gains."

"'For every one sale we make, we're getting 12 listings,' Lutz said. 'It's just been really, really hard.'"

"Home builders are slashing prices on new properties because of the record slump in that market, and many existing-home sellers who have equity to work with are having to slash their asking prices, too, in an attempt to attract interest."

"So far, Lutz said, the late-summer market is stagnant despite all that. 'The phone is just not ringing.'"

The Herald Tribune. "Paradise Development Group hoped to ride the region's frenzied condo wave to the edge of downtown Sarasota when it bought the offices of the Kirk Pinkerton law firm in August 2005."

"Paradise envisioned a $35 million mix of retail space and more than two dozen high-end residences, priced at about $1 million each. Two years later, and after the collapse of the area's condominium market, Paradise has pulled the plug and is offering the building for sale."

"Similar scenes are playing out throughout the region and Florida: Developers who had hoped to capitalize on low interest rates and perceived demand are having to reconfigure, stall or abandon projects altogether. In Sarasota alone, roughly a dozen condo developments have either been shelved, revamped or put back on the market."

"'It's simple. Our market is in a coma,' said Debra Garrett, an agent in Sarasota. 'There are too many condos, not enough buyers, and too many speculators. We're seeing a correction now from overinflated prices, caused because people thought price increases would never stop -- and they did stop.'"

"'It was a knee-jerk reaction around the country,' said John Harshman, president of a leading Sarasota commercial real estate brokerage firm. 'From 2002 to 2005, developers looked at practically every site downtown and around it as a residential site.'"

"When Jeff Bacon opened the Drexel Heritage Store in Sarasota two years ago, business could not have been better. Customers were feeling rich on real estate and were buying the exclusive line to redecorate their homes."

"But after six months, Bacon noticed a distinct change. Sales were starting to slide. Early on, he blamed the back-to-back hyperactive hurricane seasons. But as real estate continued its long slide, Bacon found his sales following the same disturbing line."

"After long-suffering Realtors, the business people who are perhaps smarting most from plummeting home sales, furniture stores might be the next best litmus test for the fortunes of the real estate market."

"Furniture sales in Florida have tumbled far off their housing-boom highs: sales statewide climbed 27 percent, from $9 billion in 2003-04 to $11.5 billion in 2005-06. By summer 2006, they were down 16 percent from that peak."

"'It's bad across the board,' says Michael P. Niemira, chief economist and director of research for the International Council of Shopping Centers. 'It's severe, it's long and it's not going away anytime soon. As a business cycle, we're living with the boom-bust part of that market.'"

"Lennar Corp., the big Miami home builder that reported a $255 million loss in the most recent quarter, has trimmed more than 60 additional positions from its Southwest Florida division, bringing it to its pre-housing-boom levels, an executive said."

"The cuts this week included Rob Allegra, the division president of Lennar Sarasota/Manatee, who has been the face of the home builder locally for more than a decade."

"The problems at Lennar reflect the general housing market malaise. Other big builders in Southwest Florida have been cutting staffs, but experts said that companies with national exposure have been hit harder."

"'The home building inventory readjustment is mostly at the lower end because of all the extra sub-prime homes and all the speculative homes sold in the $250,000 to $400,000 price range, and I think it will affect the national builders more than the local builders,' said Pat Neal, president of Lakewood Ranch-based Neal Communities."

"'Market conditions have eroded so much over the past six months that we are now focused on limiting the loss for the year,' said CEO Stuart Miller, adding later that uncertain conditions made him 'suspect that we will not know that a recovery is coming until it is upon us.'"

"Vultures have been circling over the slumping Southwest Florida real estate market for a while, but few have descended to snatch properties from increasingly desperate builders and developers -- until now."

"Documents obtained by the Herald-Tribune show that Joseph L. Long, a little-known, New Jersey-based real estate investor, is negotiating with about 60 area developers and builders to buy 1,500 homes and condos at a 30 percent discount to their current list prices."

"If Long, who has never done anything of this magnitude before, is successful in lining up the $700 million needed to pull off the deal -- a very big if -- it could have market-shaking consequences."

"'I'm extremely skeptical about a guy with no track record who doesn't have financing in place,' said George Huhn, a Venice real estate agent and foreclosure specialist. 'If he thinks he's going to get money from a hedge fund, I've got news for him: The liquidity out there is zero. The mortgage crisis has taken all the liquidity out of the market, and no one is sure what is going to happen.'"

"Huhn added that the smart money, the real vulture money, is waiting for banks to seize properties from developers and builders."

"'They don't want to buy property for 70 cents on the dollar,' Huhn said. 'They want to buy for 25 to 30 cents on the dollar. They really want to feed on the dead carcass,' Huhn said."

The Scripps Howard News Service. "America's housing market has gone from robust to just plain bust in the past 18 months. These are the times that try the skills of real estate professionals, says Jim Crawford, a real estate coach in Atlanta."

"'It's a buyer's market without buyers,' he says. 'Of the top 40 markets, 36 are down. In Atlanta at this time of year, we should have a maximum of 52,000 homes for sale; we have 114,000. What's happened is, if you can't sell in Chicago, you can't buy in Atlanta. If you can't sell in Boston, you can't buy in Florida.'"