The Miami Herald reports from Florida. "Since 2005, home buyers in Miami-Dade and Broward counties have signed so-called 'exotic' mortgages at twice the rate of borrowers in the rest of the country. Roughly one in five mortgages written in Miami-Dade and Broward counties between 2005 and July 2007 fell into one of those categories, according to data from McDash Analytics."

"Tim Kingcade is a Miami bankruptcy and foreclosure attorney whose practice is booming lately. One of his clients, he said, is a pizza deliverer living in a Brickell condo who came to him only after getting a notice that his mortgage payment was about to jump more than $2,000 a month."

"'The uglier the mortgage, the more abusive the terms are to the customer, the more money the banks make on the secondary market,' Kingcade said."

"Joel Aresty, another Miami attorney, said he has had a 'parade' of people streaming into his office in recent months with devastating mortgage problems. 'It's all the same story,' Aresty said. 'The broker told them to lie about their income' to qualify for bigger loans, often for four or five properties. 'The brokers told them nobody would check,' he said."

"Many lenders offered 'stated income' loans. The people who took those loans 'will lose the properties, they'll lose their credit, but the real losers will be the financial institutions,' Aresty said. 'I don't think there's any way out. There's going to be a huge shakeout, down to the very foundation of the financial system.'"

"Randall Whitney, a Sunny Isles Beach mortgage banker who makes his living selling exotic mortgages, said business has crashed with the concerns about the credit market and the downturn in home sales. 'This industry is like the airlines after 9/11,' Whitney said."

"Whitney blames other lenders who sold the products to unsophisticated borrowers for the loss of faith. But in the right hands, Whitney said, the option ARM is a great tool. 'I applaud it,' he said. 'I put my own mother into it, literally. Most of the brokers who sell it have one themselves.'"

The Ann Arbor News. "For a deposit of $5, Sharon Gray said, she became a member of Ann Arbor-based Huron River Area Credit Union. In fact, Gray has never set foot in Michigan. She lives and works in Oklahoma."

"Gray said she was encouraged to join Huron River to obtain a construction loan for an investment home in Florida through a real estate education group, Millionaire University. It, along with Huron River and Howell-based The Construction Loan Co. Inc., is now the target of a lawsuit alleging fraud."

"The suit alleges the defendants intended to sell the properties, most in Lehigh Acres, near Fort Myers in Lee County - at 'inflated prices with excessive fees and commissions paid to the various defendants.'"

"'I couldn't function and I didn't sleep for days,' Gray said of learning she and her husband owed at least $35,809 on a $208,800 Florida home she said they were told wouldn't cost more than the $1,995 they put down at the beginning. 'I said, 'my God, I don't have that kind of money.'"

"As the housing market in that part of Florida deflated, the value of such newly constructed homes did too. In some cases, homes are likely worth less than the construction loans taken out to build them, and some buyers are refusing to close, like Gray."

The Palm Beach Post. "In a sign of the times, Seacoast National Bank has sued to foreclose on downtown West Palm Beach properties once slated for condos."

"The Stuart-based bank claims The Leap Group and principal Rodolfo Gonzalez owe $4.5 million on two loans. Gonzalez had planned to build Skyline Lofts, 103 condos on two blocks along Sapodilla Avenue. But Gonzalez couldn't make the deals work as the market crumbled."

"'I'm not surprised,' banker Russell Greene said of the foreclosure action. He believes it is among the first commercial foreclosures in downtown West Palm Beach. Expect more as developers have trouble unloading properties and paying bank loans, said Greene."

"The Eden condo is in limbo and so are the souls who own units in this unfinished condo conversion."

"Things could get worse: If developer Ceebraid-Signal Corp. doesn't get control of this Boca Raton property, the complex could wind up in bankruptcy court. That's according to Roy Dickson, the project's incoming white knight."

"Dickson is telling Eden homeowners they better go along with a plan to remake Eden into an adults-only, independent living community of apartments. If they don't, Dickson warned Eden could be placed into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection by Ceebraid, sources say."

"You think Eden is a nightmare now? Just wait! After finishing only one of four buildings, Ceebraid-Signal has given up on plans to turn the apartment complex on Palmetto Park Road into a luxury condo. To the chagrin of folks living there, Eden is a messy construction site."

"Some people don't want to sell. Either they don't want to move or they think Ceebraid is not offering enough money. Ceebraid is willing to pay condo owners only the price they paid for their units."

"Unfortunately, holding out might not be a smart play. Bankruptcy court will ensure the unfinished buildings remain that way for years, meaning current Eden condo owners will be stuck, with slim chance of reselling their units."

The Times Union. "The Jacksonville area had the 21st highest rate of foreclosures among 100 major cities in the first half of 2007, according to Realty Trac. Jacksonville Area Legal Aid doesn't have enough lawyers to take on all applicants as clients. In the past 10 months, the law firm has fielded 267 requests for representation and agreed to add 100 clients."

"Dawn Lockhart, president of Family Foundation, said lenders are willing to negotiate, within limits, because it costs them big bucks to repossess foreclosed homes. 'What we can't do is miracles,' she said. 'If the consumer can't afford the loan, there's nothing we can do.'"

The Orlando Sentinel. "Central Florida's bloated housing inventory is 'a problem, any way you look at it,' according to one of the state's leading independent housing analysts."

"More homes are available, and more are coming out of the ground, than the market can absorb, says Anthony Crocco, director for Central Florida and North Florida for MetroStudy."

"Crocco, one of MetroStudy's top Florida housing specialists, said both new-and-existing home inventory is too large to allow all the homes to be sold within a historically reasonable time frame."

"The East Pasco Association of Realtors reports that in August its members had 13.8 months of unsold inventory. It reported the average days-on-market as was 120 days, reflective of a serious glut."

"'It's bad everywhere,' Crocco said. But many builders, he said, 'are still building.'"

"Most county code-enforcement departments report an increase in unkempt yards this year. Through August, code inspectors issued 55 percent more citations for overgrown lawns in unincorporated Osceola, 72 percent more in Volusia, 200 percent more in Lake and about 15 percent more in Orange, compared with the same period last year."

"Anecdotally, inspectors report they are handling more cases of abandoned and neglected foreclosed houses. 'When a person's about to lose a piece of property, the last thing they're going to worry about is mowing the lawn,' said Carol Kerrigan, Volusia code-enforcement manager."

"Inspectors are finding overgrown lawns in lots of middle- and upper-income neighborhoods where they wouldn't expect them. Walter Krujaick, Osceola building- and code-enforcement director, recently discovered several in one normally tidy subdivision off West U.S. Highway 192."

"'I was shocked when I saw them,' Krujaick said. 'The grass was up to my hips.'"

"Apopka engineer Wayne Mather and two neighbors periodically take turns mowing the grass and hacking the weeds at the vacant house on their street. The owner, who lives in Orlando, stopped paying her $239,000 mortgage in January, according to court records."

"'It devalues the neighborhood, and there's a lot of people trying to sell their homes in this neighborhood,' said Mather. 'We're trying to keep the neighborhood nice.'"

The Herald Tribune. "Wagner Realty is planning to hold a red tag sale this weekend that will give buyers a 10 percent discount on the list price of certain homes and condos in Sarasota and Manatee counties."

"'It's something I picked up from car dealers,' said David Eckel, Wagner's president. 'We're going to our sellers and getting them to reduce prices by 10 percent on Oct. 13 and 14.'"

"'We'll see if this generates some traffic,' said Wagner agent Polly Gaar. 'If it generates some traffic, it might result in some offers. At least it gets people moving.'"

"Terri Elmy, Don Cantin and Larry Tenbusch have one thing in common: They chose to be tortoises rather than hares when it came to expanding their businesses during the recent real estate boom."

"All three North Port home builders say they were freaked out by the number of investors who came by their sales offices in 2004 and 2005 with requests to sign multiple building contracts."

"'We'd had investors come in -- arrogant as all get-out -- and they would want to know how much it would cost for us to build five homes for them,' Cantin said. 'They would expect us to buy the land, and we were supposed to take their word for it that they would be there at the closing.'"

"Now these three builders are not sitting on scores of unsold homes like many of their competitors. What's more, they are not hemorrhaging from the amount of interest they have to pay to banks for borrowed funds."

"'I'm real cautious about letting things get away from me,' Tenbusch said. 'I'm the tortoise rather than the hare. I don't owe anything to anybody, and that's what is going to carry me through.'"

"Elmy says she will have an advantage over other builders in North Port because she bought building lots when they were still selling for $2,500 each back in the 1990s."

"'I have 45 lots left,' Elmy said. 'I chose to take them off the market during the boom because I felt they would help sustain us in a downturn. We're able to reduce our prices more than other builders and still make a profit.'"