NBC 2 reports from Florida. "The NBC2 Investigators looked into the real estate market slump and uncovered one thing sellers could do to turn the market around. Although the buyers are there, some home prices are at 2002 levels. Many buyers are waiting for the prices to drop. 'What we have are lurkers. Lurking on the sidelines,' said Lee County Realtor Brett Ellis"

"Ellis agrees with his high-profile competitor Denny Grimes. 'We don't have a demand problem. We have a supply problem,' said Grimes."

"There are 15,000 homes and 9,000 condos listed for sale in Lee County. Thousands of them are priced out of the current real estate market and are putting a downward pressure on prices."

"'We tell them here's where the market is- if you're not prepared to bring your property to the market, we can't help you. Because nobody is going to be able to sell your property for more than it’s worth, especially in today's market,' said Ellis."

"The NBC2 investigators discovered realtors are telling clients to drop their prices to a reasonable level. 'We're seeing people coming in crying uncle, waving the white flag, saying we're not going to get what we thought. We've got to get serious to move this thing,' said Grimes."

"Jenny Marinescu and her husband just bought in a gated community. The house had been on the market at one point for $370,000. They paid $245,000 not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth."

"'Unless you're psychic, it's the only way to predict when the market will bottom and what it will do. You just have to look back at history. If you do your research just a little bit, you'll see that now is a good time to buy,' said Marinescu."

The Herald Tribune. "After eight months of legislative wrangling over property tax reform, the uncertainty of the process itself is taking a toll on an already depressed real estate market."

"'There are a number of Northeastern baby boomers who are literally waiting to see what we do with tax reform,' said Kelly Ann Ayer, an agent in Venice. 'It certainly has kept people on the fence, without question.'"

"Fence-sitting, in fact, has helped freeze an already stagnant market. In September, Realtors sold just 8,688 single-family homes statewide, down 37 percent from a year ago and the lowest since the Florida Association of Realtors started keeping a statewide record in 1993, when 9,300 homes sold."

"Sarasota home builder Lee Wetherington, who has downsized his own home-building company to wait out the current slowdown in sales, said that reduced property values are going to prove more important in limiting taxes on non-homesteaded buyers than is the proposed 10 percent cap."

"'Over the next five to seven years, you are not going to see that much appreciation in property,' Wetherington said. 'I suspect you are going to continue to see valuations decrease. I think most homeowners will have the ammunition to go to the tax assessors and say, 'This is what my new tax base should be.'"

The News Press. "First Home Builders in Fort Myers, which two years ago was on top of the world as Lee County's biggest residential contractor with almost 1,200 employees, is down to about 50 today following its layoff of 200 workers."

"The move was done in response to the current sluggish real estate market, said Ray Casas, spokesman for Red Bank, N.J.-based Hovnanian Enterprises, which acquired the assets of First Home in August 2005."

"'We will see ya all Monday morning for business as the 'new normal,' First Home president Fred Hermann told employees in an e-mail. 'If asked by anyone...assure everyone we are not closing our doors...just 'right sizing.' Thank you for helping us all get through the day.'"

"The layoffs come as the low-end home sector, First Home's specialty, is in dire straits in Lee County with a huge inventory of vacant houses caused by waves of speculation and failed loans."

"There were 1,220 foreclosures filed in the county in September, 915 of them for single-family houses. That's more than five times the 237 from a year earlier. Meanwhile, the number of building permits issued fell to 121 from 698 in the same time period."

"'It's going to be like going through some quicksand for a couple years' for low-end builders, said Naples-based real estate consultant Michael Timmerman."

"The median price of a single-family home in Lee County has fallen to $231,600 in September, the latest month available, down 28 percent from an all-time high of $322,300 in December 2005, according to the Florida Association of Realtors."

"Besides a slow market, First Home has been beset over the past year by numerous lawsuits by people alleging fraud in the terms under which they bought homes from the company with little money down, some of them through a program by real estate firm D'Alessandro & Woodyard, which brought in investors to purchase the houses."

"Many of the purchasers refused or were unable to close on the houses when they were completed, often because falling prices had made the deals infeasible."

"Norlarco Credit Union and Ann Arbor, Mich.-based Huron River Area Credit Union collapsed earlier this year, mainly because loans they made to build houses, many of them built by First Home in Lee County, ran into problems when property values plummeted. Both are being run by the National Credit Union Administration."

The Miami Herald. "The saga of Nicky Hilton's would-be South Beach hotel continues, with its bankrupt owners set to auction off the Ocean Drive property under court order."

"After a failed condo conversion, the combined Breakwater and Edison property will be sold to the highest bidder under the supervision of a federal bankruptcy judge. Construction has stopped midway through completion of a rooftop penthouse, and a lawyer close to the case expects debts to far exceed what the hotel can command on the real estate market."

"The bankruptcy-court auction marks a dramatic turn of events for a property that only a year ago won favorable mentions by David Letterman and from writers in People and Vanity Fair magazines."

"'It's such an awesome piece of property,' said Michael Ehrenstein, a lawyer for co-owner Jonas Mimoun. 'But it's been so thoroughly mismanaged.'"

"Hilton signed a licensing deal with developer Robert Falor to brand the two properties the Nicky O. She was promoted as the guiding force in designing the condo-hotel, and her tabloid cachet brought waves of publicity to the project."

"But the partnership dissolved into litigation, just one in a string of disputes involving Falor's once formidable portfolio of condo-hotel projects."

"Construction stopped at the Breakwater and Edison this summer; Miami Beach declared the tarp-draped hotel abandoned on Sept. 17 and issued a stop-work order at the construction site."

"Though construction crews have already done about $5 million in work converting the rooms into condominium units, broker Christian Charr expects a buyer would probably opt just to operate the property as a traditional hotel."