The News Press reports from Florida. "A Fort Myers-based real estate agent is calling on his colleagues to stop doing business with Countrywide Home Loans, saying the company is cutting off home equity credit to solid residents of Lee County because of falling housing prices. 'I have used Countrywide as a borrower and real estate agent for 15 to 20 years and they have decided that the relationship means nothing,' he said in an e-mail. 'Just because they say Lee County is in a really declining market for values, they're just going to cut you off.'"

"Not everyone is sympathetic to Powell's crusade. 'As a real estate appraiser in this area, I see firsthand what is going on in our real estate market, and I do not fault Countrywide one iota,' said real estate appraiser E. Scott Johnson in Fort Myers."

"'With home prices falling off the edge of a cliff in Southwest Florida, Countrywide is wise to shut down these lines of credit, as they cannot be sure the equity still exists that was securing these lines of credit,' Johnson said."

"In fact, he said, 'Countrywide is finally exercising some amount of fiscal restraint that was lacking in the past few years and was partially responsible for our current credit crisis in this country.'"

"'It shows you this vicious cycle,' said said John McIlwain, senior resident fellow for housing at the Washington-based Urban Land Institute. 'The appraisal on which that credit line was issued probably is no longer good and his home may very well be worth less. You cut credit off from places that are struggling and that makes it worse. It accelerates the problem.'"

The Naples News. "Nobody’s predicting the shooting-fish-in-a-barrel real estate frenzy that dominated sales in the infamous years of 2004/5, but if anything, the return to normalcy is imminent. This is the view of mortgage banker Kim Escarra and also Realtor Jim Prange."

"Escarra, in particular, emphasizes that some of the optimism relates specifically to properties in Collier County — this against the backdrop of national real estate sluggishness and the glut of foreclosures. 'Collier is different,' Escarra said, 'and we started our market correction before the economy issues occurred.'"

"Prange said there have been prospective buyers out there for the past two years, but that there was no urgency for them to act. 'The sellers are all of a sudden getting realistic,' he said. 'If you look at 2005, the least expensive waterfront lot was $625,000. Now there are 40 of those lots on the market at under $500,000.'"

The Palm Beach Post. "At Green Cay Village, a freshly built condo project west of Boynton Beach, 20 sales fell through after buyers who qualified for loans during the boom no longer had financing when the units they had signed for were completed."

"Many builders saddled with unsold homes are slashing prices. But Green Cay Village’s developers, Goray Communities of Boca Raton and Housing Trust Group of Coconut Grove, have decided to hold the line on prices — much to the relief of the 240 buyers who paid $200,000 to $300,000 for units at Green Cay Village."

"Small builders who don’t want to cut prices gripe that national builders have been undermining them by holding fire sales. 'There’s a lot of animosity,' said David Seiders, economist at the National Association for Home Builders. 'If they’re dropping prices like crazy, it’s going to take the whole market with them.'"

"But Seiders doesn’t necessarily think price cuts are a bad thing, given the glut of homes for sale. 'I keep preaching to builders, 'You’ve got to keep the inventory down,' he says."

From Hernando Today. "County commissioners and planning staffers were under no illusions Wednesday about the enormity of the Lake Hideaway development, proposed for U.S. 19 in northwest Hernando County. With 3,700 homes planned, commissioners had to look at this development even closer because it falls into the category of a development of regional impact, or DRI."

"County Commissioner David Russell said residential growth in that sparsely developed section of the county is inevitable, so it makes sense to latch onto a well-detailed plan that the Lake Hideaway developers are proposing rather than parcel out the property piecemeal in the future."

"'This project epitomizes responsible planning,' Russell said."

"Only Commissioner Diane Rowden voted against Lake Hideaway, citing the continued housing market downturn, growing number of foreclosures and lack of immediate building plans by the developer. 'I can't support 3,700 new homes,' Rowden said."

"Hernando County already has thousands of homes sitting empty, she said. Also, the development order calls for build-out of this project by 2013 or later, depending on the status of the housing market."

"'The people out there have basically said, 'Enough's enough,' as to these massive plans of growth,' Rowden said."

"But Joel Tew, an attorney representing the developer, said once the housing market comes back, people will flock to Lake Hideaway. Unlike other states, Florida follows a V-shaped housing curve, which allows for a faster recovery."

"'We crash harder but come back quicker,' he said."

The Herald Tribune. "Whoops, did I say bottom? Well-known state economist Hank Fishkind says he erred in calling a floor to Southwest Florida's housing market last year."

"Fishkind admitted to a crowd of business people from the Manatee Economic Development Council on Wednesday that he mistakenly thought the housing market was bottoming out in mid-2007, but he added that he now thought 2008 would mark the beginning of the recovery."

"'I thought the market had stabilized right here,' Fishkind said, pointing to a chart illustrating existing home sales in Manatee County. 'But then we got the financial panic, and the meltdown in the market, so things took another turn down.'"

"Fishkind said that he thinks the low point has now arrived, and that 'in the next few months' we will see a 'bottom form in the existing housing market.'"

"He is predicting that the national economy as a whole -- in the first half of 2008 -- will skate close to the edge at 'nearly a recession,' but will not fall into a full-fledged recession. He thinks that by the second half of the year a recovery will begin."

"Fishkind's predictions of late have been on the rosy side of the prognosticators. Jack McCabe, the Deerfield Beach-based real estate economist, would be roughly 180 degrees away. 'We're in a recession right now,' said McCabe. 'Tell the people who have lost their jobs, to young families who have left the area because they can't afford it, and those people in foreclosure right now, that we're not. They have a much different perspective.'"

"'We have some economists in the state of Florida who have been inaccurate in their predictions over the last three years,' he said. 'Those who have been calling a bottom now for a year or more, which has proven to be not correct, need to get out of their ivory towers and unbury their nose from outdated Census Bureau statistics. They need to hit the bricks and start talking to people, and then they'll find out just how antiquated their predictions are.'"

"Like McCabe, Miami-based economist Kenneth Thomas, who correctly predicted the last recession in 2001-02, does not see a recovery like the one Fishkind outlined as probable. 'I think we're still on a downward slope, and will be on it throughout this year, and probably even into much of next year,' he said. 'We're not going to get out of this in a matter of months or quarters.'"

"Thomas said he thought in many cases the true housing inventory numbers now are even worse than they appear because some people have simply given up on selling."

"'It's like unemployment, where people just give up looking for a job altogether, and suddenly they're no longer counted in the statistics,' he said. 'It's the same thing now with housing, where people have just pulled her homes from the market. They're no longer listing them.'"