The Miami Herald reports from Florida. "Home prices in South Florida sank by double-digit percentages in January, posting some of the steepest declines since the housing market slowdown began more than a year ago. The number of single-family homes sold fell 48 percent in Miami-Dade, while the number of homes listed on the market increased 45 percent over the year before. In Broward, sales slumped 33 percent over last year, while inventory grew 18 percent."

"The dearth of buyers forced seller Mari Redondo to mark down her Virginia Gardens home $70,000 over the last seven months. She is now asking $330,000 for the four-bedroom -- just enough to pay off her mortgage. 'It's been horrible. The only thing I see is people renting because they can't afford,' Redondo said, 'In about a month, I might put it up for rent.'"

"In January, lenders took back 641 properties in Miami-Dade from borrowers in foreclosure. 'You are having to compete against properties that are $50,000 to $100,000 less than yours is. So, you don't have a good chance of selling before they do,' said Dee Del Castillo, a real estate agent who focuses on Southwest Miami-Dade County."

"Her phone finally started ringing in January from potential buyers. All, she said, had asked to see bank-owned homes or foreclosures."

The Sun Sentinel. "When Ellen Levy moved to the Carriage Pointe townhouse development in Boynton Beach two years ago, she thought it would be a vibrant, stable neighborhood. Instead, the community has turned transient. Four of the 158 homes are in foreclosure stages and roughly a third have liens imposed by the homeowners association for not paying their monthly dues."

"Carriage Pointe's homeowners group doesn't have sufficient income to replant dead trees and make other repairs and improvements, said Ellen Levy, former president of the homeowners group. While some Carriage Pointe homes were vacant, others had the opposite problem: two or more families crowded into them."

"'It's sad,' Levy said. 'It's definitely not what we bargained for.'"

"Phil Thomas, a retired lumber yard manager from Idaho who moved to Carriage Pointe 18 months ago, said he figured he'd have to endure a special assessment or two. 'But what's frustrating is knowing that so many people aren't paying,' he said."

"Even more disappointing: watching property values decline and the development deteriorate over the past year. Thomas paid $345,000 for his unit, but some of the townhomes now are on the market for less than $300,000."

"'I thought we were buying into a more upscale kind of community,' he said."

"Irano Fleurancian, a construction worker from Haiti, paid $121,000 for his small Delray Beach house in 2002. He refinanced two years later thinking he would get a better rate that would lower his $1,300 monthly mortgage payments."

"Instead, the adjustable-rate mortgage increased his payments to about $1,800. When the interest rate on the loan reset, the monthly payment soared to $2,300. His attempts to sell the house have failed."

"'How is a guy making 15 bucks an hour going to afford $2,300 a month?' said Jim Di Paola, whose foreclosure-rescue firm in Delray Beach tried to help Fleurancian. 'That's a recipe for disaster. And it's happening over and over again.'"

"South Florida's housing troubles are playing out in dramatic fashion along the 7900 block of Ramona Street in Miramar. Since last year, nine of the 37 homes on the tree-lined street have slipped into some stage of foreclosure."

"'It's really, really quiet now,' said Maria Dennett, who moved here 17 years ago. 'Really, really quiet.'"

"'Banks were taking a lot of risks because they could. It was a frenzy, almost like a drunken stupor. Nobody was saying, 'Stop it,' at the time,' said Gus Zambrano, Miramar's economic development and revitalization director."

The Naples News. "There were more foreclosures in January in Collier County than for the entire year in 2005. Kevin Lilly, a tax analyst with Tax Appraiser Abe Skinner’s office, said somewhere down the line in 2008, the county will collect the taxes on all those foreclosed properties from 2007, but it will likely represent a compounded loss for the banks that issued the mortgage."

"'Never in my experience has the mortgage industry been in such disarray,' said Jack Ablin, the corporate chief investment officer for Harris Private Bank. Asked if the savings and loan debacle in the 1980s, Ablin acknowledged that he’d have to return to about 1986 to find a parallel."

"'Think about it this way. Two years (ago) the Bush administration was touting that the homeowners rate was as high as 70 percent,' Ablin said. 'The problem is, the natural rate of home ownership in this nation is 65 percent. As a nation, we sold home to 5 percent more people than should have been in those homes.'"

The St Petersburg Times. "Tampa Bay area home sales have spent two years grasping for a ledge to arrest the plunge into the canyon. Home sales totaled 1,235 last month in the three counties, the Florida Association of Realtors said. That's 24 percent below the 1,627 homes that sold in January 2007 and 59 percent below peak January sales of 2,995 in 2005."

"Reflecting a glut of more than 40,000 houses and condos for sale on the market, median home sales prices declined from $220,100 to $187,100 the past year."

"Housing boom prices exceeded rents and incomes so much that a few years of stagnation are in order, said University of Florida economics professor David Denslow. 'Look at San Diego and other boomtowns,' Denslow said. 'In those places you have six to seven years of declines followed by six to seven years of boom. That could become our pattern.'"

The Tampa Tribune. "As builders try to unload finished inventory or secure sales contracts to build new ones, they increasingly are competing against homes they recently sold but have come back on the market as resales, either from people seeking to avoid foreclosure or from banks that have seized properties."

"Lenders, anxious to rid their books of foreclosure homes, tend to slash prices significantly lower than what it costs builders to construct a similar home, said Jack McCabe, of McCabe Research & Consulting in Deerfield Beach."

"'This renders builders uncompetitive,' McCabe said. 'If you can buy a new home from a developer for $300,000, or a year-old foreclosure home just like it for $200,000, it's a no-brainer. Especially when it's in the same neighborhood.'"

"A 4-bedroom, 2,134-square-foot home built in 2005 is on the market in the Live Oak Preserve neighborhood in New Tampa. It's in foreclosure. List price: $202,500. The builder, Engle Homes, has a similar, recently completed home in the same neighborhood on the market for $329,990."

"Just last week, Default Research said it tracked 919 new foreclosure lawsuits, which lenders file to take back properties, in January in Hillsborough County. That's up 9.7 percent from 838 cases in December."

The Ledger. "Polk County's housing market continued to struggle last month as existing home sales dropped to their lowest level since 1999. 'Off the top of my head I felt it was the worst I've seen in six years. But eight years? I believe that,' said Tony Fridovich, broker/owner of Lakeland-based RE/MAX Paramount Properties. 'I have to say February's not looking any better.'"

"In addition, Fridovich said Polk still has more than 3,000 existing homes sitting on the market. 'That's twice the inventory we need,' he said. 'Too much supply, not enough demand and that's what we got.'"

"Broker associate Sean McDonough said realistic pricing is still key for sellers."

"'If these Realtors continue to put homes on the market with what the seller is hoping to get - is willing to wait 12 to 18 months to get - then our numbers aren't going to change,' McDonough said. 'We certainly want to list all the homes we can, but we're realistic with folks and we put the right price on homes, not just stick a sign in the yard.'"

The News Journal. "With distress sales dragging down the real estate market, Volusia-Flagler home sellers sacrificed their properties in January for the cheapest prices in nearly three years."

"A total of 321 existing single-family homes changed hands last month at a median price of $179,100, the lowest level since February 2005, the Florida Association of Realtors said Monday. Prices were down 12 percent from a year ago while sales volume plunged 35 percent."

"Mark Dougherty, executive officer of the Daytona Beach Area Association of Realtors, said the market remains weighed down by a growing number of foreclosed properties being added to the area's inventory."

"'We really expected the inventory level would drop before we enter our seasonal lurch,' the period when longtime homeowners try to unload properties on special-event tourists, Dougherty said. Instead, 1,710 more owners listed their real estate during January just in East Volusia, adding nine properties for every one that was sold."

The Northwest Florida Daily News. "When it comes to the state of the housing market on the Emerald Coast, two sets of figures offer a stark reality. In January, home foreclosures in the region nearly equaled single-family home sales."

"And there actually were more foreclosures in January than single-family sales in Walton County, according to county records and information from Metro Market Trends Inc."

"'I don’t think we’ve seen the worst of this,' said Melissa Neal, of the University of West Florida. 'We’ve done some research on when we’re going to cycle through this, and it appears it would be 2009 before sales come around and we have a normal amount of homes for sale.'"

"Longtime Realtor Ray DiTirro in Destin said selling a foreclosed home can be a nightmare."

"'These people are walking away from the homes and then the utilities get shut off,' DiTirro said. 'We showed one last year that had been sitting for 90 days, and there was mold and mildew everywhere. The swimming pool was bright green. So the seller would get maybe 50 cents on the dollar because of all it would take to get it corrected.'"

"Just a couple of years ago when interest rates were low and adjustable rate mortgages proved so enticing, some people borrowed money to buy condominiums they were going to use as rental properties."

"'Lenders were lending money like drunken sailors,' DiTirro said. 'Now there’s thousands and thousands of condos for rent for less than market value. If you own them, you can’t even get your overhead back. A lot people are stuck. I know of one that was bought for $425,000 in 2005 and it’s selling for $150,000.'"