The Orlando Sentinel reports from Florida. "The Orlando Regional Realtor Association reported that its members sold 922 houses and condominiums in February, 40.2 percent fewer than changed hands in February 2007. Combined with the revised total of 813 homes sold in January, it was the worst start to a sales year since January-February 1997. Steven Moriera, president of the Orlando Realtors group, said he thinks the year-over-year declines are beginning to moderate; the 40.2 percent drop in February was the smallest in six months."

"'The market isn't moving down very much now, nor is it moving up,' he said. 'We believe that there is light at the end of the tunnel, but we don't know how long the tunnel might be.'"

"Moriera said sellers have finally begun to lower their asking prices to reflect the market's retreat from all-time highs reached several years ago during the nationwide homebuying frenzy."

"'They are becoming more realistic,' he said. 'There is an understanding that someone who is pricing a house at what it was worth last year has very little chance of selling.'"

"The number of houses for sale in the Realtors' database rose by 260 in February to 25,984 -- an inventory that would take more than 28 months to sell at the current sales pace."

"'There are houses in Windermere where people paid $1 million for a house and they got a $700,000 loan, and now their houses aren't worth the value of the loan,' said Austin Jones, an appraiser in Orlando."

"From downtown Orlando condos to raw land and homes near the beaches, the 'bid-calling' patter of auctioneers has been picking up speed in Central Florida and across the country. Privately run real-estate auctions are gaining ground as the economy sours, even as courthouse sales fail to attract bidders."

"Home builder Christopher Wardlow in St. Cloud said he recently decided to try to raffle off two houses he built on east Lake Toho. It is a desperation strategy, he concedes."

"'I'm not trying to make a profit. I'm just trying to avoid taking a loss,' said Wardlow. He built the two houses on the lake as 'spec homes' last year. But now the homes are 95 percent complete and regular sales effort through a national real-estate company failed to generate enough interest or offers high enough to cover the bank debt, Wardlow said."

"He said he needs to raise about $655,000 to cover the loans for the two homes and the two lots, and anything raised beyond that would be donated to charity. The raffle tickets are $250 apiece. Wardlow said he needs to sell at least 3,000, to cover costs and the debt to make it work."

"So far, he's sold about 60 in the past few weeks, with four weeks to go. And four of the tickets went to the fellow who installed the granite countertops in the homes."

The Palm Beach Post. "The overbuilt real estate market has dragged the Treasure Coast into a recession, but the end is within sight, economic and real estate experts said on Tuesday."

"'We'll kind of get past this housing market,' said economist Hank Fishkind. 'Already, I believe, we can see the shape of the bottom.'"

"But even he - a self-proclaimed optimist who lists major developers among clients - conceded that the economy appears to be in a recession. 'We have a classic kind of cyclical downturn in Florida,' said Fishkind."

"On the residential side, quarter-acre lots in Port St. Lucie that sold for about $80,000 two or three years ago are now selling for $25,000-$30,000, said Pat Murphy, president of Fort Pierce-based Hoyt C. Murphy Realtors Inc."

"Murphy's firm is handling a lot of foreclosure sales, and he noted another upside on that front. About 80 percent of the foreclosures were investor-owned homes, and about 80 percent of the buyers picking them up plan to live in them, Murphy said."

"Fishkind has dramatically tempered his outlook since he spoke at the same conference in 2006. Then, he told attendees that Florida's robust population growth would absorb the surplus homes on the market within nine months or a year. Two years later, the inventory has only grown."

"Fishkind conceded Tuesday that Florida would lose some of its growth to the Carolinas. But he estimated that the Sunshine State would continue to add between 200,000 and 400,000 new residents a year."

"'Florida's not over,' Fishkind said. 'Florida's different.'"

The Tampa Tribune. "For the past three years, the developers of Trump Tower Tampa searched coast to coast for a lender willing to finance the $300 million luxury condominium. Now, after being turned down by numerous traditional lenders and 10 hedge funds, they're poised to walk away and sell the waterfront site in downtown Tampa, the project's developer says."

"'We're either going forward or coming to an end,' said Frank Dagostino, CEO of the company developing the project."

"The tower's only hope: one last New York hedge fund must agree to finance the project before March 31, Dagostino said. The developers set the self-imposed deadline in new contracts they persuaded buyers to sign."

"'No one wants to lend money in Florida right now,' he said. 'Every developer is desperate right now.'"

"Dagostino said the company has $85 million in contracts. It originally had $137 million in signed purchase contracts, he has said. If the company does call it quits next month, Dagostino said the company will try to liquidate the property and 'pay everyone we can.'"

"SimDag paid $16 million for the property in 2004. They would likely get only about $10 million to $12 million for it in today's market, even though developers may have invested as much as $25 million in infrastructure on the site, said Patrick Berman, senior director for Cushman & Wakefield in Tampa."

"'The land is worth what it will yield,' said Patrick Berman, senior director for Cushman & Wakefield in Tampa. 'The market for 50-story condos is no longer viable.'"

"Buyers put down 20 percent deposits on the condos, originally priced between $700,000 and $6.5 million. Half of the money was put into escrow so it could be returned to buyers. The rest was turned over to SimDag and used for site preparation."

"Don Wallace, who with his wife invested in two units, said buyers are ready for a resolution, no matter what that is. 'Everybody wants closure,' Wallace said of the Trump Tower buyers."

"'The thing that messed this whole thing up is that Donald Trump didn't step in and make this happen,' Wallace said. 'If we all knew this was in the hands of a local developer, I certainly wouldn't want to buy a unit. With the Trump name behind it, we thought we'd be OK, even if problems arose.'"

The News Press. "Hovnanian Enterprises Inc. wrote off 1,345 houses in Lee County after the buyers were unable or unwilling to close on the deals, company officials said Tuesday."

"Meanwhile, lawyers in a class action lawsuit against Hovnanian filed court papers Tuesday alleging that fraud and misrepresentation by the company resulted in the failure of those deals to go through."

"Technically, the houses involved are considered 'delivered,' Hovnanian Chief Financial Officer J. Larry Sorsby told the analysts. He explained that buyers purchased them with construction loans that paid for the lot - then Hovnanian would take draws from the loan to pay for the house's construction."

"Buyers were originally supposed to convert the construction loan to a mortgage on completion of the house but many were unwilling or unable to do that as prices plunged and lenders tightened credit policies after the market started to slide in early 2006."

"'Basically we determined we had no ongoing involvement with those homes,' so for accounting purposes the result was the same as if the buyers had closed on them, Sorsby said."

"The class action suit, filed in federal court in Los Angeles, alleges that Hovnanian officials including Sorsby and CEO Ara Hovnanian deceived stockholders and the investment community by misleading them about how little many would-be buyers had at stake: as little as $1,000 per house even for investors who never planned to live there."

"Sorsby said in an e-mail Tuesday afternoon that 'We believe the suit is totally baseless and without merit. We will aggressively defend ourselves.'"

"Most of the 1,345 houses ended up in the hands of the National Credit Union Administration, which got them when two credit unions failed after making thousands of home loans in Lee County."

The Daily Business Review. "Now that residential development has hit the wall, builders and lenders are partners in misery. Developers in the field — from small-scale operators to national home-builders — who aggressively acquired land during the go-go years of the early and mid-2000s, are now stuck with hundreds of acres of land they have no use for and cannot afford to hold."

"Local experts point out that most overpriced land deals transpired at the peak of the residential market in late 2005 and early 2006. The loan terms on land acquisitions are normally between two to three years, lenders say."

"Now, as the payoff deadline for many of these loans looms, owners are left with overpriced and undeveloped land, and mounting debts."

"Many smaller, private developers, however, are still 'hoping for a miracle,' said Ronnie Issenberg of Miami-based Marcus and Millichap’s land division. 'They are still hoping for a profit. It’s not going to happen. People need to get realistic and learn how to weather the storm.'"

"One developer in a bind is Scott Lehman. Lehman paid $5.33 million in May 2006 for a one-acre parcel in Lantana where he planned to build a 15-unit luxury condo with units priced between $1.4 million to $2.2 million. (The seller had acquired it seven months earlier for $2.3 million)."

"When the loan came due late last year, Lehman had to negotiate an extension for the payoff that is now scheduled for March 23. The parcel has been listed for sale for about three months, Lehman said, but the interest has been 'minimal.'"

"'Everyone thinks they deserve a profit,' Issenberg said. 'I don’t understand the logic behind it. If you are not going to develop it because it’s a bad market, how can you expect me to shop for someone who will?'"

"'2009 is going to be worse than 2008,' he said. 'As time goes on there is going to be great infill locations either owned by the bank, that are being sold at auctions and we are going to have enough developers that are going to be in such pain that they will have to come to the table.'"

"Even industrial buyers now are getting cold feet, said Neil Merin, chairman of a West Palm Beach-based commercial real estate company."

"'Through the summer [of 2007] a number of industrial developers thought they were getting good bargains on the land, but they are realizing if they had waited another six months they would have gotten another 25 percent off,' he said. What was a bargain six months ago may be overpriced today. It’s that bad.'"

From CBS 4.com. "Record home foreclosures in Florida and across the country are prompting some people to walk away, even before a bank steps in to take their home."

"Lori Nicholson is packing up, abandoning the house she and her children have lived in for more than two decades. '23 years this year, my son I actually brought him home from the hospital in this house,' said Nicholson. 'It's tough, it's very tough to leave.'"

"Six years ago Nicholson took out a second mortgage on the house to pay for a divorce. With declining home values, she owes more in mortgages than the house is worth."

"With the downturn in the housing market, many homeowners find themselves like Nicholson, who is basically stuck with a bad loan. Even if they are able to make her monthly payments, there's little incentive to. So they are walking away, leaving the bank holding the bag."

"One financial research firm predicts that if home prices drop an additional 10 percent, 20 million families will owe more than the value of their homes."

"For Nicholson, the decision to walk away came when the bank wouldn't help her figure out a way to stay in her house."

"'I just don't know what else to do,' explained Nicholson. 'I'm tired of fighting the bank, I'm tired of fighting a situation. I cried for days and days and days, because I'm thinking this house is coming to an end and now I'm seeing it.'"