The Sun Sentinel reports from Florida. "Almost every street has one: a vacant house that sold a couple of years ago for a jaw-dropping price. Appraisers so commonly pumped up house values to meet demands of developers, real-estate agents and lenders that complaints against them tripled in Florida in recent years, the largest complaint increase for any profession regulated by the state."

"Cheryl Oliphant of Santa Monica, Calif., bought a house that lenders shopped to appraisers as being worth $550,000. A novice real-estate investor, Oliphant said she used her retirement savings and bought at the top of the market, thinking she had a great deal and instant equity in the house because it appraised for $50,000 more than the $450,000 sales price."

"'The appraisal was wishful thinking,' said Oliphant. 'I became a little suspicious later when I went to refinance and the next appraiser was having a hard time finding the value.'"

"Oliphant has been trying to sell the house at a $100,000 loss and plans to file for bankruptcy, losing her $50,000 down payment. She said she might ultimately have to abandon that house and four others she bought in Florida."

"Mortgage and real-estate brokers, appraisal-management companies and banks usually choose the appraiser. 'The manner that they use to game the system now is either mass faxes or mass e-mails,' said Frank Gregoire, former chairman of the Florida Real Estate Appraisal Board. 'Loan originators around the country will send out a notice: 'We're going to do a loan...can you get me $500,000? If you can... you'll get the assignment.'"

"One 'blast' message sent in December 2006 offered Gregoire and others $350 for an appraisal of a St. Petersburg house. It cautioned appraisers about photographing the house: 'Photos CANNOT contain pictures of any person OR UNFINISHED/CONSTRUCTION/DAMAGE PICTURES!!!'"

The Miami Herald. "Another sign of desperation in the South Florida housing market: banks tired of paying taxes and upkeep on foreclosed homes put 200 up for auction Saturday in Fort Lauderdale."

"Ranging from the most modest one-bedroom efficiency condos to five-bedroom houses worth close to a million dollars at the height of the market, these once-dignified symbols of the American dream were reduced to tiny thumbnail photos in an auctioneer's guidebook."

"'It's very bittersweet,' said Realtor Renee Dworkin, who accompanied several clients to the sell-off. 'Each one of these homes represents heartache for someone.'"

"A three-bedroom house in Miami Shores that sold for $460,000 two years ago, went for $177,500. A two-bedroom house in Coral Gables that sold for $670,000 in September 2005, fetched a bid of $300,000. The buyer declined to give his name, but said he plans to rent it out."

"Most of the deals struck on Saturday are contingent on the bank accepting the bid. Buyers will find out sometime mid-week. But about 20 percent of the sales were 'absolute,' said Dave Webb, co-owner of the auction company."

"Brian Trujillo, a real estate investor from Miami, said prices had fallen even since the last auction he went to, about a month ago. 'Condos are selling about 15 percent under the last time,' he said. 'Houses selling for about 10 percent less.'"

The Daily Business Review. "On-site auctions, where the bidding is staged in the front yard of a property, are becoming more popular in South Florida as sellers and lenders with ballooning real estate portfolios struggle to dispose of real estate assets in a sluggish market."

"Minutes before the auction on a foreclosed house at Southwest 142nd Court began, Richard Caso saw signs promoting the auction and checked it out. At 6:30 p.m. the auction started with an opening bid of $100,000. The house, which is owned by Chase Home Finance, last sold for $305,000 in July 2006, according to Miami-Dade County property records."

"'$105,000,' Caso offered. '$110,000,' countered the second bidder, Robert Perez. The two traded bids until Caso dropped out after Perez made a $130,000 offer. Perez signed the contract and wrote a check for $6,500 — the required 5 percent deposit."

"'It was a good price,' said Perez, who plans to rent the house. But...Chase has the right to refuse the offer, said Troy Fowler of Miami-based Investor Realty & Auction Group."

"Caso, who is taking advantage of the market to acquire several distressed properties, said he wasn’t disappointed at losing the bidding. 'There are plenty of [lender-owned properties] out there,' he said."

"Caso said in the last two months he has bought two houses out of short-sale. 'I usually try to get to the property before it is foreclosed,' said Caso, who said he has seen properties selling for about 40 percent off their 2005 prices and about 20 percent less than the property’s loan principal.'"

The Naples News. "The tables have turned in the local real estate market. A few years ago, it was tough to find a home under $300,000, let alone under $250,000, especially in the Naples area. Now, they’re in the hundreds."

"In 2004 and 2005, a frenzy of investors snapped up homes, pushing prices sky high in Southwest Florida. Community leaders scrambled to try to deal with what became known as an 'affordable housing crisis.'"

"The median price for a single-family home in Collier County peaked at $592,500 in February 2007. Now, it’s down closer to $400,000, as sales have slowed and housing inventories have grown."

"In January and February, the Cape Coral-Fort Myers area had the highest foreclosure rate in the country, according to RealtyTrac Inc. Lee County broke a foreclosure record in February with 2,461 filings, up from 2,297 in January."

"These days, it’s much more common to see these phrases on a listing in the MLS: 'Short sale, bring all offers' or 'This property has just entered foreclosure.'"

"A few weeks ago, Realtor Mary Catherine White got a call from a couple from Chicago looking to buy a retirement home in the area where they could spend part of the year. She took them out the day they arrived in town, and by the next day they had made an offer after finding a great deal on a two-bedroom condo at the Brooks, a gated community in Estero."

"They got more than they wanted and paid $180,000, a price that even seemed to surprise White. The home was once listed at $369,000."

"'Nobody can believe that we got something for that price in the Brooks,' she said."

The News Press. "Lee County's inventory of unsold homes has swollen to record levels, depressing prices and discouraging the construction of new homes - and the glut may be even worse than it appears."

"The inventory of unsold homes swelled to almost 16,000 _ seven times what it was in 2005 at the height of the market when buyers outnumbered sellers. Nearly 5 percent of the total housing units in the county are for sale."

"Because of the glut, contractors find it impossible to compete in price against existing homes - and any dwelling in less than perfect condition has little chance of being sold."

"High as they are, the MLS numbers may not tell the full story. There's a 'shadow market' of houses not officially for sale even though they're owned or soon will be owned by lenders who took them back in foreclosure, said Jack McCabe, a Deerfield Beach-based real estate consultant who tracks the area's home market."

"'It'll probably take federal regulators to tell them to get this stuff off the books,' he said. 'The lenders are the most unrealistic of the bunch right now' - many banks still aren't putting their repossessed houses back on the market priced to sell."

"'The MLS doesn't really give us a full picture of the supply,' said Michael Timmerman, a Naples-based senior associate with Fishkind & Associates. 'It's very difficult because there's no one good source that allows us to get a handle on the total supply.'"

"For example, Timmerman said, a builder generally doesn't put all the houses available in a new community on the MLS. 'But he may have three or four sales from a development on MLS just to entice people,' Timmerman said. 'The MLS can be used as a system to generate leads for that particular builder.'"

"There's no way to know exactly how much of that is going on, or how many houses are being held by a lender who ultimately will have to put them back on the market."

"The median MLS sales price has fallen 34 percent from its peak of $322,300 in December 2005 to $211,900 in February 2008, the last month for which statistics are available, according to the Florida Association of Realtors. Permits for new houses have slowed to a trickle: only 74 in March compared to 1,558 two years earlier."

"Steve Koffman of Cape Coral-based Century 21 Sunbelt Realty, said about 40 percent of homes sold in the city are foreclosures or short sales. The enormous inventory means that only the ones priced the lowest and in the best condition will sell, he said. Otherwise, an agent won't bother to show them to a client."

"'There could be 500 like it on the market,' Koffman said. 'How do I pick the eight I'm going to show today? They have to stand out.'"

"That's bad news for the houses that are half-finished or in bad shape, of which there are large numbers in areas where a lot of inexpensive homes were being built in Lehigh and the Cape during the boom, he said. Many have been vandalized by thieves or even by subcontractors who weren't paid and illegally came back to take back items such as bathtubs, Koffman said."

"With prices at rock bottom for existing homes, builders are offering great deals on the houses they've already finished - but don't expect it to last forever, said Kevin Clark, Southwest Florida division president of national developer Beazer Homes."

"Builders are throwing in amenities such as granite counter tops and high-end flooring to lure buyers without cutting prices further, he said. That way they won't have to raise prices when demand picks up."

The Herald Tribune. "The energy level was high as the auction unfolded at the Longboat Key Club and Resort, with bidders fighting it out for at least 35 of the 49 properties up on the auction block."

"How many of those properties ultimately sell is still up in the air. Only eight were sold 'absolute,' leaving the rest of the high bidders below the seller's reserve, or minimum price."

"Prices also stalled out on some of the auction's signature properties, demonstrating that while buyers might be back in the Southwest Florida real estate game, they are looking for deals -- some to the extreme."

"While bids subject to a reserve ended up totaling $31.3 million, many of the winning offers amounted to only a fraction of previous asking prices. For auctioneers, the work was tough at times."

"Take 529 Putter Lane. Sky CEO Chad Roffers touted the home as the 'signature property,' not just of the auction (it graced the cover of the auction materials), but of Sky's entire portfolio."

"'This is probably the finest home we have in the Sky Sotheby's inventory right now,' Roffers told the crowd, saying the owner had previously turned down an offer for $4.3 million. Even so, the bidding only got started at $1 million, and despite Daniel DeCaro's best efforts only managed to reach $2.3 million."

"Jeffrey Roberti's well-known, four-story Siesta Key house -- complete with a rooftop pool -- had not previously been offered for sale, but was assessed in 2007 at $4.6 million. DeCaro tried to open the bidding at $6 million, then $4 million, then $3 million, but no one raised a paddle."

"Finally, someone bit at $2 million, and then other bidders jumped in, creating a small frenzy. Bidding went back and forth across the room, but only increased the amount by incremental steps. The bidding ended at $2.65 million."

"The most strenuous effort by the auction organizers came when the so-called 'Sugar Bay' estate came up. Gerd Petrik's two-parcel estate received a $14.1 million bid at Sky's November auction but the deal later fell apart. The smaller parcel was sold off to another buyer in February, but the larger main parcel -- still the subject of arbitration proceedings -- was back."

"Both Roffers and DeCaro crisscrossed the room feverishly as bidding started at $4.5 million, well below the $9 million offer received in November and a third of the $15 million list price, and bidders fought it up to $5.85 million, where things stalled."

"After a few moments and some effective persuasion, a shout came from across the room, and things picked up again. But after some more back-and-forth between two remaining bidders, things stalled again at $5.92 million."

"The bidder who was hesitating was in the back of the room, a cell phone in his hand. He was on the phone with his wife. DeCaro came over and gently put his arm around the man's shoulder."

"'5.95?' DeCaro said, almost in a whisper."

"No dice; the answer was no. The auctioneer returned to the stage. 'Folks, the reserve price on this is $8.2 million,' he said."

"The rustling continued for a few more moments, as the auction employees continued to work the crowd. 'Get that guy's wife back on the phone,' DeCaro joked. 'We're not taking no for an answer.'"

"But it was not to be. Bidding was closed at $5.92 million."