The Herald Tribune reports from Florida. "Martin Caparros was late to the party with his Vintage Grand condominium conversion project, but his sales team still managed to sell 238 units for a total of $43.4 million from January 2006 to October 2007. It turns out, however, that part of the Miami Lakes developer's success can be attributed to market-distorting rebates and enticing mortgages that his sales team offered to buyers as incentives in late 2006 and early 2007."

"The rebates, which ran as high as $35,000, distorted the market, analysts and appraisers say, because sales prices were recorded at $235,000 and banks lent money against that value, while buyers were only paying $200,000 to $215,000 for their units."

"'When a bank forecloses after one of these deals, it is instantly upside down on its loan,' said Dennis Black, a Port Charlotte appraisal instructor. 'Its customer owes more than the property is worth.'"

"That was certainly the case with nine loans secured by Tampa real estate investor Michael Chadwick. In late February and early March 2007, Chadwick's Sarasota real estate agent, Pat Brester, bought nine Vintage Grand units and immediately resold them to Chadwick at much higher prices, enabling the Tampa investor to get loans that exceeded original purchase prices by nearly $90,000."

"Chadwick's Sarasota real estate agent, Pat Brester, bought the nine units for $1.91 million from Feb. 26 to March 13 last year and sold them to Chadwick for $2.22 million on the same days they were purchased."

"Chadwick then got two loans from SunTrust and seven loans from Fifth Third Bank, totalling just under $2 million, or nearly $90,000 more than Brester originally paid for the properties."

"Together with the rebates offered by Vintage Grand, Chadwick was able to walk away from the closing table with about $360,000 -- money Chadwick said he used to make interest payments on his loans."

"'I could not have carried the properties otherwise,' he said."

"When the money was gone, Chadwick filed for bankruptcy protection, listing $3.04 million in debts and $2.095 million in assets."

"His nine Vintage Grand units were valued at...an average of $139,000 per unit -- a far cry from the $246,400 Chadwick said paid for the units, and the $221,755 per unit he received in loans. 'All in all, it was just a bad real estate decision,' Chadwick said. 'I didn't know how bad the market was going to get.'"

"Julie Bartlett, a California real estate investor...helped Vintage Grand with its marketing efforts. Bartlett thought the deal was so good that she convinced her father to buy a unit. But she is now regretting that decision."

"'The units are worth $100,000 today and we're buried in interest payments and condo fees,' said Bartlett, who took over nearly $2,000 in monthly payments from her father a year after he bought his unit. 'We're getting to the point where we either have to find a short sale or give the unit back to the bank.'"

The News Press. "Welcome to 'the courthouse steps,' a corner of the second floor of the Lee County Courthouse where the county clerk's office holds auctions every weekday in cases where a judge has ordered that a piece of property be sold to satisfy an unpaid debt. It's a busy place, and on the brink of getting a lot busier."

"Judges in March ordered 521 properties sold - more than 19 times as many as the 27 from March 2006. Lee Clerk of the Court Charlie Green said he’s about to step up the auctions, which disposed of more than 70 properties one day last month. 'We’ll have days in the future when we’ll have two sales,' Green said."

"What’s frightening is that a huge backlog of foreclosure cases is building up and needs to be dealt with: almost 16,000 were still pending at the end of March, he said."

"Back in the heady days of the real estate boom that ended in late 2005, there were buyers aplenty at the auction, said David Hall, president of First Community Bank of Southwest Florida. 'They were buying into a buying frenzy,' he said."

"But now there’s a glut of homes on the market, Hall said. 'There’s just so much property out there.'"

"Thomas Bruzzesi, who has been a real estate investor since 1989...once watched an inexperienced bidder triumphantly pick up a house for $12,000 and later realize to his chagrin that there was also a $168,000 mortgage on it — the bidder’s money was down the drain."

"Ed Bonkowski, a Fort Myers-based real estate broker, did a lot of business in foreclosed properties in the early ’90s in the last major downturn but said he hasn’t lately because good deals are 'few and far between.'"

"He expects that will change eventually, as foreclosure sales accelerate and bank-owned homes pile up. 'Our decision to buy’s going to be when the banks are ready to bulk sale a bunch of them, then it’d make some sense,' Bonkowski said."

"But prices will have to drop steeply for that to happen, he said. 'At 15 cents on the dollar, all those properties will be gobbled up, investors will come out of the woodwork and buy them and everybody will go back to work,' Bonkowski said."

The Republican Eagle. "In these harsh times, when a builder goes broke, the financial hardships, much like the would-be homes, have only begun."

"Vincent Santanelli was delighted when his elderly father-in-law told him he planned to purchase a home at Cascades at Groveland, a Florida retirement community west of Orlando."

"Still under construction, the property was a short distance from Santanelli’s own Groveland home and was reasonably priced – a rare find in central Florida’s tight housing market. Best of all, Santanelli says he felt at the time, the home was a product of Levitt and Sons, a Ft. Lauderdale-headquartered building giant with a solid reputation for high quality and service."

"With some financial help from Santanelli, the father-in-law placed a $20,000 deposit on the home and put the Cozumel duplex he lived in on the market. He quickly received a couple of offers and was about to sell when, in November, the retired senior and his family learned that Levitt and Sons had filed for bankruptcy."

"'We’re still waiting to find out if Bank of America is going to take over the development so we can get the deposit back. My father can’t sell the Cozumel home, and now that the value of it has dropped because of the market, he’s looking at a bigger mortgage than he’d anticipated. He has no idea where to turn next,' says Santanelli."

"Santanelli and his family aren’t alone in their predicament. When Levitt and Sons filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Nov. 9 after defaulting on $181.5 million in debt, hundreds of customers who had shelled out unsecured deposits were suddenly cast in financial limbo."

"Debt-holders like Santanelli’s father-in-law have to get in line with everyone else -- homebuyers, contractors, everyone -- to who the bankrupt company owes money. To get a sense of just how long that line is in Levitt’s case, more than 650 liens were filed against the company in St. Johns County, Fla., alone within days of the bankruptcy."

"'We understand that many of our customers have experienced financial and other distress as a result of our bankruptcy and the catastrophic and unprecedented downturn in the residential real estate sector in Florida and beyond. We have endeavored to be as sensitive as we could possibly be to our customers, and we will continue to do so,' (stated) Levitt lead bankruptcy attorney Paul Singerman."

"That the company has tried to be sensitive to its customers’ plight is a statement Levitt homeowner Dan Wenk strongly disagrees. Toxic mold and water damage in his Clermont home near Groveland...he claims made his home unlivable and that Levitt has refused to address. Wenk says his battle took on new urgency in August 2006 when he was diagnosed with leukemia."

"'I’m not blaming Levitt for my illness, but I’m saying, 'Hey, I can’t live in the home you sold me, and you haven’t done anything to fix the situation,' says Wenk, adding that he and his family had to rent another home in which to live."

"'I hired an attorney, and when we finally sued Levitt, it was about the same time that I noticed...they were reorganizing their stock. Levitt requested an extension for responding to the points we raised in the suit, then they asked for more time. Then, I found out they had filed bankruptcy,' he said."

"Wenk says that the cost of his now-stalled lawsuit, medical expenses and the burden of maintaining a second home pushed him over the financial edge. 'Because of this, I’m having file for bankruptcy now, and my mortgage company had to foreclose on the Levitt house.'"

The Tampa Tribune. "Karen Mateson recently approached the Career Central vehicle parked at Pasco-Hernando Community College with cautious curiosity. She glanced through the back door of the mobile job center and, a few minutes later, was looking for jobs in the medical field with the help of Dave Hamilton, the mobile unit's driver and operator."

"Mateson, an artist at heart, is enrolled at PHCC's Dade City campus working toward a degree in radiology. She'd like to teach art, but will settle for a job doing sonograms. 'It's not my passion,' Mateson said, somewhat sheepishly, of the medical field."

"Hamilton helps dozens of people like Mateson every week as he pilots Career Central's mobile unit around the remote corners of Pasco and Hernando counties. 'It's not about finding a career right now,' Hamilton said. 'It's about finding a job.'"

"The bursting housing bubble cost Pasco more than 1,000 jobs between the summer of 2007 and the same period a year before. The decline put Pasco County firmly in the middle of Florida's 22 largest counties, with half seeing smaller declines or job-market growth and the rest - most of them in the southwest corner of the state - sharper declines in their job markets."

"Pasco, which ranked first in job growth among the nation's 329 largest counties in early 2005, now ranks near the bottom."

"The bulk of the job losses happened in the construction industry as builders dramatically curtailed projects in response to slumping demand. Many of those unemployed construction workers are finding Hamilton's roaming job center. 'Unfortunately, I don't have construction jobs to pick from,' he said."

"During one of those visits to Land O' Lakes that Russ Wilson stopped by the mobile job center looking for work. Wilson, 32, was a truck driver until the cost of fuel forced him to give that up. Now he lives with his wife and two children at his mother-in-law's house just north of Land O' Lakes High School. He works odd jobs and his wife cleans houses to make ends meet."

"'Nobody's hiring,' Wilson said. 'I couldn't even get a job as a dishwasher.'"

The Tallahassee Democrat. "The day the Legislature convened its 60-day, 2008 session in a flower-drenched Capitol, the average price of gasoline in Florida was $3.25. It shattered an all-time record, $3.62, on Friday, the last day of session."

"For the 60 days in between, lawmakers steered the ship of state while spiking gas prices and paralyzed housing starts gripped the throat of a tourism and growth-based economy."

"Republicans at the helm kept one eye on a fuel gauge that showed tax collections on fumes and another on the approaching storm of the November elections. The result was a $66.2-billion budget with more than $4 billion in spending cuts targeted largely at school children, the sick and the elderly. It was a year like no other."

"'It's never been this bad,' said Florida Education Association Attorney Ron Meyer, who has been lobbying in Tallahassee since the early 1970s. 'Money is the root of all evil, but even when there's no money, there's still evil.'"

"The teachers' union thinks Florida is so off course, it's preparing a massive lawsuit. 'I can't imagine that such a small reduction, coming on the heels of eight years of historic funding increases, would ever lead anyone to contemplate such a thing,' said House education committee chairman Joe Pickens."

"Some 40,000 Floridians who rely on two Medicaid programs, Medically Needy and Medicaid Aged and Disabled, got a one-time reprieve when Republican leaders agreed to take $350 million from a state reserve fund."

"But the same budget also includes language that sunsets the programs next year, meaning they will go away unless lawmakers act. And that decision may rest largely on the health of a nearly $1-trillion economy over which the Legislature has little control, some experts say."

"'Obviously, the state can't turn the economy around, they don't have the power to reduce interest rates or lower the cost of a barrel of oil,' said Orlando economist Hank Fishkind. 'But they can do little things. The Senate had a plan to speed up construction projects, but unfortunately, the House did not agree. I wouldn't say Rome burned while they fiddled, I'd say Rome burned and all they managed to do was evacuate the barn.'"