The Associated Press reports on Florida. "Al Ray is so strapped for cash, the only time he eats out is on Wednesday or Sunday, when the local McDonald's sells hamburgers for 49 cents. Ray lost his engineering job last November, and has been working as high school tutor, scratching out about $1,000 a month - if he's lucky. He struggled to make his $1,400 monthly mortgage payment and $330 monthly homeowners' association fee until May, when he stopped paying."

"Ray is looking for work and renting out a room in his two-bedroom condo in Davie, Fla., for $500, but his monthly income doesn't match his expenses and he's facing foreclosure. 'I barely have money to survive,' he said."

"Ray is one of more than 7.5 million people - almost 15 percent of American homeowners with a mortgage - who are spending half of their income or more on housing costs, according to 2007 data released Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau. That is up from nearly 7.1 million the year before."

"'We had a bubble,' said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C. 'This is a case where we absolutely want the market to adjust.'"

The Wall Street Journal. "In 2003, Robert Provost snapped up a $2.5 million villa in Sarasota, Fla. A finance chief for an auto-sales chain, he earned more than $250,000 a year and had an impeccable credit history."

"Then he lost his job. Provost missed one $10,500 mortgage payment, then another. This month, he put his house, a five-bedroom with sweeping views of the Intracoastal Waterway, on the market for $3.4 million. But the listing thus far has attracted little interest. Provost says he expects to receive a notice of default from the bank in the next month or two."

"'A foreclosure would be devastating,' he says. 'My wife and I would have to start from scratch.'"

The Herald Tribune. "It is hard to imagine conditions getting worse in the Manatee condominium market. Nearly 400 condo owners have defaulted on loans since the beginning of the year, Manatee County court records show. A handful of developers, including Venice master builder Mike Miller, have been forced to surrender projects to their banks."

"'I had clients who walked away from a $90,000 deposit,' said Jo Rutstein, an agent with Sarasota's Premier Properties. 'In hindsight, they did the right thing.'"

"Miller, who developed The Palms at Riviera Dunes in Palmetto, faced a wave of cancellations and ultimately defaulted on a $23 million loan. As a result, his 108-unit, two-building condo project remains half-finished."

'Similarly, Darrel Reha, who borrowed $3.5 million to refurbish the Manatee River Hotel in downtown Bradenton, defaulted on his loan and left the once proud building in sorry shape."

"'I have heard other developers are getting ready to walk away themselves,' Rutstein said."

"Another investor who defaulted after buying a unit at Watercrest for $695,000 in August 2005 was Re/Max agent Marianne Zoll. Zoll, who financed the purchase with two loans totaling the exact amount of her purchase, did not return calls seeking comment. But a blog she posted on the Internet in October to drum up support for an auction told her story."

"Zoll finally defaulted on her loans in April, and the bank seized her property in July. She is one of 18 people to default on condo loans totaling $11 million at Watercrest since the beginning of the year."

"'You think because I am a Realtor and an auctioneer I would know better, but we all make mistakes,' Zoll wrote. 'A week ago a bankruptcy auctioneer had an auction and sold a condominium 400 square feet bigger than mine for $322,000.00. It was a model and had all the bells and whistles.'"

"While some of these relative newcomers to the Sarasota-area auction scene are finding themselves in the doldrums, the same can't be said for some veteran players in the market. For example, at least one longstanding local business, Venice-based Van De Ree Auction Co., is still holding events on a regular basis, and is moving the real estate going up on the block."

"'It's a way to get market value, because right now no one really knows what market value is for many properties,' said George Van De Ree. 'I feel bad for the appraisers these days, because they're trying to appraise properties without much in the way of comps, or any firm sense of what things are really worth in the market.'"

The New York Times. "Come to Fort Myers, population 60,000, the seat of Lee County. Walk the Gulf Coast beaches. Cruise the Caloosahatchee River. Witness what happens when banks dole out easy mortgages and homeowners forget that the money isn't free."

"Drive down McGregor Boulevard, or Cleveland Avenue, turn left or turn right, and see the empty houses, the overgrown lots, the signs saying AUCTION and FREE RENT."

"Shayne Becher works for the code enforcement division's rapid response team, which tries to keep up with an ever-growing list of abandoned properties needing to be mowed and boarded up."

"The lawn mower cuts across the front-lawn jungle of an attractive house with great location and move-in potential. Abandoned, in other words. Three years ago, sold for $660,000; today, a ghostly parcel of failure."

"He finishes mowing, takes a photograph of a job well done, and closes the chain-link fence as though the property were his own. 'Another day in paradise,' he says, standing on this street called Sunset."

The News Press. "Three years ago, banks were throwing money at prospective no-money-down homeowners in Southwest Florida. Now prices have plummeted and banks aren't as willing to take the risk: demanding hefty down payments as high as 20 percent and triple-checking credit histories and employment."

"As would-be buyers are forced to sit on the sidelines, how can Lee County's housing market with an inventory of about 15,000 homes expect to recover?"

"Getting more buyers into the market is key to a turnaround, said real estate agent Brett Ellis in Fort Myers. 'I'm actually losing a lot of deals over financing, three in the last month.' In some cases, he said, 'These were deals already in place, pre-approved up front, and then underwriting standards changed.'"

"The number of foreclosures has exploded in Lee County recently, with 2,156 filed in August. That compares to 1,045 in August 2007 and only 146 in August 2006 when foreclosures were just starting to take off."

The Orlando Sentinel. "Of Kevin Azzouz's grand ambitions for MetroWest, none is bigger than his $700 million development called Veranda Park. It's intended to be Orlando's second downtown, a 30-acre agglomeration of condos, restaurants and a luxury hotel."

"Azzouz blames his troubles on the gone-bust housing market and Wachovia Bank's refusal to renegotiate a $52 million construction loan for a nearly completed 144-unit condo building."

"Azzouz denies that he has cheated anyone and said he expects all the lawsuits will be dropped eventually. 'Welcome to the ABCs of real-estate development,' Azzouz said. 'One problem can have a domino effect. But if I have a problem, I fix it. There's no way this doesn't survive.'"

"William C. Weaver, a forensic economist who teaches at the University of Central Florida, likens Azzouz's situation to the classic developer's 'house of cards.'"

"'If they get in over their heads financially, they may take money meant for one part of the project and use it for another,' he said. 'It's like robbing Peter to pay Paul, and then robbing Paul to pay Mary, and on down the chain until they run out of money. They get into trouble if there's not enough money, and then it's not just one problem; it's crash-and-burn time.'"

"A condominium-hotel project near SeaWorld Orlando has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, more than a year after the project put all sales on hold."

"Now the company says it has between 50 and 99 creditors, and something between $1 million and $10 million in liabilities. The petition, filed Sept. 12 in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Orlando, did not include a list of the largest unsecured creditors, as required by the court."

"According to a Web site for Sage Resort, units were being offered for prices ranging from $469,000 to $1.3 million. The company's New York-based lawyer, Raymond Sussman could not say Monday how many buyers had invested in the unbuilt condo-hotel."

The Naples News. "When Cape Coral resident Ronald Luczak pleaded guilty to fraud charges in federal court earlier this month, he was admitting to engineering a scheme to inflate home sales prices - enough to allow for the payment of kickbacks to his wife's company. Luczak then had straw buyers take out 100 percent financing based on those inflated values."

"Despite the nearly two-year-old case and Luczak's recent guilty plea, home sales Luczak handled have been included in the database the Lee County property appraiser's office uses to calculate assessed values for neighboring properties for taxing purposes."

"Cindy Franklin, who works for the property appraiser's office, confirmed two days after the plea that with that particular property - one on SW 40th Terrace - the 2005 sale was still listed as a 'qualified' sale. In other words, the property appraiser's office had viewed the reported sales price of $610,000 as the property's true value at the time."

"The home has sold more recently for a mere $175,000."

"There is a good chance that if you live in a neighborhood managed by an association, you are going to start feeling the pain if you already have not. The symptoms are 3-foot-high lawns, moldy walls and, increasingly, associations that lack the money to maintain the common grounds or pay the water bill, much less maintain abandoned homes."

"'People don't realize how bad it is out there,' said Tom Cook, who with his wife, own SRQ Property Management in Manatee County."

"Few of the 16 associations that SRQ manages -- encompassing about 1,100 units -- have been immune. Besides former owners who have just disappeared, the associations are contending with banks that have taken possession of properties but will not pay the owed fees or fork over money needed to maintain the properties until they are resold."

"In a real estate market where any sale is a prized event, most homeowner and condo association board members were reluctant to discuss the specifics of their problems with the Herald-Tribune, lest it scare potential buyers away."

"But a recent survey of 500 associations throughout Florida by a group that deals with lawmakers to protect property values for the state's community association residents, found a majority of boards are being swamped."

"More than 60 percent said that banks and mortgage lenders holding title to homes or units are not paying regular fees or other assessments."

"'We've seen associations that have passed multiple assessments to cover the nonpayments,' said Ken Arnold, the Hallandale-based Association Financial Services's CEO. 'It can run into hundreds or even thousands per unit.'"

"Arnold notes the domino effect that rising assessments can have on a neighborhood. 'These families got a mortgage they knew they could pay and all of a sudden the guy next door stops paying and their assessments go up and up and up until they can't afford to pay either,' Arnold said. 'It snowballs from there.'"