A report from Florida Today. "According to Zillow, 46.5 percent of all homes bought in Brevard since 2003 -- or about 30,000 homes -- are now worth less than is owed on them, raising worries that the record-high foreclosure rate here won't end any time soon. Local foreclosure numbers back that up. Just over 7,000 foreclosure suits were filed through the end of August, according to the Clerk of the Court. That's up from less than 5,200 all of last year and 1,900 in 2006."

"'I wish I wasn't upside-down on my house. But I am,' said economist Sean Snaith, who bought his Orlando-area home in 2006 when he joined the University of Central Florida faculty. 'But I'm fine. I'm not going anywhere.'"

"Others, though, feel trapped. If they were to sell, they would have to pay their lender the difference between the selling price and the amount owed. 'The only thing keeping us here in Florida is our house,' said Maria Acevedo of Palm Bay."

"Acevedo and her husband moved from New Jersey to Brevard because they thought the schools would be better for their two children. After renting for a year, they bought a house in 2004 for $114,000. They later refinanced and now owe $160,000. Acevedo said she doubted she could get $80,000 for the house right now. 'There are so many houses on the market that have been foreclosed,' she said.'"

"Acevedo said she and her husband took pay cuts when they moved here. That was fine at first, she said, since the cost of living here was low. But as the cost of living has increased...salaries haven't kept pace. 'The jobs just aren't cutting it,' she said."

"'The only thing keeping us here in Florida is our house," said Acevedo. Now Acevedo wants to move back to New Jersey, but doesn't see it happening soon because of her house. 'If I could, I'd leave here in a heartbeat.'"

The Palm Beach Post. "Behind on their mortgage and forced to move to Miami-Dade County for work, Reggie and Noelvis Capiro this summer petitioned their lender, Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, and its servicing company to allow a short sale on their three-bedroom, three-bath house. They found a buyer who was willing to pay $400,000, about $40,000 less than they owed on the mortgage. "

"The bank countered at $520,000, and the deal fell apart, according to the Capiros' agent, Dave Derrenbacke. The Capiros lost the home to foreclosure in June, and the bank this month sold the house to a new buyer. The sale price this time: $360,000, according to MLS data. In the end, the bank got paid about $40,000 less than it would have had it gone through the short sale offered by the Capiros."

"'There's definitely success stories out there,' Derrenbacker said. 'But there's a big frustration level on everyone from sellers to buyers to the Realtors who are involved.'"

The News Press. "The relentless slide of home prices in Lee County has left almost half of recent buyers owing more on their mortgages than the home is worth — a sure-fire recipe for a new wave of foreclosures, experts say. Worst off are those who bought homes in 2006, just as the housing boom was ending: 78.5 percent of those now have home values less than the original loan amount, according to Zillow."

"Among people who bought within the past five years, 46 percent are underwater on their mortgage in Lee, compared with 29 percent nationwide."

"'We are so upside down,' said Michelle Nacua of Lehigh Acres. Nacua and her husband, Lani, bought their house in 2004 for $112,000. They refinanced twice and now owe $161,000, far more than the $114,000 the three-bedroom, two-bath house is assessed for by the county Property Appraiser’s Office. 'It is our fault, but I hate it.'"

"Since the record high of $322,300 for the median Realtor-assisted sale of an existing single-family home in December 2005, the price has fallen 54 percent to $146,900 in August, according to the Florida Association of Realtors."

"Even those who have been dutifully paying their mortgages are faced with the fear of foreclosures. 'The third wave is coming from people who are underwater who are suffering disruptions to income,' said Chris Lafakis, Florida analyst for Moody’s Economy.com."

"Fort Myers attorney Kevin Jursinski agreed. 'My clients are not subprime buyers; they’re people who’ve invested and can’t afford to pay,' said Jursinski. For example, he said, 'If I have a house I paid $400,000 for a few years ago with a $350,000 mortgage and I can buy a (bank-owned foreclosure) for $300,000 or $250,000, I’m going to do that,' he said. 'I’m gone.'"

"Jim Luccisano is the founder and president of Edison Financial Services, a financial services, mortgage, insurance and real estate firm in south Fort Myers. Q: The long-term prospects for Lee County's real estate market?"

"A: Long term, I think they're great. The boomers will come. Remember, 'if you build it they will come'? Well, we've built it! Unfortunately, we built too much, too fast."

"Once the uncertainty of the current markets settle, the retirees will put their homes up north on the market and we'll get our share buying here. It will start in those cities that have not been hit as hard by the downturn, cities where the economies have not been devastated. Our snowbird friends are already looking around. A condo that was appraised at $325,000 in 2005 recently sold for $130,000."

The Herald Tribune. "Like so many other high-flying companies in Southwest Florida, Century Bank's success was linked to the unprecedented real estate boom. When that boom turned to bust, Century suffered the consequences. 'I've been in banking 36 years and I've never seen a recession come on this fast and I've never seen property values depreciate as much as they have,' said John O'Neill, Century's CEO."

"The biggest problem Century has had, O'Neill said, is with its portfolio of home equity or second loans. With real estate values down by 20 to 30 percent across the region, there was not enough collateral left in the properties for both first mortgage lenders and home equity lenders to be paid off."

"O'Neill said his bank has also been burned by loans made to borrowers that were secured against building lots mainly in Lee County. Lots that were selling there for as much as $60,000 during the boom are selling for only $10,000 today, O'Neill said."

The Tampa Tribune. "Bay area housing prices continue to fall, largely because a big chunk of the homes selling are sharply discounted properties in distress, a new report shows. Of homes that sold in Hillsborough, Pinellas and Pasco counties in September, 28 percent were either bank-owned or preforeclosure properties that sold for less than the troubled borrower owed on the mortgage. That's up from a mere 0.2 percent during the same month in 2005...according to a real estate consulting firm and brokerage."

"'The distressed properties really weigh down the market,' said Peter Murphy, a consultant with the company."

"That's because troubled real estate sells for far less than homes in which the seller isn't under pressure. In the three-county area, nondistressed property averaged $126 per square foot. Compare that with $78 a square foot for bank-owned homes. In 2005, in the midst of the housing boom, nondistressed sales averaged $165 a square foot."

The St Petersburg Times. "How terrible is the tug? According to (a) Tampa real estate consultant, banked-owned properties in September sold for only 62 percent of what nondistressed properties sold for. Distressed sales help explain the duration of the housing slump. More than 600 such properties were sold in the bay area in September alone. It helps explain why a typical house that fetched $215,000 a year ago now goes for about $170,000."

"John McCain may be the Republican presidential candidate, but his proposal that the federal government buy and restructure $300 billion in troubled mortgages was a page ripped directly from Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal playbook."

"'Is it expensive? Yes,' McCain said. 'But we all know, my friends, until we stabilize home values in America, we're never going to start turning around and creating jobs and fixing our economy.'"

"Some worry such a plan creates an incentive for more people to default on their loans to get to refinance for less. That's a chance worth taking to stem foreclosures, said Michael Slotkin, an economics professor at Florida Tech. 'We need to save a generation of homebuyers. If you lose a couple of million buyers, you won't have them back for years.'"

The West Orlando News. "Pending home sales have risen seven percent in some parts of Florida. The increase is being attributed to falling home prices. The increase in the housing market is bittersweet and things in Florida could get worse before they get better. Florida’s unemployment rate is at a 13 year high and exceeds the national average."

"Governor Charlie Crist spent an hour meeting with Florida bankers. Afterward we asked if Florida is in a recession. 'The economy’s tough. I don’t know what you technically call it. You know it’s a difficult challenging situation and there’s no question about it.'"

"Crist says the best thing Floridians can do in these tough times is to keep spending."

"On the ninth floor of an office building on Cypress Street last week, Brad Robinson looked out across a sea of vacant desks and a deserted fish bowl and framed ads talking about company trust. Only he was left, the last man standing in Suite 950-A, once home to a thriving commercial real estate lending division of Washington Mutual. Now, it's just another wasteland after the largest bank failure in American history."

"'There was a person there,' Robinson said. 'Person there. Three or four there. Person there. Person there.'"

"But in an industry full of panic, Robinson, a former senior loan consultant who made $200,000 last year, managed calm. True, he never expected WaMu to sink like Enron, and he lost company stock once worth as much as $75,000. To Robinson, WaMu's future seemed as safe as a savings account. It had a long, storied history, having given out the first home loan ever in 1890 and more than $150-billion in home loans in 2006."

"He only recently sold his Jetta after years of ribbing from colleagues and bosses over driving something that didn't match his moneyed line of work. He saw no reason to get rid of it since it ran great and attracted little attention when he visited properties in rough neighborhoods. He parked it out of sight and arrived early if he had to meet clients.'

"But eventually he caved and bought a metallic gray BMW 335 coupe two years ago."

"'You take the good with the bad,' he said, squeezing a pink piggy bank-shaped stress reliever between his palms sitting behind the office desk he was cleaning out."

The Miami Herald. "Maria Osorio, 62, of Sunrise, never meant to run up her credit cards the way she did. But the companies sent them so freely. And they were so easy to use. First it was gifts and big items. Then it was gasoline, and that tasty baked chicken at the Golden Corral restaurant, then even groceries."

"Suddenly the charges on her eight credit cards totaled $14,000. And she couldn't always pay the monthly minimums. 'The interest rates were killing me,' she said. 'If I sent in $100, only $20 of it was going to the principal. The pressure was building. I started getting the calls.'''

"She was far from alone. Since 2003, Americans have increased their credit card debt by an astounding $200 billion, to a record total of almost $1 trillion, the Federal Reserve says."

"''People are overextended, losing jobs, losing homes, losing 401(k)s,' says Meg Green, a North Miami certified financial planner. 'There's no place to go but credit cards, and they're maxed out.'"

"Unfortunately, the economic crisis comes at a time when American consumers have been living beyond their means for decades. By 2007, personal consumption had reached $10 trillion a year. While housing values were booming, they financed purchases with home equity loans."

'''From 2001 to 2006 homeowners cashed out $1.2 trillion in home equity, to cope with mounting debt and basic living expenses,' says José Garcia, of the Demos financial consulting firm."

"Some who approach April Lewis-Parks, director of Consolidated Credit Counseling Services' Broward office, have so much debt and so little income that she can't help them. 'There's a pool of people who have lost their jobs, and their income is cut and they just don't have the money even for lower payments. I think a lot of them will just default,' she says."

"Green, the financial planner, is no fan of the way credit card companies treat customers. But she blames credit card users as well: 'Why were people spending money they didn't have in the first place? Where is it written that you can forget the difference between want and need?'''

The Naples News. "The Collier County Building Industry Association won’t let a tough economy rain on its parade. The Parade of Homes will go on. But not this fall. Originally planned for later this month, the scattered-site parade has been rescheduled for March in hopes of drawing more interest from local builders, who have been slow to sign up as they struggle through one of the worst housing slumps in decades."

'Only 13 entries were received — not enough to make a fall parade worthwhile. Typically, there are 30 or more homes displayed. New-home construction has slowed to a crawl in Collier County. In August, permits were down 23 percent for single-family homes, compared to a year ago. Multi-family permits were off 81 percent, according to a monthly report by Naples-based The Bidder’s Broker."

"For many years, the association has done two parades annually: one at a single site and the other at multiple locations. In 2007, there wasn’t a multi-site parade. 'That is when things really started to adjust,' said Brenda Talbert, the building association’s executive VP, in a letter to the media and marketing partners."

"Custom Construction Associates, a family-owned builder of multimillion-dollar homes on Marco Island, signed up for the parade this month too. But Lynn Lilly, an office manager, said she understood the decision to postpone it. 'Last year was a little off,' she said. 'But it has been tremendously off this summer.'"

"Many builders are 'absolutely pulling in and not expending any more resources than they have to,' as they fight for survival, while others are going out of business or bankrupt, 'losing everything they ever worked for,' Talbert said."