What do you see in your housing market this weekend? Foreclosures? "Flagler County had a big spike in foreclosures last month, causing it to have the state's highest ratio of foreclosure properties compared with total number of homes. Foreclosure activity in Flagler jumped more than 215 percent month-over-month in June. Some real estate observers say the rise in activity could be the beginning of the unloading of a 'shadow inventory' of foreclosed homes that had been building, despite a decline in foreclosures the previous three months."

"Scott Nieminen, the immediate past-president of the Flagler County Association of Realtors, said he doesn't buy that this is the start of a shadow inventory, and that the market has been fairly consistent throughout. But he and other area real estate agents said it's still too soon to tell. 'I don't really think there's a shadow inventory,' said Nieminen. He said the June increase is likely a normal fluctuation in the foreclosure process. 'I think only time will tell at this point -- is there or isn't there?' he said."

"The Chicago area now has the nation’s largest inventory of foreclosed homes because it is harder to unload troubled properties here than in most other metropolitan areas. The Chicago metropolitan area had 118,776 homes in May 2011 that were either owned by banks or were in the process of being taken over by lenders, according to RealtyTrac."

"'I think it’s the banks; they are not willing to lower prices,' said John Bouman, president of the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law, an advocacy organization for low-income people. 'So these properties just sit there empty because they don’t want to sell it at a lower price and lose the money they have in it.'"

"Bouman, who lives in Maywood, said the situation has affected him personally. The house across the street from him has been vacant for more than a year, he said, and he knows of two prospective buyers who inquired about the property but couldn’t get satisfactory answers from the bank. Bouman said he and his wife had thought about selling their house and moving to a condominium in Chicago, but the glut of foreclosures had depressed prices so much that he couldn’t get enough money for his house to afford one."

"'Sometimes I think that it’s hard to find anyone at the banks who can make a decision,' said Bouman, 'so these properties just sit there.'"

Sales information? "Georgia's vacation home market has taken the same beating as sales of primary homes in metro Atlanta, with some believing it's even worse. 'I've never seen it this bad before,' said Roger Ardston of Woodstock, who sells mountain real estate, owns a cabin near Blue Ridge and runs Blue Ridge Lodge Cabin Rentals. 'I would like to say it's getting better. But I don't see it. Most of [the cabins] we have seen have been on market for 18 months to two years and have not sold.'"

"Bill Keim, a founder of Signature Properties Group on St. Simons Island, estimated half of sales there now are foreclosures. 'Right now, second homes and investment property sales particularly are pretty close to nonexistent,' he said."

Development News? "The Memphis development company Makowsky Ringel Greenberg made a strategic plan for creating The Laurels condominiums, committed to it, secured financing and had it substantially built when the uh-oh moment struck CEO Michael Greenberg in October 2008. Watching the stock market plummet and hearing the bailout talk, Greenberg recalled, 'I remember saying to my wife, 'This is bad.'''

"The roof was already keeping dry the 40-home, four-story building at the northeast corner of Central and Highland. The first luxury units would be ready for sale in just nine months. And all of a sudden, the real estate world as we knew it disappeared. 'Once you start, it's a train leaving the station. You can't stop,' Greenberg said of the $13.2 million project. 'We are selling for significantly less than we got in it.'"

"While many other developers have either been forced into foreclosure or just walked away, Makowsky Ringel Greenberg decided not to give up, to protect both its reputation and the investments of The Laurels residents. 'Do you sit there and try to wait it out, which the bank would never let you do anyway,' Greenberg said. 'Or do you do what you've got to do to move it and get people in the building?'"