Is Housing Nearing the Floor?

The last piece of the last residential construction crane in Miami is coming down, and locals don't expect to see another one for a while. Developers threw up some 23,000 housing units along South Beach and its environs beginning in 2003, many of them bought by speculators who thought they could flip the properties for a quick profit. Then the music stopped. "Our best guesstimate--and we've talked to lenders and developers--is that you will not see a residential construction crane in the sky in downtown Miami for a generation," says Peter Zalewski, a real estate broker and founder of Condo Vultures,...