Lisa Selin Davis

You'd think that now would be the time to pick up a bargain home in South Florida. After all, there are more than 96,000 foreclosures to choose from, and that's just from the first six months of 2010, according to the Miami Herald: "Distressed properties are still dominating the market, with more than half of all homes and condos sold last month at some stage in the foreclosure process."

Floridians with modest nest eggs who were priced out of home ownership during the boom should be able to get their hands on a sweet little slice of subdivision now that prices have plummeted. Right?

Not exactly. It turns out that investors are opening their purse strings, too, beating regular buyers to the punch.

Since the Plaza in New York City began its conversion from hotel to condos in 2004, there's been nothing but controversy. First, what would happen to Eloise, its most famous fictional resident? Then there were the record-breaking prices and the subsequent grumblings, accusations and lawsuits. Even so, the units were snatched up -- bought, if not lived in.

That seems to be the case with a penthouse unit on the 20th floor. Hotel and casino mogul Steve Wynn is now the proud owner of said home, one of the largest units, thanks to the previous buyer's reneging on the contract. According to The Wall Street Journal, that buyer claimed the apartment delivered was markedly different than the one promised. The matter is still bandying about the courts.

The price for such swanky digs?

Lots of banks are saddled with extra properties these days, thanks to risky loans and faulty practices. But in Utah, it was the state that did the risky lending, and has found itself the proud owner of what seems to be a suburban ghost town.

Arizona-based developer SunCor worked out an unusual deal with the state of Utah: SunCor could lease the land from the Utah School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration (SITLA), develop a far-flung suburban paradise two hours from Las Vegas and four from Salt Lake City, then give the state a portion of the profits when the homes were sold -- 2,000 of them on more than 2,500 acres. The funds would directly benefit schools in the state.

You can guess at least part of the story: The market collapsed and very few homes were built. According to Stateline.org, "The half-completed Coral Canyon development went up for sale last year along with other SunCor projects in Arizona and New Mexico. Rather than waiting for a hedge fund to scoop up Coral Canyon and flip it for a quick buck, state officials decided to step in." They paid $3.4 million for 172 finished lots.

The big question is why.

If you thought the economic downturn and housing crisis would lead to more modest homes, you are wrong -- at least in this case. And in this case you'd be very, very wrong.

It's a 90,000-square-foot mansion listed for $75 million. It sits in a prime spot, on 10 waterfront acres in a gated community outside Orlando, Fla. It has plenty to boast about, including 10 kitchens, a 20-car garage, 13 bedrooms, a bowling alley and an indoor roller rink.

Actually, make that space for 10 kitchens, a 20-car garage, 13 bedrooms, a bowling alley and an indoor roller rink, because the house has one big catch: It's not finished.

When it first hit the market in 2008, The Riverhouse, or One Rockefeller Park, was marketed as the pinnacle of the new green-building movement: chic, modern, luxurious and sustainable, all wrapped up in one water-view building. It symbolized the departure from the 1970s version of the movement -- off-grid yurts and solar-powered treehouses that we previously associated with green -- and repositioned it as an urban lifestyle.

Well, thanks to a lawsuit by one couple, The Riverhouse may come to symbolize something else: the empty promises of pre-bubble eco-housing.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the owners of one three-bedroom, three-bath unit there are suing the building's former manager, Sheldrake, and its new manager, Centurion Real Estate Partners, for empty green promises.

Many remorseful Americans are finding their property values have plummeted, their neighborhoods have gone to the dogs, and their neighbors have defaulted right out of their houses. So whose fault is it anyway?

Jonathon and Brandy Miller, of Boynton Beach, Fla., think they have an answer. The couple sued the builder of their townhouse, Hovnanian Enterprises Inc., for selling multiple units in their development to home flippers.

Instead of the mini-utopia they were promised in the development called Firenze, the Millers say, they found it full of transients. Not homeless folks but real estate flippers who bought homes with the sole intent of selling them.

Now it's a ghost town instead of a neighborhood, where vandals have looted everything but the kitchen sink, and maybe even the kitchen sink, in some homes. "The exercise room was burglarized," reports the Wall Street Journal. "The clubhouse remains locked for fear of vandalism. Landscaping deteriorated."

Last week, infamous opponent to Brooklyn's much-maligned Atlantic Yards development project, Daniel Goldstein, surprised some of his supporters when he took a $3 million settlement from the developer who took ownership of his property through eminent domain. (Those who waxed cynical about his cash infusion apparently wanted him to martyr himself by trying to find a decent place to live in the ever-inflated South Brooklyn real estate market).

But Goldstein, it turns out, is not the last resident of the area to refuse to leave. Out of the rubble -- literally -- of the Atlantic Yards construction zone, another family has emerged, according to the NY Post. A woman named Aisha Ahmed, whose ex-husband bought 481 Dean St. in 1988, is asking for $170,000 more than she has been offered -- or $85,000 for each child -- to vacate her property. We don't know what the previous offer was, nor do we know if the property has been officially sold, since no records have been found.

Poor Coney Island. Piece by piece it's been dismantled, rezoned, and shut down, all with the promise of building a bigger, better, newer Coney. Now Crain's NY reports that three acres of Coney Island are up for sale, bringing more uncertainty to the already wobbly prospects for the area.

The owner, apparently, is Horace Bullard, who owns the Kansas Fried Chicken chain (which seems to have its home in the Bronx, not Wichita). And we don't know the reason for the sale, or the price.

We do know that there are some constraints on the purchase. It has been rezoned as an amusement district and thus no condos can go up on the site -- forget your living-room view of the Cyclone.

"Amusements, small retail and entertainment" are what's permitted.

Daniel Goldstein's apartment has appreciated in value by more than just about any other in his Prospect Heights, Brooklyn neighborhood. He bought it for $590,000 in 2003. Seven years later, he'll get $3 million to move out.

Goldstein has been the most vociferous opponent to Atlantic Yards, a massive infill development project that used eminent domain to reclaim several buildings. He was the last holdout, the lone tenant in his building after every other was bought out by the developer, Forest City Ratner. Along with the $3 million, Goldstein has agreed to step down as spokesperson for his anti-Atlantic Yards organization, Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, but not to leave the opposition or stop speaking out against the project, something he's been doing for years. Goldstein and his compatriots took their fight all the way to the Supreme Court, claiming that seizing private property for a private development was an abuse of eminent domain.

The court did not agree. As of March 1st, ownership of his home was transferred to the Empire State Development Corp., which told him to pack up his wife and kid and move out by May 7. Yesterday he reached a settlement with the developer, who will give him $3 million to do so; he initially was offered $510,000 by the state to leave.

It was, perhaps, the best real estate deal in New York City history: For one lousy buck, New York State bought 172 acres of land less than 800 yards from lower Manhattan. Governors Island, the former military base and Coast Guard stomping ground, was going to be, at times, a park, an oasis of affordable housing or a theme park, and always a symbol of the New York's ability to reinvent itself.

But seven years after the sale, pretty much nothing has happened on Governors Island other than the continued decay of its historic buildings and the arrival of picnicking visitors. It has instead become a symbol of the state's dysfunction. So last week, New York City won the right to take over development of the island.

This brownstone for sale is what all the Brooklyn hubbub is about: A mint Brownstone in North Park Slope on one of the desirable "named streets" (as opposed to those with numbers, like 7th Avenue or 3rd Street). This one, fresh on the offering block, is four stories and has its "museum-quality details" intact: wooden pocket doors and marble fireplaces, mahogany built-ins shelves and woodwork. It has more than 4,000 square feet, four bedrooms, a den, and two-and-a-half bathrooms. If for some strange reason that's not enough space, there's a finished studio apartment on the garden level, for your home-office, a mother-in-law apartment or to use as rental income.

Once upon a time, there was an old-fashioned soda fountain on this site, the corner of 9th Street and Prospect Park West in Park Slope, Brooklyn. It was surprisingly unloved, despite its sweet, stained glass and egg creams on the menu, so developers tore it down and built the biggest building they could: four stories overlooking the winding paths of the park.

There was no neighborhood hoopla over the construction, as far as I know, and I for one have always thought the building was perfectly acceptable: not really in conversation with the Italianate brownstones and limestones around it, but quietly proud, with its brick facade and window trim painted French blue. And with the open floor plans, great views and wall of windows, it seemed like a pretty darned nice place to live.

It's hard to wander through Greenwich Village without feeling New York University's presence. Towering over the South Side of Washington Square Park, for instance, is Furman Law School, an enormous building on the site of what was, until 2000, Edgar Allen Poe's modest home; they quashed it to erect their new creation, preserving only the facade. They own most of the townhouse real estate on the north side of the park, too, and have systematically been buying up land and buildings throughout the neighborhood for years.

But piecemeal projects are nothing compared to NYU's grand expansion plans. Although the official language of NYU2031 states that the goal is to "maximize existing assets already owned," WNYC reports that their 20-year vision includes "a new tower at Bleecker Street next to the Silver Towers as well as buildings on Governors Island and in Brooklyn." In all, they'll be adding six million square feet to the campus, mostly to complete the transformation from commuter to residential college. But surely some of it stems from a long competitiveness with Columbia, which has similar plans -- no matter how contested -- to widen its stamp on Upper Manhattan's Morningside Heights.

It would be reductive to say that it took 20 years for Brooklyn Bridge Park to open. It truly is a feat to create a brand new, and quite grand, city park when the Governor of New York State has been closing parks everywhere else. To do it in a recession, when housing prices are still falling and lots of New Yorkers are out of work, is even more of a feat.

True, only 9.5 acres of the total 85 opened this week. But it's 9.5 acres in a part of town -- Dumbo, Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill -- that has a dearth of parkland and public recreation space to offer. Curbed points out that in addition to fields, playgrounds and waterfront walkways -- watch out, Brooklyn Heights Promenade, you have competition -- Pier 1 has a "stairway to nowhere," a granite sculpture of steps that will be a favorite of wedding parties and tourists posing for pictures.

It's a challenge to get your hands on a four-bedroom house in the historic and very, very popular Brooklyn neighborhood of Park Slope. It's pretty much impossible to get one with a driveway, which is one of the things that makes this house such a rarity.

It's semi-attached -- another wonder in brownstone-land -- with four bedrooms and four baths, a total of 1,648 square feet. Yeah, it's not a grand brownstone, some of which can total as much as 5,000 square feet, and it definitely needs some love on the inside: the kitchen and bathroom have some standard, underwhelming Home-Depot-type fixtures, pressboard cabinets and high-1980s tile.