Ettore and Larisa Costanzo are showing off their new house, which they love madly. Now if only they could get the keys and go inside, instead of peering in the windows like a couple of Peeping Toms.
The house, on which the couple made a down payment of $88,820, is empty. Their belongings are in storage. They live, unhappily, in a hotel. “It’s very upsetting, not to be allowed in our own house,” said Ms. Costanzo, a Russian immigrant. “Please take our money and let us move in.” Their builder is Levitt & Sons, a unit of the Levitt Corporation, which ran out of cash in October and declared bankruptcy in November. All work on this planned 460-home development for retirees, grandly named Seasons at Prince Creek West, has ceased. The Levitt employees were laid off, the subcontractors put down their tools, and the Costanzos found themselves in limbo. The collapse of Levitt, the first big home builder to fail in the current slump, illustrates how the turmoil in real estate is spreading far beyond subprime borrowers who cannot pay their mortgages. Levitt had a fabled brand, decades of experience and enthusiastic customers with good credit, but none of that was enough to save it. http://tinyurl.com/yos53x Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AsburyPark/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AsburyPark/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
