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Three of the four condominium towers with the highest number of foreclosures in the first three quarters of 2007 are on Brickell Avenue, a report from consulting firm .

The report, showing the 10 buildings with the most foreclosures in Miami-Dade and Broward counties, was compiled from county court records.

The Club at Brickell - with 54 foreclosures - has the most foreclosures of any building Miami-Dade and Broward counties. The Vue at Brickell is No. 3 on the list - with 49 foreclosures - and The Jade at Brickell comes in fourth with 42.

The three towers account for 37 percent of the foreclosure actions in the 10 buildings, and more than $113 million in loans and fees owed to lenders and condo associations, the report says.

Condo Vultures principal Peter Zalewski said the buildings exemplify three types of condos. The Jade is a luxury building built before the boom, The Club was built for working professional and The Vue is a conversion.

"You have three different samples and they're all running into trouble," he said. "I think this an early sign of what we're going to see on the Brickell Avenue/Biscayne Boulevard stretch."

The stretch between Miami Beach north to Sunny Isles Beach and west to Aventura is also studded with foreclosures.

Oceanview - a condominium conversion on Collins Avenue in northern Sunny Isles Beach - is fifth on the list, with 41 units in some stage of foreclosure, totaling $13 million in debt owed to creditors, the report says. In Aventura, the Parc Central Aventura condo ranks seventh, with 34 actions filed for a total of $11.9 million, and the Mirador in South Beach is No. 9 on the list, with 27 units in foreclosure and $9.1 million owed to creditors.

Blue Lagoon in Miami also made the list - with 38 foreclosures and $11.7 million owed to creditors - as did Shoma Condos/Townhomes at Keys Cove in Homestead - with 33 foreclosures and $6 million owed to creditors.

Only two buildings in Broward County made the list: the Palm-Aire Country Club in Pompano Beach - at No. 2, with 53 foreclosures and $5 million owed to creditors - and Sailboat Pointe in Oakland Park - No. 10, with 26 foreclosures at $1.4 million owed

Everybody agrees that the housing market is drifting down from record highs. But is it coming in for a soft landing, or is it about to crash?

That's what economists debated at the National Association of Home Builders' spring construction forecast conference, held on Thursday in Washington, D.C. Attended by building-product manufacturers, builders and others involved in the housing industry, the semiannual event covered the likely trajectory of housing prices, starts and sales over the next year or two.

Although most of the economists on the panels have close ties to the industry, none was projecting a continuation of the five-year housing boom, which peaked last July. Nearly all described the housing market as "in transition," although they couldn't agree on how much favorable factors like strong overall job growth, low unemployment and moderate inflation will be able to mitigate the drag of rising mortgage interest rates, lack of housing affordability and wage stagnation.

Even the most optimistic panelists were guarded in their expectations for the coming two years. NAHB Chief Economist Dave Seiders predicted the rate of home-price appreciation would slow to 4% by the end of 2006, only a third of last year's pace. In the first quarter of 2007, he expects new and existing single-family home sales to fall 5.8% to a total of 6.59 million units and single-family starts to drop 13.4% to 1.15 million units. "It will be a general cooling process, not a thud," he says.

Similarly, Michael Moran, chief economist of Daiwa Securities America, Inc., pointed out that while there's "little sign of stress" in discretionary spending, and most people are able to keep up with their loan payments and other expenses, personal savings rates fell into negative territory last year. "This can't continue for the long term," he says.

Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Economy.com, pointed out that home prices have soared so high in many parts of the country that they're out of reach for many buyers. "Affordability has collapsed to where it was in the ‘90s, despite very aggressive lending," he says. The rapid rise in interest rates over the past few months have become a barrier for many first-time buyers, he says, and are prompting many short-term home flippers to sell their holdings. That could lead to localized crashes, which he defines as a peak-to-trough price decline greater than 10%, in markets like Washington, D.C., the Jersey Shore, Miami, Las Vegas and Orlando, Fla.

Housing consultant Thomas Lawler, former senior vice president for risk policy at Fannie Mae, notes that flattened or declining home prices are already apparent in places like Northern Virginia, Maine and Massachusetts. "They turned more quickly than anyone thought." He adds that preliminary data suggests that aggregate home prices were flat in the first quarter of this year compared to the previous quarter -- the slowest growth rate since mid-1996. Even so, he says, housing remains regional and prices aren't falling everywhere -- indeed, they're rising in Texas, Tennessee, Oklahoma and the western portions of North and South Carolina, partly due to local job growth and demand for housing from hurricane refugees.

While local economies have always been the prime movers of housing markets, increasingly, global factors are coming into play, the panelists said. Outsourcing has eliminated more than 3 million American jobs in manufacturing, depressing housing in the Rust Belt, while mortgage rates are dependent on foreigners' willingness to buy U.S. debt.  And, rising energy prices abroad slash consumers' buying power here. These days, the economists said, it's important to frame local and national housing trends in the broadest possible context. "World economies are more in synchronization than ever before," says James Glassman, managing director of J.P.Morgan Chase & Company