Housing Crisis takes down Levitt

[richlevy]

From here,

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.

Levitt built the first Levittown in New York in 1947. It is not a fly-by-night builder, or even a regional builder. It is a national builder with over a half century of experience and one of the strongest brands in the country.