When people are lining up overnight to put down chunks of money to buy a condo that does not yet exist - as they were in Miami as well as other places - you should be running away as fast as you can.

Condos on which they made deposits of up to $1,000 a square foot in 2006 are now selling for $125 to $350 a foot, said Jack McCable, a real estate consultant in Deerfield Beach, Florida.