The Lennar Homes 51% off Sale.

The Palm Beach Post reports:

They sit on a just-built Martin County block south of Stuart where children glide on scooters alongside stroller-pushing moms, and where residents occasionally greet each other as "neighbor."
A splitting market
Scripps archive How rising costs have divided the market between those who benefit

But the prices buyers paid for the brand-new homes on Fleming Way tell the tale of what happens when a market cools.

In a handful of deals during the last several months, Miami-based builder Lennar Homes slashed prices on the street by as much as 51 percent, unloading the last of its houses in the Martin's Crossing development to select investors.

That means residents such as Mark and Kim Andersen, who locked in $506,400 when they signed a contract for their five-bedroom home in early 2005, are living just down the street from a nearly identical five-bedroom home that Lennar sold to another buyer for $250,000 in late October.

That buyer, Howard Fishman, flipped the home three days later, reselling it for $425,000, records show.

Industry experts say big price cuts aren't uncommon as builders look to make sales in a sluggish market - what's striking in the case of Martin's Crossing is their magnitude.

Prices don't always go one way.