And that bottom is approaching, says McCabe. “I keep hearing stories of people not making payments on the mortgage for their homes or condos for a year, and they haven’t been foreclosed on,” McCabe says. When the banks do begin to sweep through their backlog of nonperforming loans, all that extra inventory should gut prices even more. That’s when the vultures will feast.

McCabe spoke at a distressed property conference in Miami earlier this year. The vast majority of attendees were potential buyers with access to billions of dollars. While only a few splashy deals have gone through up till now, those investors are still out there, waiting, biding their time until the price is right. “All of this is ready to happen,” McCabe says.

But what about Sarasota and Manatee counties? Even though the region meets many of the criteria Martinez considers important to attract vulture investors, some doubt whether big-money bundle deals will come to the area. “Sarasota is more of a conservative community. It’s not an investors’ market,” says Norman Kerr, who was involved in planning the now-defunct CityPointe project in north Sarasota. And besides, the Southwest Florida market might just be too small, he says.  “If you bought 100 units or 200 units, because the demand isn’t that big for it, it would take that much more time to find someone to actually buy.”

The question of demand is a big one, and the region’s job loss numbers have discouraged investment. According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Bradenton-Sarasota-Venice market experienced a 3.7 percent drop in employment from May 2007 to May 2008, ranking the region fourth in the nation for job loss. 

“If there aren’t jobs, then there’s less of a reason to move to those areas, and vacancy rates will be higher,” says Martinez, who pegs the “dire” employment situation on Florida’s west coast as the main reason he and his investors haven’t made moves on Sarasota or Manatee counties.

Still, some vultures are sniffing the air. Marc Rasmussen, a SKY Sotheby’s International Realty representative in Sarasota, says he received a flurry of interest from big-money investors looking to buy distressed properties at wholesale prices several months ago, but the interest tapered off because the vultures weren’t getting the prices they wanted. Michael Padgett, vice president and owner of Vision Homes of Southwest Florida, was approached as well, but again the numbers hadn’t fallen far enough to cut a deal.

Nonetheless, McCabe believes that vulture deals will happen here, and he predicts that Lakewood Ranch could be ground zero. Zalewski says buyer groups need to pick up trophy properties in high-profile markets such as Miami to satisfy investors before pursuing less prestigious, but perhaps more profitable, bundles in other parts of Florida.

But Mike Morgan, who offers research and analysis through his firm, the Morgan Florida Real Estate Group, doesn’t think that vultures will clean up the real estate mess here. He argues that the market is nowhere near its nadir. “We are going into a depression,” he says. One of his clients recently expressed interest in some foreclosed properties being offered at 40 cents on the dollar. Morgan told him to wait. Sure, the prices were low, but Morgan predicted they were only going to dip lower, perhaps to 20 cents on the dollar. “We’re not at the bottom. We’re at the eye of the hurricane, and these guys who are vultures are going to get sick.”

Morgan might not believe the hype, but those who have dealt with these buyer groups know how serious they are, and how seriously they guard their secrets. McCabe has met several vulture investors and collects their business cards. “I know they’re like a principal in the firm,” he says, “and there’s no title on the business card, and sometimes there’s not even an e-mail address.” Padgett had to sign proprietary agreements not to disclose the names of the funds that contacted him. Like their animal kingdom counterparts, vulture investors like to stay aloft, high above it all, waiting to buzz in low when conditions are right.