You can't accuse Florida economist Hank Fishkind of being a cheerleader for the housing industry anymore.

Just returned from a Tuesday afternoon speech Fishkind gave in Tampa before a massive crowd of mostly retail real estate brokers, landlords and tenants.

Fishkind predicts housing and population growth won't resume strongly in Florida until 2011. He did, however, predict that the last big pustule of foreclosures will burst this year, followed by a reduction in mortgage defaults. Another 400,000 Florida properties will fall into foreclosure this year, he said.

"This will be the last real ugly year," Fishkind told the crowd.

Fishkind reiterated that Florida actually lost population if you count only migration within the U.S. What bailed us out last year, and gave us a net gain in population, was immigration. Orlando is doing better than Tampa.

Another fact that stood out was the depth of the housing depression in Lee County, namely Cape Coral. It's such an overbuilt backwater that Fishkind assumes many neighborhoods will remain wastelands for the foreseeable future.

"Some of that housing won't be absorbed at any price," he said.

Pretty scary stuff. Fortunately, Hillsborough County has only half the foreclosures of Lee County.