CLM reported recently that one of the crowning jewels of the condo tower market in Vancouver - also Canada’s most active condo market, has stopped construction.

The Ritz-Carlton sent work crews home and told the press the delay would be caused by a need to change the Parkade design. A rather dubious explanation has now been made worse by stories of Realtors not getting paid for sold condos, and the developers hostile remarks that since it is a private project “I don’t …have an obligation to disclose what my private business plans are to you.”

On the heels of this there are now dozens of confirmed projects where funding is either drying up due to the credit crisis, investors are walking away from deposits, and buyers amid forecasts of plummeting housing values are losing interest.

All of this sounds painfully too familiar to condo developers in Miami Florida who experienced the exact same scenario of mass investor speculation and skittish buyers even as the boom was peaking.

In Vancouver this is probably just the beginning of the end for new condo towers and sadly, many more stories of financial losses can be expected.