Taylor Woodrow said yesterday it was halting a housing development in Florida and cutting spending elsewhere in the US. The Guardian. Financial Times

Taylor Woodrow bought the Clearwater Beach site near Tampa in 2005 for $31.5m (£16m), and cleared it for a $180m high-rise apartment block. But now it says sales are so poor that it will wait for the market to recover before beginning development.

'The spring selling season for our high-rise tower division in Florida has been very poor,' Ian Smith, chief executive, told the company's annual general meeting in London. 'Market weakness persists in California and particularly Florida and conditions have worsened in certain submarkets within those states.'

The 'sunshine state', beloved of Britons seeking a holiday home abroad, has been hit by some of the biggest drops in prices as a boom in new building and sharp rises in interest rates combined to scare off buyers, despite the weak dollar making US property cheaper for foreigners.

Figures out last week showed sales of existing homes across America fell at their fastest pace in nearly two decades