TAMPA - A real estate investor accused of encumbering more than 200 titles in Florida in order to keep the properties from selling is banned from using such practices to make deals in the Sunshine State, Leon County Circuit Judge William L. Gary ruled Thursday.

The Florida attorney general’s office, which investigated and litigated the case, said Todd Teal filed fraudulent affidavits that prevented owners in 28 counties from selling their property to anyone but him. Seventeen of the properties were in Hillsborough, Pasco and Hernando counties.

Vacancy rates for rental homes are the lowest in recent memory, thanks to record foreclosures in the Denver area, officials said Wednesday.Only four out of every 100 non-apartment unit rentals - including single-family homes, town-homes, condos and triplexes - were vacant in the second quarter, according to a report released by the Colorado Division of Housing.

The second-quarter 4 percent vacancy rate is the lowest since Gordon Von Stroh, a University of Denver business professor, began compiling the report six years ago.

In the second quarter of 2006, the vacancy rate stood at 7.1 percent.

For nearly 20 years Alan Greenspan, as head of America’s central bank, was the most powerful economic central planner the world has ever seen. What did he do? Roughly twice a year, the Federal Reserve chairman had to make a substantive decision about whether to raise, lower or keep the level of U.S. interest rates the same.