Here's a childhood fantasy if ever there was one: to live in a high-rise luxury apartment building with 24-hour access to a swimming pool, and no one around but your family. You could pretend all sorts of things, like, being the king of a castle or the captain of an enormous, vertical spaceship.

It's a little different if you're a 45-year-old adult from the New York area, who's grown accustomed to having other people around all the time, whether you like it or not. Indeed, you're likely to go insane. Just think of Jack Nicholson in The Shining.

So perhaps it's unfortunate that Victor Vangelakos isn't a child, but a New Jersey native who bought a condo in Fort Myers, Florida with his wife four years ago, only to find himself living there today with not a single neighbor. The 32-story building, the AP reports, has become a symbol of the foreclosure crisis: would-be tenants reneged on their intentions to buy units there, opting instead for another building nearby with more people in it. The Vangelakoses, meanwhile, are held to their purchase by a stipulation by their mortgage lender.

Where I live, in Brooklyn, massive new condo buildings have sprouted like mushrooms after a heavy rain in recent years, and from what I can see and hear, they've seen similarly dismal success. I don't believe any of them have only one tenant, but they certainly aren't full -- or even half-full.

Maybe the best way to ensure that the housing crisis doesn't get any worse is to just start buying up these orphan properties. This handy website can help you find the home for you, but bear in mind: not all homes affected by the mortgage/foreclosure crisis are brand-new luxury pads. Many of them are the former dream homes of hard-working people who got suckered by banks, and then saw their dreams dashed in a matter of months.

Some others, meanwhile, harbor ghosts you may not want to live with, such as a former meth-making operation. A friend of mine in Minneapolis recently found a .22 Beretta in the rafters of her new home, which she and her husband and young son moved into last month. A cop explained to her that it's not uncommon to find guns and even drugs in former "dope houses."

As she wrote on her Facebook page, "I knew the house was dope, but come on."

[Image: AP]