Ms. DiMartino at Dallas News has this on credit standards. "Lo and behold, housing is a concern on Wall Street. Even the stock market's cheerleaders have had to acquiesce. The fact is, any economist worth his salt has been concerned for 15 months. That's how long new-home inventories have been hitting record highs."

"Maybe what we should be asking is how inventories, of both new and existing homes, grew to their current records. The answer gets to the root cause of the housing bubble, the credit binge."

"Consider that only one of the 53 banks surveyed by the Federal Reserve through the three months ended in April said it had tightened lending standards. About 10 percent had the gumption to loosen standards further. With no lending standards to speak of, it's been almost impossible to corral the speculation that drove sales and home prices to their bubbly heights."

"In the meantime, the holes in the bubble continue to grow. A recent report by Moody's Investors Service said home equity delinquencies had risen for a second straight quarter. And this is just the beginning of the trend, something Fed officials recognize. On Thursday, both Chairman Ben Bernanke and Chicago Fed President Michael Moskow voiced concerns about the potential for lax lending standards to harm the economy."

"At issue are nontraditional mortgages that carry adjustable rates or allow the balances to grow with time. (Hint to lenders: Loans are actually supposed to be paid down.) The fact that such nontraditional terms now account for one in five mortgages outstanding suggests someone's let the fox into the chicken house."

The Record reports on the appraisal business. "Kirk DeJesus, a Stockton real-estate appraiser, echoes the sentiments of others in the local real-estate appraisal scene: his business is a shadow of the frantic work scene since a home-sales slowdown hit in the fall. 'It's week-to-week, to be honest with you,' he said."

"DeJesus estimates business has dropped 45 percent since the summer. 'I knew it was coming,' he said. 'I kind of got the feel that prices were getting out of control. I knew something had to change.'"

"Real-estate brokers and agents said that high prices and rising interest rates cooled the hot market and also pushed real-estate investors into putting their properties for sale when they concluded that the equity escalation had topped out. Nearly 3,500 resale houses were on the market last month, up from 935 the previous April."

"Jim Clark, an appraiser in Stockton, said that before last summer, business was so good that 'it was chaos. It slowed down very fast,' he added. Though business is still good, he said, it's down by half."

"One part of the appraisal business is starting to pick up, though, he said. 'Foreclosures are becoming the new thing now,' he said. 'We hadn't done any foreclosures for three or four years and, now all of sudden, we're getting hit with them.'"

"Ron Simon, who said he has done 22,000 single family home appraisals in 20 years in the business, thinks the market is going through a necessary adjustment. 'We actually needed this to make the real-estate market healthy,' he said. 'The way it was going was a formula for disaster down the road.'"

"This spring and summer will be not too bad, he said, while fall and winter will have some 'falls and trips.'"