The Denver Post reports from Colorado. "Weld County homeowners saw their home values decline as the nation's housing market hit the brakes hard in the second quarter, according to a report. In Weld County, the housing market isn't dead, but it barely has a heartbeat, said Pam Worster, a broker associate in Greeley."

"Buyers who bought within the past three years without putting any money down, a common practice, can't sell for what they owe. Foreclosures follow, putting further downward pressure on prices."

"Worster, who calls Greeley the 'bargain capital of Colorado,' said she has seen $200,000 homes going for $180,000. 'There is a trickle of buyers,' she said."

"Slower Front Range gains were expected, given that home values have outstripped income gains for several years running, said economist Bill Kendall in Denver. 'Over the last dozen years, incomes have gone up only half as fast as home prices,' he said."

The Deseret News in Utah. "In a sign that Utah's housing frenzy also might be at a turning point, housing prices in the St. George metropolitan area have started to soften."

"'Absolutely, the market has turned down here,' said Allan Carter, director of developer services for Southern Utah Title Co. 'There are whole subdivisions filled with spec homes that in one case don't have a single home sold.'"

"Carter blames southern Utah's wild housing ride on real estate investors, who bought up hundreds of properties with the intention of flipping them. Last summer, roughly 40 percent of people purchasing properties in the St. George market were investors, Carter said."

"And Carter believes the Salt Lake region is prone to what he calls a 'train wreck' now hitting Las Vegas and Phoenix. His advice to people looking to buy a home in the Salt Lake region is to wait until next fall. 'You guys are going to hit the wall between April and June next year,' Carter said. 'It's a huge problem.'"

"'Florida, California and Arizona, are under stress right now, with prices coming down a little bit,'said Jeff Thredgold, an economic consultant to Zions Bank. 'The market is prone to excess, and they got a little carried away. In our market, we lagged behind for so long..we've talked for some time about the fact that Utah real estate would do well for 2006, 2007 and 2008.'"

"Carter said what Thredgold and other economists are missing is the effect of the investor presence in the market. 'It's the same element that Vegas missed,' Carter said. 'He's assuming that when a home sells it's being bought by somebody that holds a job and will live in the home. But the people that bought the homes, bought them with the idea of putting them back on the market. So now in Vegas you've got 10,000 homes that have never been lived in.'"

"Clark Ivory, CEO of Ivory Homes, the state's largest homebuilder, agrees that investors in the Salt Lake region are creating what he calls artificial demand. 'In many cases when the investors came in the builders couldn't supply the inventory fast enough, so the prices escalated even more rapidly, which brings in even more speculators and investors,' Ivory said."

"'Builders don't realize that many of those people that were buying their homes had no intention of occupying them. The builders are ramping up production to meet a new demand, which is an artificial demand. The whole thing is artificially inflated, and then all of a sudden there is this surge of supply,' he said."