A housing report from the Arizona Republic. "Those mountain vistas, star-filled skies and expensive furnishings in Ahwatukee Foothills are coming at a steep price - sometimes of the home itself. Homeowners, many strapped with some of the highest credit-card debt in the Valley, are falling behind on their mortgage payments and facing foreclosure at nearly record rates."

"'Basically, it's something we saw coming last summer, and even up to a year ago,' said Rock Argabright, an agent in Ahwatukee. 'Home buyers were signing up for no-money-down, adjustable-interest-rate mortgages, so they have no equity in their homes. They trapped themselves as the value of their homes started sliding. It really was written on the wall, it was going to happen.'"

"The problem is that most everyone's largest investment is their home, and real estate values have fallen over the past year."

"'What they've done is gotten a second (mortgage) on their home and lived on the second. Then maybe the wife got pregnant, or someone lost their job, and now they have to refinance and their house value is slowly sliding,' said Argabright. 'One of the saving factors is that our home prices haven't fallen as much in Ahwatukee as other parts of the Valley.'"

"Scott Nelson, a certified financial planner in Ahwatukee, believes many residents got into trouble by buying too much of a house."

The Review Journal from Las Vegas. "In Las Vegas, local research firm SalesTraq reported 2,581 new home closings in October, down 22 percent from the same month a year ago. It was the fourth straight month of declining sales."

"'The future seems clear,' said real estate consultant Steve Bottfeld. 'October is not the end of the buyer's market in Las Vegas. But October data does tell us that the Las Vegas housing market is much closer to the end of the buyer's market than most people believe.'"

The Financial Times. "If you buy a house this month in Nevada's bone-dry Las Vegas valley you can probably get a swimming pool and a Florida vacation thrown in for the price of a new home."

"The perks are among the incentives being offered by property developers desperate to fill tens of thousands of homes that stand empty in the billowing dust after a whirlwind of speculative construction swept the southern and western states."

"Anna Klinger, a Nevada real estate agent, says: 'The developers are repenting for what they did. They built too much, too fast.'"

"The large builders admit that the slowdown has been more severe than they expected at the start of this year. David Rosenberg, chief US economist at Merrill Lynch, says: 'I think the latest barrage of data told you that housing hasn't bottomed. We're not going to hit bottom for the entire sector until the tail-end of 2007.'"

The Nevada Appeal. "Housing market information isn't cheery. A weakening national housing market will continue to be felt throughout the nation in 2007, said John Mitchell, western region economist with U.S. Bank."

"Some local residential real estate agents are worried, but they've heard this prediction before. 'It's exactly what we know,' said Chris Kallas, a Realtor in Minden, after the meeting. 'I don't want to be negative. We're hoping for the correction to finish.'"

"The Carson City housing market hit a high in 2005 when the median price of a single-family home jumped 34 percent over a year to $348,500. It has inched down to $310,000 in September, according to the MLS."

"Broker Mike Veatch said recent 10 percent to 15 percent price declines are eased by the huge gains seen in the last few years. 'My view is we are returning to a normal real estate market in this area,' he said. 'As far as a slow down, we have hit the bottom of the trough.'"