The Press Herald reports from Maine. "A mortgage broker recently left a message on Jennifer Richardson's home answering machine suggesting it was time to refinance again. This time, she didn't call back. Since she bought her one-level ranch in Lewiston six years ago for $73,000, she has refinanced five times and has incurred $58,000 in fees and penalties."

"She said she now understands that brokers sometimes give people advice that is not in their best interest. 'I have been misled and taken advantage of,' said Richardson."

"Since the housing market began to decline last year and the number of defaults has risen, investors have begun to lose interest in risky loans. The industry has begun rapidly tightening credit standards."

"Several states, including Massachusetts, Rhode Island, North Carolina, New Mexico and Ohio, have recently imposed 'onerous' new restrictions on loans, and that has also hurt the subprime market, said Jim Demers, president of the New England Financial Services Association. He said the Maine Legislature has to take a 'balanced' approach so that lenders don't abandon the subprime market."

"'Your highest risk people,' he said, 'are going to find less credit options available because lenders won't make those loans.'"

The Concord Monitor from New Hampshire. "A cooling real estate market, rising energy prices and stagnant wages have pushed more homeowners into foreclosure in the past year. The number of foreclosures nearly doubled last year in Merrimack County, jumping from 56 in 2005 to 100 in 2006, according to Merrimack County Register of Deeds Kathi Guay."

"The numbers aren't looking too good so far this year either, she said. As of mid-February, 29 foreclosures had already been recorded in the county. (In all of 2004, just 32 foreclosures were recorded.)"

"Adjustable rate mortgages with a fixed payment for the first two years looked attractive when the real estate market was still booming and interest rates were low. But now that those fixed rates are ending."

The Taunton Gazette from Massachusetts. "Have we or have we not hit bottom? That continues to be the real estate question of the hour. Asked to predict when the market might hit bottom, the symbolic point when sellers' asking prices have fully adjusted to market conditions and begin to rise again, (broker) Gail Carter refused to speculate. 'Oh boy, I have no idea,' said Carter, in Assonet."

"Massachusetts Association of Realtors president Doug Azarian said regardless of the drop-off in sales and selling prices last year things could have been worse. 2006, he said, turned out to be the third best year for sales recorded by MAR."

"But the record sales pace of 2001 to 2004, he cautioned, should be considered a thing of the past. 'I suggest that the seller price property to the current market, and not be concerned with what they could have gotten a year ago,' Azarian said."

The Connecticut Business News Journal. "When it's completed, the 310,000-square-foot structure along I-91 in Wallingford will be a showpiece. But in the first weeks of February, workers took down signs trumpeting the future owner of the building; Middletown-based Mortgage Lenders Network (MLN)."

"Even as hardhats braved freezing temperatures, Mortgage Lenders filed for bankruptcy, then revealed its intentions to liquidate."

"Poor underwriting and risky financial moves have added to the woes of many mortgage lenders, says Allen Puwalski, senior financial analyst at the Center for Financial Research & Analysis in Maryland."

"'It's a combination of a lot of competition in the sub-prime lending space during 2005 and '06,' Puwalski says. 'They started loosening their underwriting standards - the kinds of loans they were underwriting became dependent on home prices appreciating at a pretty rapid pace. When that stopped, the underwriting issues came back to haunt many of the players.'"

"One former employee, who asked not to be named because he's still looking for a job, says the company's problems were evident much earlier. 'They just played with the numbers - that's the feeling I got,' says the worker, who began working at MLN in 2005. One sign of trouble, he says, was that MLN could close only on a very small percentage of the prime mortgage applications he submitted."

"For homeowners, the failure of firms like Mortgage Lenders Network means it's going to be that much harder to buy a house if your credit is less than stellar. 'It's going to bring some pricing power back to the larger remaining lenders,' says Puwalski. 'It's going to cost more for the sub-prime homeowner to have a mortgage.'"

The Nation News. "An unusual housing crisis is affecting Barbadians in New York, often causing them to lose homes they bought less than two or three years ago. According to mortgage brokers, court officials, elected representatives and real estate agents in the city, Bajans and other West Indians are among the hardest hit."

"Take the case of a Bajan who was on Cloud 9 in New York two years ago. She had just bought a multiple-dwelling house, a 'real bargain", complete with rental apartments, low mortgage payments and a two-bedroom unit into which she moved with her children. 'It was my way of living the American dream,' she said recently."

"Now, that dream may be turning into a nightmare. The adjustable mortgage rate she negotiated with the bank allowed the financial institution to change it in two years, but when that happened the rental income was so low that it hardly made a difference now that the monthly payments have skyrocketed. 'I am in real danger of losing the property,' she confided."

"That story is being heard repeatedly in New York City these days. 'It's a real crisis in our community,' said New York state senator John Sampson of Brooklyn. 'Real estate agents and some mortgage finance companies are taking advantage of the desire among West Indians to acquire a piece of property.'"

"A city court officer who requested anonymity because he wasn't authorised to speak on the matter, said that foreclosures were a serious problem in the Caribbean immigrant community. 'We see them almost every day,' he said. 'It's something that needs attention. It's at crisis stage. People are losing their life's investments.'"

The Asbury Park Press from New Jersey. "Homeowners who had been using the rising equity in their homes as the foundation for building wealth couldn't be too happy with the new quarterly report on home prices in the Shore area."

"The median selling price for homes in the region that includes Monmouth and Ocean counties fell 4.2 percent in the fourth quarter of last year, according to the National Association of Realtors. That's the biggest dropoff since 1991."

"Fourth-quarter numbers compiled by the Otteau Valuation Group for Monmouth and Ocean counties were even worse than those provided by the Realtors association."

"The numbers shouldn't have come as any great surprise. The softening of the market had been apparent for months, a fact underscored by the epidemic of 'For Sale' spreading throughout many neighborhoods in New Jersey. Many of those signs have faded with age."

"Has the market bottomed out? Most analysts believe the worst is over, even though the unsold inventory of homes remains high. 'The positive may well be that people are finally reducing the prices in order to sell their homes, and ultimately that's going to set the stage for renewed expansion in housing,' said economist James Hughes at Rutgers University."