The Pioneer Press reports from Minnesota. "There may or may not be a real estate bubble in Ramsey County, but there's no denying Ramsey County's housing market is losing some serious air. Tax statements that hit mailboxes this week show that as many single-family homes in St. Paul lost assessed value as gained value for 2007, according to a county report."

"It's the first such widespread decline county officials said they can remember. In each of the previous four years, nine of 10 homes in the city gained value, a Pioneer Press analysis found."

"The news came in the mail for people like Phyllis Folta in St. Paul. Like nearly all of her neighbors, she saw the assessed value of her home slip by thousands of dollars on the tax statement she got this week, while her taxes went up 17 percent."

"'I'm not happy about it,' said Folta. After more than a decade of steady rises in her home's value, she noticed the change immediately. 'I have the statement right here by my phone,' she said. 'I was hoping the county would send something, some kind of explanation.'"

"County assessor Stephen Baker cited a number of factors in the change: Real estate investors have been pulling out of the market; first-time buyers may be sitting on the sidelines and waiting for the market to bottom out; tightening credit may be both putting more homes on the market and winnowing the number of buyers with the wherewithal to buy them."

"'It reflects some uncertainty in the market that we saw,' Baker said. 'It looks like the market is stagnating, and this is where the models told us to go.'"

"'I'd thought we were overvalued as it was,' said Roy Wendt'. He said the 'for sale' signs on his street seem to indicate a slump."

"'There's no way our house was going to sell for what it was assessed for,' he said. 'This is a little more reasonable … but then my taxes went up 16.4 percent anyway.'"

The Journal Sentinel from Wisconsin. "With a little doctoring of loan documents, Patricia Tamillo was 'cured' of multiple disabilities and her meager income was boosted. Urged on by an agent for a subprime lender, Tamillo said, she signed for a $77,000 mortgage on her home in November 2004, listing herself as a 'handy woman' making about $20,000 a year instead of who she is: a 42-year-old cerebral palsy patient whose $569 monthly disability check wouldn't cover the $583.90 monthly payment."

"'They said I'd save $300 a month (over her old mortgage) and get $3,000 cash out,' Tamillo said. 'To a person who's broke, that sounds pretty good.'"

"Now, the paperwork has come back to haunt borrower and lender alike. Tamillo's Milwaukee house, inherited after her mother's death, is in foreclosure. Her lender, Ameriquest Mortgage Co., closed operations centers across the country Thursday amid mounting financial troubles, and is now routing calls to its Orange, Calif., headquarters."

"Tamillo's attorney, Catherine Doyle of Legal Aid Society of Milwaukee Inc., called the loan 'unconscionable and unenforceable.'"

"'They knew she was on disability - they came to her house,' Doyle said. 'They said she earned $1,800 a month as a handywoman, when she's in a wheelchair.'"

"Ameriquest violated the federal Truth in Lending Act on several fronts, Doyle alleged, including not informing Tamillo that the loan carried an adjustable rate ranging from 8.35% to 14.35%, and leaving blank key portions of Tamillo's loan papers."

"Wisconsin has lost its reputation as a stellar borrower. The Mortgage Bankers Association reported this week that Wisconsin's mortgage foreclosure rate hit 1.42% in 2006's fourth quarter. That exceeds the 1.19% national average, which itself reflected a worsening trend."

"It all comes down to greed, some industry experts say. 'There was so much money to be made, and these companies went after it. Home prices have doubled in some cases in the last 10 years. But now these people are going down with the mortgage companies that funded them,' said John Pawarasat, director of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's Employment and Training Institute."

"Veteran mortgage broker Stephen LaDue, president of Affiliated Mortgage Corp. in Wauwatosa, sees more trouble ahead, too. Loans written in the last few years were pinned to expectations of double-digit house price run-ups that have evaporated in the year-old housing slump, he said."

"'The lending market in general has been operating under unrealistic conditions,' LaDue said, 'but the subprime market was institutional psychosis. They found a way to dress it up and sell it to (government) regulators, opening up market access to people who shouldn't have it. And that kind of loan is epidemic.'"

"'When it was individual borrowers losing their houses, there wasn't much attention paid. Now that Wall Street is taking a hit, and companies are going under, the issues are coming more to light,' said Bethany Sanchez, director of community and economic development for the Metropolitan Milwaukee Fair Housing Council."

"A national attitude adjustment is in order too, said Dick Jungen, chief executive officer of Central States Mortgage Corp., whose loan operation is tied to credit unions."

"'There's almost an inalienable right to homeownership in people's minds these days. It's like a national goal,' he said. 'The mortgage industry responded by finding different ways for people to do that, and for a while, it worked. But maybe there's a point at which some people just shouldn't try.'"