The Pioneer Press reports from Minnesota. "Welcome to an ultra-competitive spring housing market. Motivated sellers are cutting prices. Axing in some cases. And that new willingness to move the product marks the end of last year's stare-down between buyer and seller, and could spell a sharper falloff in area home prices over the next year."

"Chuck Eckberg was stunned when his clients last week announced they wanted to drop the $419,000 price on their house by $20,000. Price reductions are something sellers typically resist like a colonoscopy. 'I didn't think we needed to reduce at all,' said Eckberg. 'They're trying to beat other sellers to the punch because they don't want to suffer through anything they saw, or many experienced, last year.'"

"Serious price reductions that typically don't start until closer to the July 4 make-it-or-break-it point, are happening now, Eckberg said. 'I think people are finally saying 'I get it,' said broker Steve Hyland."

"Part of it is a plethora of offerings to choose from. For-sale listings around the Twin Cities have swelled again to 28,362. And that doesn't capture all the empty newly built homes around."

"Susan Thacker will be singing if her house just sells. (She) and her husband first listed the house in December for $990,940 after months of extensive improvements. Three price reductions later they're asking $862,000. They just want to move to their new house, Thacker said."

"The cuts were tough, but necessary, Thacker said, even though the house is paid off."

"'We had a sense from everything we've read and watched on TV, and seen on the Internet, that the real estate market was as it is - just very, very sluggish,' she said. 'You don't have to like the reality of price cuts to accept it.'"

"It's a similar story in West St. Paul. Jean Wirsig, a retired math professor, has been trying to sell her two bedroom, two bath condo since she listed it at $178,900 in 2005. She cut the price another $1,000 last week to $154,000, a deal, said her agent, Mary Farrelly, given its impeccable condition, wooded location and spot high atop one of West St. Paul's Signal Hills."

"'People don't even come to look,' said Wirsig."

"It's not just homeowners grappling with the slow market. Lenders, trying to minimize their losses on foreclosed houses they've repossessed, appear more willing to cut prices too, agents say. Craig Murphy, an agent who deals exclusively with lenders and foreclosures, agreed that lenders are starting to price their foreclosures more realistically from go. 'We're seeing the prices come down pretty good,' said Murphy. 'It just takes time for them to come to grips.'"

"Anna Green has had her St. Francis house on the market for six months. She keeps an eye on other for-sale signs in the neighborhood, she said, and notices when 'reduced' signs appear. So the Greens reduced their $425,000 original price. And reduced. By early March, they were at $400,000. 'That's kind of the frame of mind of the buyers, of waiting for things to be reduced,' said Green."

"She and her husband, who works in construction, designed it together. He built it himself. They need the money, Green said. Her husband's construction work has become too sporadic."

"'We're hoping with the nice weather coming back it will start picking up,' said Green. 'It's one of those things, keeping your fingers crossed and hoping for the best.'"

The Journal Sentinel from Wisconsin. "Wisconsinites have paid dearly for the wild success of the quick-but-costly subprime loan trade. Homeowners across the state took on $1.6 billion in subprime loans in 2005 alone, the most recent year for which figures are available."

"Those loans accounted for nearly 21% of the state's mortgage market and a stunning 34% of Milwaukee County's, federal Home Mortgage Disclosure Act records show."

"This state is now 11th worst in the nation on loan defaults, based on its fourth-quarter 2006 foreclosure rate of 1.46%, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported. Legal actions to seize property for unpaid debt surged 34% last year and are running 27% higher in this year's first two months, according to ForeclosuresWI.com."

"'We're seeing the fallout from the inappropriate loans of '05 and '06,' said Todd G. Clausen, after mapping the numbers attached to all those broken dreams. 'I think that's what the big increase in foreclosures is all about - adjustable-rate mortgages, high interest rates, high fees,' Clausen said. "I don't think people realized just how high their payments would go.'"

"The Wisconsin Department of Financial Institutions records show 112 consumer complaints as of mid-March, compared with 358 in all of 2006. 'Some people say, 'They should have never made me this loan,' said Michael J. Mach, the department's banking division administrator. 'Some say, 'I didn't understand what I was getting.'"

"Milwaukee homeowner Scott A. Schlipp counts himself as one who escaped. In seeking to consolidate the mortgage with some credit card debt, he turned to one of the nation's top-volume subprime lenders."

"'I said, 'I don't care what you charge me, I only care what I owe each month, and I don't want my payments to change,' Schlipp said. 'They offered me a 4.75 percent rate, without an appraisal, all over the phone. But they lied. When I got the papers, I checked the APR (annual percentage rate) and found it was variable. The range was from that low all the way to 18 percent. And I'm like, 'I'm not signing this.'"

"Schlipp said he has lived happily ever after, on a 6% fixed-rate loan from another lender. 'I laughed when I read they shut down here,' he said. 'They were definitely trying to pull something.'"

The Quad Cities Online from Illinois. "Mortgage foreclosures spiked in Rock Island County and inched upward in Scott County in 2006, and are on track for another barn burner if all else stays equal, court records indicate."

"Rock Island attorney Bruce Buckrop said he has definitely seen a rise in the number of his clients facing financial difficulty because of adjustable rate mortgages. Some borrowers are wooed into an adjustable interest rate by an attractive low starting rate of 5 percent interest that increases six months later to 8 percent and then 11 percent, he said."

"An 11 percent mortgage rate is 'a killer rate' that can take a $400 a month house payment to $950, Mr. Buckrop said."

"'I don't know if we've seen the worst of it,' said Brian Boyles, president of real estate lending for American Bank & Trust Co., Davenport."

From Chicago Business in Illinois. "With inventory stacking up and few buyers in sight, home sellers are starting to sweeten the deal in the hope of enticing casual house hunters into signing on the dotted line. 'We all need buyers quite a bit,' says Tom Gilfillan, a northwest suburban agent."

"'I'm telling all of my sellers, give me six months,' says Barbara Floyd, (an) agent who's sold real estate in Chicago for more than 20 years. 'It's taking longer to sell. You can't sugarcoat it.'"

"With homes languishing on the market for an average of 131 days, the supply of homes for sale in Cook County as of last week had risen 38% from last year to 43,339, according to the MLS of Northern Illinois."

"The oversupply situation isn't lost on those few buyers out there, says Carl Tannenbaum, chief economist at LaSalle Bank in Chicago. The result: a game of chicken."

"'If buyers sense that there are going to be bargains out there, and a lot of sellers are very reluctant to lower (prices)...the result of that is the waiting game,' he says."