The Hartford Courant reports from Connecticut. "The Southington homeowners took a gamble on their housing purchase, believing they would be in the three-bedroom home for years and, therefore, taking out a home equity loan to make some improvements. The couple, hoping to avoid foreclosure, are now listing their house for sale."

"'It looks like they are going to lose about $18,000 on their house,' said Tom Abbate, an agent in Middletown, who is handling the listing, which will be about $225,000. 'They are trying to avoid foreclosure and saying, 'What do I do?'"

"During the last six months of 2006, foreclosures rose sharply in Connecticut - jumping about 36 percent, compared with the same time a year earlier."

"Cheryl Keithan, a foreclosure expert, said the impact of foreclosures on the housing market is only going to worsen in the next six months because foreclosure resolutions can take months to finalize."

"'The pipeline is filling up for me,' said Keithan, who has handled foreclosures for the past 14 years. 'Foreclosures dropped significantly in 2004 and 2005, but by the end of last year it started picking up again. By summer, you are going to see a lot of these listings, and that is only going to further slow down the market.'"

"Michael Menatian, president of a mortgage brokerage, said he is handling more mortgages for clients who are buying foreclosure properties."

"'I'd say there are two or three a month, and two years ago, that was unheard of,' Menatian said. 'And these are not distressed properties. These are $400,000 or $500,000 houses, and they are getting them at a discount because the owners used a product or program that enabled them to buy a house when they probably shouldn't have because they couldn't really afford it.'"

The Providence Journal from Rhode Island. "For real estate agents like Edward Manfredi, the subprime mortgage foreclosure crisis means that business is booming. Manfredi works for a Warwick real estate firm that specializes in (bank owned) properties."

"Mark Reo is a builder, property manager, landlord, and foreclosure consultant. Reo said he has purchased six REO properties recently, but would like to start buying them 'in groups of 10 or 15' directly from banks. 'A lot of these banks now … they have 300 REOs instead of 30. … I’m here to help them,' Reo said. Because the banks want to reduce their REO inventory, Reo believes they are willing to negotiate on price."

"'I can suggest almost anything and I have their ear,' he said. 'Because it’s a big, big problem.'"

The Journal News from New York. "With lowered expectations, John and Cynthia Vergilii have put their ranch-style house in Cold Spring back on the market. The asking price, $550,000, is $100,000 lower than what they tried to sell it for about 1 1/2 years ago, Cynthia Vergilii said."

"'I'm one of those people with an enormous amount of faith,' Vergilii said. 'I'm confident we'll sell it.'"

"Paul Lee of Nanuet said he and his fiancee looked for a place in Rockland County for more than a year. Lee said he hasn't seen prices drop far enough to suit him. The couple will have to budget carefully to keep their new home, he said."

The New York Times. "As homeowners across the country have dealt with the declining values of their houses and their ballooning mortgage payments, most New Yorkers seem to believe that the market here doesn’t play by the same rules."

"But in recent weeks, a growing number of New Yorkers, often with six-figure salaries and reasonably good credit, have begun to find that mortgages are harder to get as lenders try to stem losses from loans to the weakest, or subprime, borrowers."

"Mortgage brokers...warn that people with any red flags on their mortgage applications will face delays and will pay higher fees. 'You’re going to pay the piper for any little mistake,' said Melissa Cohn, the president of Manhattan Mortgage Inc. She said her brokers were spending twice as much time on each application as they did a month ago because of new lending requirements, and she expects the situation only to get worse."

"'The impact is going to be much greater as banks demand that people have clean credit to get the best mortgages,' she said."

"Buyers like Lee and Kimberly Au had to adjust their expectations. The Aus wanted to buy a one- or two-bedroom condominium costing $800,000 to $1.25 million at the Atelier on West 42nd Stree. But they quickly learned that they could no longer get 100 percent financing, even though Dr. Au makes more than $700,000 a year as a surgeon."

"Eric Eisenberg, the mortgage broker handling the deal, said that even though the Aus put up more cash, the transaction was far more difficult to close than it once would have been."

"'About three weeks ago, I would have gotten this done by snapping my fingers,' said Mr. Eisenberg. 'Now it’s a very lengthy and time-consuming process where every bit of paperwork has to be done to the T. The guidelines are literally changing every hour.'"

"The Aus tried to tap into the equity in their four-bedroom house in Honolulu or their rental property at Haiku Plantation nearby in Kaneohe, but banks refused to refinance or to lend on these investments."

"The couple are using Ms. Au’s credit score, which falls in the Alt-A category, to qualify for a 7.5 percent first mortgage and an 8.5 percent second mortgage. 'We have a lot of our money tied up in real estate in Hawaii,' she said. 'I knew we had to find something quick.'"

The News Journal from Delaware. "For now, the party is over for vacation property owners at the Delaware beaches, where house prices in some communities at Washington's summer playground nearly tripled from 2000 to 2005."

"'The market at the beach has died,' said Scott Gaston of Dover, an investor who is selling a Rehoboth Beach house he bought in foreclosure in January. Already, he has lowered the price."

"From Lewes to Dewey Beach, average sale prices for single-family homes last year declined for the first time since 2000, according to MLS data provided by the Sussex County Association of Realtors. Prices in the communities closest to the ocean dropped 5 percent from 2005 to 2006."

"Bowing to the new reality, sellers, from home builders to owners of existing homes, are throwing in incentives. Along with the bricks and mortar, how about a trip to Bermuda?"

"'You're going to see people doing everything. We're talking cars, vacations, boats, anything that will make people buy it,' said Jack Corrozi, managing member of Corrozi Builders in Newport."

"While real estate agents and developers tend to be perennially optimistic, even some of the sunniest are nervous about the spring season. 'I'm pessimistic,' said Trevor Gouert, an affiliate broker in Lewes. 'I tell my owners: Hold on to your property if you can. Now is not the time to sell.'"

"Brett Reilly doesn't need to be told that. For nearly a year, Reilly, a chief executive with Tapa Homes in Dagsboro, has been trying to sell a manufactured house his company put up on a lot in Rehoboth Beach. The price has been dropped 11 percent from $259,000 to $230,000. Now, with a monthly carrying cost of $800 to $900 a month, Tapa is eager to deal."

"'We want that thing gone,' Reilly said."

"Average sale prices of a single-family home from 2000 to 2005 nearly tripled in some oceanside communities. The average sale price of a home in the Lewes-Rehoboth Beach-Dewey Beach area, for example, rose from $426,170 to a peak of $1.23 million in 2005."

"'A lot of people thought there was no end to it. But there's always an end,' Corrozi said."

"Inventories have climbed. The number of homes that came on the market in some beach communities in 2006 were four times the level at the beginning of the boom in 2000."

"Robert Harman, president of the Sussex County Association of Realtors, blames the slowdown on overbuilding. For the first time, the nation's largest home builders, such as Lennar Corp. of Miami, Fla., and Centex Corp. of Dallas, Texas, entered the market, Harman said."

"'They anticipated a great wave of buyers that didn't come,' Harman said."

"The old adage that it was a good investment to buy beach property 'because they're not making more of it' proved not to be true in the case of the Delaware shore. The vacation home market simply expanded inland to the west and north."

"New-home communities miles from the water were given salty names, such as 'Sandbar Village.' 'There's more woods than bay," said Pat Campbell-White, a broker in Rehoboth Beach."