The Baltimore Sun reports from Maryland. "An Edgewater house with a new siding-and-stone facade. A five-bedroom in Hanover, two-car garage attached. A West Friendship mansion on nearly an acre of gently sloping land. A million-dollar Colonial in a Columbia development so new, the sales office is still open. Symbols of affluence. And, as recently as the past few weeks, all in foreclosure."

"Foreclosure filings rose four times faster last year in Baltimore's suburbs than in Baltimore, up 15 percent versus less than 4 percent in the city, court records show. To the south in Montgomery, one of the nation's wealthiest counties, filings were up more than 30 percent."

"Consider, for instance, a western Howard County home whose lender filed for foreclosure last month: Built last year, it's nearly three times the size of an average new house, with a double-door entrance, a circular driveway and a four-car garage. Balance due on the loan: about $1.5 million."

"'Either they've fallen behind in payments or it's just gotten to the point that the debt is strangulating them,' said Mark F. Scurti, a Baltimore bankruptcy lawyer who has seen the number of people looking for Chapter 13 protection because of mortgage problems increase 'dramatically' in the past few months."

"'People are getting these large mortgages with variable rates that are just outrageous,' Scurti added. 'What they got in at, they could afford. Now they're paying almost double.'"

"Some homeowners are in trouble before their first reset. One foreclosure filing in affluent Howard County last month, for an almost $1 million home in Columbia, affects an owner whose interest rate isn't scheduled to change until 2011. Not one dollar of the principal had been paid off at the time of the court filing."

"Three days later, another lender filed for foreclosure on a $480,000 split-level in Ellicott City with an adjustable-rate, interest-only mortgage that also hasn't reset. The home changed hands only last summer."

"The problem isn't limited to subprime loans. Baltimore-based First Mariner Bancorp, which doesn't offer subprime products, said bad loans contributed to its nearly $4 million loss in the last three months of 2006."

"'They can't sell their property and they can't refinance their property and they can't get a tenant, and you're seeing them throw up their hands and say, 'You know, I'm out,' said Brett Carter, president of First Mariner Mortgage."

The Lancaster News from Pennsylvania. "The calls, said Bob Thomas, don't always come from poor people. 'One prospective client makes $100,000 a year," said Thomas, (who) provides financial counseling. But he, too, had gotten a mortgage with low, low 'teaser' rates that soon leapt to the stratosphere; and he, too, was worried he couldn't make the higher payments, and might lose his home."

"M&T Bank, with several branches in Lancaster County, announced last week it would not auction off $883 million worth of loans to investor groups, a typical move in the banking industry, because it would lose money on the sale, according to an article in The York Dispatch."

"Though these particular loans weren't subprime, 'There's a lot of skittishness. Investors have shown less interest in any product that's not a traditional prime mortgage,' bank spokesman Michael Zabel told The Dispatch."

"Frank Christoffel of the Lancaster County Association of Realtors (said): 'When you look at our market overall, it's still doing rather well," he said. 'Prices are still going up, not as much as they were, but we'd been drinking out of a fire hydrant.'"

"'We've long seen a steady volume of folks coming in with subprime loans,' said Patrick Cicero, an attorney in Harrisburg who has worked with struggling Lancaster-area homeowners. 'But anecdotally, over the last six months, the numbers have been higher. When the housing market was hot it allowed people to purchase homes who shouldn't have been buying them. We were selling them the American dream, and giving them a nightmare.'"

The Sharon Herald from Pennsylvania. "A Sharon homeowner closing in on his 80th birthday thought he latched onto a deal of a lifetime. The elderly man needed his roof replaced and a leaky basement repaired. With only a monthly Social Security retirement check to support him, he didn’t know how he could pay for these home improvements."

"Then along came an out-of-town contractor who said he could complete the work for $30,000. The contractor hooked the man up with a Pittsburgh mortgage broker who specialized in subprime loans."

"When the homeowner was unable to pay the monthly loan bill, the subprime lender began foreclosure proceedings against him and his home was scheduled to be sold at sheriff’s sale."

"Although Sharon attorney Tom Dill was able to halt the sheriff’s sale of the man’s home, he wonders why the lender agreed to the loan in the first place."

"'The guy’s house is worth maybe $12,000,' Dill said. 'I don’t know why they gave him a $30,000 mortgage on a house worth that much at his age. How is this guy going to pay off a $30,000 mortgage on just Social Security?'"

"Since the mid-1990s, sheriff’s sales in Mercer County have soared from 33 in 1995 to a record 357 in 2006, according to the county sheriff’s department. With 177 sheriff’s sales on the books so far this year, 2007 is on pace to set another record."

The Pocono Record from Pennsylvania. "A big chunk of homes sold in Monroe County so far this year were houses in foreclosure. In 2006, foreclosed homes accounted for 9.6 percent of all home sales here. That rate more than doubled to 20.4 percent in the quarter ending March 31."

"While homes in foreclosure were usually six to seven years old in the past, real estate broker Vicki Brockelman now sees many after only two to three years, coinciding with the typical teaser period of adjustable rate mortgages."

"But Brockelman sees an upside. 'One person's loss is another person's gain,' she said. 'As prices go down, more people will be able to buy.'"

The Patriot News from Pennsylvania. "The midstate real estate market is showing signs of slowing, with prices wavering and houses taking longer to sell. For buyers in the local market, the trends could mean they have more bargaining power than they would have had last year."

"For example, Grayson Homes, a builder from Elliott City, Md., has twice cut the base asking price for its Copper Ridge town houses in Lemoyne since the units were listed for sale last September, said Lee Frey of Grayson Homes. The base price dropped from $369,000 to $329,990."

"The model home, the most expensive of six units available, started at $616,000. It is now priced at $424,990."

"Market conditions in the Harrisburg area are better than in southern York County, where Grayson has developed Logan's Reserve, Frey said. The number of days homes sit on the market there have doubled because of its proximity to the Baltimore and Washington, D.C., metropolitan areas, where the housing downturn is having a greater impact than near Harrisburg."

"Keystone Arms Associates hasn't reduced the prices of its new town houses just outside Carlisle that range from $171,700 to $184,700, said (realtor) Pam Hopper. Hopper said about 30 of the more than 190 units available have sold."

"Even with prices being 'a little under market,' Hopper said, the builder is using incentives such as lower closing costs and adding a yearlong warranty to spur sales."

"Jerrod Paterson, president of the Greater Harrisburg Association of Realtors, said the average sale price and number of days on the market this year are 'skewed' by sluggish activity for homes priced at $250,000 and more."

"'In the higher-end homes we are seeing offers being made and houses not selling for the asking price,' he said."