The Associated Press reports on Texas. "Maxine Bryant received an ad in her mailbox last year for undeveloped land in West Texas and bought, sight unseen, 20 acres of sorry-looking desert in the middle of nowhere. She said she was led to believe that this was a place where ;things are happening.' But if things are happening around Dell City, it's news to locals."

"And clearly, some of the buyers didn't look very closely at a map before signing on the dotted line. 'It's desert? What we bought is desert?' said new landowner Robert Brown of Hollywood, Fla. 'It's not wetland?'"

The Star Telegram. "Eight years ago, Christina Dreyfus moved to West Texas to escape the big city. Now she's going back, not because she's tired of the wide-open spaces and mountain vistas but because she can no longer afford it. The soaring real estate prices in far West Texas, and a limited job market, are forcing Dreyfus to look for work elsewhere."

"The trend started over a decade ago in Marfa. Now it's spreading to Alpine and Fort Davis, where prices, while not as outrageous as Marfa, have doubled in the last decade."

"'I'm still having houses appraised for $40,000 selling for $300,000,' Presidio County chief appraiser Irma Salgado said of the Marfa real estate market. 'I got another house valued at $27,000 that sold for $230,000. It's a two-bedroom, one-bath, 600-square-feet home. So nothing has changed. The prices are still going up like crazy.'"

"Dreyfus' Alpine home, which was worth $55,000 six years ago, was recently appraised for $115,000. That doesn't sound too expensive, but most residents here earn low salaries, she said."

"'There aren't many jobs that pay more than $10 an hour, some pay a lot less, so it's getting harder all of the time to live here,' Dreyfus said."

"Long-distance commutes are already happening. Home builders say much of their labor pool makes the 85-mile commute from Presidio to Alpine or Fort Davis."

"It also caused the price of mobile homes to soar around Fort Davis. 'You've got a mobile home, 12 to 15 years old, with a 900-square-foot machine shop sitting on 5 acres and it goes for $185,000,' said Jeff Davis County chief appraiser Zedoch Pridgeon."

The Express News. "San Antonio's formerly high-flying new housing market has returned to earth. First-quarter housing starts dropped 25.5 percent, in stark contrast to the first quarter of 2006 when builders worked at an exuberant pace."

"Now the realities of last year's real estate frenzy are casting a shadow over the market, as builders sell off the excess inventory that started stacking up late last summer and in the fall, according to Metrostudy, a housing research firm."

"'We need to sell some homes,' said Jack Inselmann, vice president of Metrostudy's U.S. Central Division."

"There were 3,093 completed new homes on the market at the end of March, 60 percent more new homes than were on the market at the same time last year."

"'It's a little early to touch the panic button,' said Michael Moore, the first vice president of the Greater San Antonio Builders Association."

"Builders are feeling the crunch for now. Many have laid off employees and are offering deals and incentives not available to home buyers last summer. There's also more competition in the market, as new builders continue to arrive in San Antonio."

"Bob Gardner of Gardner Financial Services said the sudden absence of subprime loans has taken many San Antonio residents out of the market. 'It's not that there's not jobs and demand for housing, it's just that we can't qualify as many people,' he said. 'We won't see the full brunt of it for a while. Once the attitude changes about who qualifies for a loan, that doesn't change for a few years.'"

The Houston Chronicle. "The speedy pace of home building is starting to sputter. Houston-area home starts fell 14.5 percent in the first quarter, as builders reined in construction amid a national housing slowdown and problems in the subprime lending industry, according to Houston-based Metrostudy."

"It was the second consecutive year-over-year quarterly decline for local home starts for the first time in more than a decade."

"The dip, Metrostudy president Mike Inselmann said, was due in part to the unusually high level of construction reported during the first quarter of 2006 when 12,532 homes were built, a 22.4 percent jump over the previous year."

"Inselmann expects builders to be more conservative this year, building between 40,000 and 45,000 homes. 'The financing hype pushed us over the top in 2005 and 2006,' he said. 'The idea of getting back to 2004 levels is not a bad scenario.'"

"Area homeowners are increasingly having trouble making their mortgage payments, signaling foreclosures will likely continue to mount."

"In the Houston area, 4.38 percent of loans were 30 or more days late during the first quarter of 2007, compared with 2.04 percent during the same period last year, according to Moody's. Foreclosures shot up to 11,983 in 2006 from 8,300 in 2004, in Harris, Montgomery and Fort Bend counties."

"'We know the foreclosure rates have been rising for the last three years, so that's not a surprise,' said Barton Smith, a University of Houston professor of economics. 'We don't see the end of this mess until at least the end of this year or maybe next year.'"

"'There's almost a direct correlation between price appreciation and subsequent depreciation and delinquency rates,' said Ben Streusand, president of the Texas Mortgage Bankers Association. 'I would be concerned somewhat if we start to have big gaping gains in appreciation over the next two or three years, because we could be setting up for the corollary scenario you're seeing in other parts of the country.'"

The Galveston Daily News. "After six months with no hard offers on the five condominiums he owns on the island’s western tip, Tom McKinley figured it was time to get serious."

"'Now is the time to get creative and try different things,' said McKinley, a St. Louis, Mo., resident who a year ago paid about $2 million for the oceanfront properties in the new Pointe West development."

"On May 22, McKinley’s properties, along with what organizers say will be about 35 other island homes, condos and lots, will go on the auction block in a Houston hotel."

"Island Realtors are longing for the giddy days of 2005, when buyers, unfazed by rising prices, engaged in bidding wars and waited on lists for condos and waterfront properties. Most everyone agrees that year was a fluke."

"And compared to 2000, real estate on the island is going strong. But some properties have languished on the market for months, after the hurricanes of 2005 cooled house-buying fever on the Texas coast."

"In Galveston, hundreds of new mid-priced condominiums are causing a supply glut, competing with similarly priced properties across the island. Late last month, 900 houses and 600 condominiums were listed for sale on the island."

"So far this year, Realtors closed sales on 167 homes, compared with 187 the year before. As of mid-April, only 40 condos had sold, compared with 62 for the same period the year before, according to Realtor David Bowers."

"McKinley said an auction is a way to market his property among the hundreds on the market in Galveston. 'It’s an opportunity for us to try to bring buyers into the area,' McKinley said. 'There’s a lot of property in Galveston for people to sift through.'"