Newsday reports from New York. "The Oceanside splanch had been listed for eight months. There were about 25 showings and three offers. Then the buyers the owners were looking for showed up. 'We were curious why the house was on the market for so long,' says Danae Schneider. 'We didn't think anything was wrong with it,' she says. 'We just thought it wasn't priced correctly.'"

"The agents first listed the 3,800- square-foot home for $929,000. After a month, the price was dropped to $875,000. Two weeks after seeing the house in October, Schneider and her husband, Jason, made an offer. They bought the house for $830,000 and moved there in February."

"For Dominick Cusumano,r who closed on his house in Garden City in February, knowing that it had been on the market for almost a year was valuable fodder in the negotiation process."

"The property was first listed with Coach Realtors Fennessy Associates in May 2006 for $1.85 million, where it remained until August, when it was co-listed with Dougall C. Fraser Jr. Inc. from September to December for $1.795 million. When Prudential Douglas Elliman received the listing next, the price was reduced to $1.62 million."

"The house closed at about $200,000 less than the asking price (the sellers' real desired price, says Daniel Guerrier, the agent who brokered the deal). 'Garden City was overpriced two years ago,' says Cusumano. 'Now it's more reasonable.'"

"Some 9,200 single-family homes are for sale in Nassau and about 13,000 in Suffolk. If nobody else listed, it would take about 10 months to sell the current inventory in Nassau and about 13 months to sell the current inventory in Suffolk."

"Barbara Malley originally listed her updated ranch in East Setauket for $489,000 in October, but she has since come down to $469,000. Her listing agent and others say the asking price is fair."

"Still, Malley says she has not received any offers. 'I don't want to wait until the house has been on the market for a year. If it is not sold by July, I'll rent it,' she says. She recently began to advertise in the city, and she's considering putting her home up for auction."

The Journal News. "The subprime lending crisis continues to shake the Lower Hudson Valley, as lenders stepped up foreclosure actions in April and two more troubled mortgage companies in the area reported more than 300 job cuts."

"Lenders started 181 foreclosure proceedings last month in Westchester County, up 50.8 percent from April 2006. Putnam County had 41 actions last month, up from 22 in April 2006."

"In Rockland, courts approved 94 judgments against property owners through the end of April, up 91.8 percent from the comparable period a year earlier."

"The higher incidence of foreclosure, however, reflects the more difficult position that borrowers with less-than-perfect credit have found themselves in, and in numbers that have grown since last year. 'The mortgage landscape for subprime lending has changed drastically in the last few months,' said Michael Ettlemyer, spokesman for GE Money of Stamford, Conn."

"GE Money owns WMC Mortgage Corp. of Burbank, Calif., which opened an office in Orangeburg in 2004. This spring, the Rockland office eliminated 171 jobs, with 98 remaining, Ettlemyer said."

"WMC is one of two subprime mortgage companies that notified the state Labor Department this spring that they were cutting staff. The second, Fremont Investment & Loan in Anaheim, Calif., closed its office in Elmsford several weeks ago. A Labor Department report said 169 jobs were lost."

"Despite the bad news, the trouble is unlikely to slow the regional economy, said Bruce Mason, chief economist and senior VP at Union State Bank in Orangeburg."

"'This is not affecting jobs. Jobs are not going down here or deteriorating in any significant level. The people are still employed,' he said. 'What it is going to affect is the real estate prices...These people aren't buyers anymore. They're sellers.'"

From New York Business. "New York state Gov. Eliot Spitzer on Friday announced an interagency task force aimed at combating predatory lending practices throughout the state."

"'Lending practices that prey upon the public cannot and will not be tolerated,' Mr. Spitzer said in a statement. 'This task force will take a comprehensive look at the sub-prime lending industry, and recommend steps to protect borrowers.'"

"Late last month, New York City Comptroller William Thompson launched a foreclosure hotline to help consumers that are falling behind on mortgage payments. The city is facing more than 15,000 foreclosures, according to data from the Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project."

"The AG's office confirmed that it issued a subpoena to Manhattan-based real estate appraiser Mitchell, Maxwell & Jackson Inc., saying it was 'part of an ongoing investigation.'"

"Jeffrey Jackson, co-founder of the firm, said the company is not a target of the probe, but is cooperating with the AG. 'My take on what they re looking for is loan officers or mortgage brokers trying to influence us so they can make loans,' said Mr. Jackson."