What do you see in your housing market this weekend? Price reductions? "Vermonters selling their homes are having to wait a little longer and price their homes more competitively as the residential real estate market settles into a steadier pace. This return to reality was bound to happen, real estate observers said, after a period of several years in which sales and prices took gazelle-like strides."

"'The prices reached a point where they didn't make sense,' said Steve Allen of Allen & Brooks, which analyzes Vermont's real estate market."

"That scenario is playing out on the streets, according to some real estate agents. 'If you have sellers hanging on to '05 prices and refusing to give up, they're not selling,' said Hank Gintof, owner of Signature Properties of Vermont in Essex."

Or foreclosures? "Northwest Arkansas counties are still at the top of the list when it comes to percentage change in foreclosures from May last year compared to May this year, as well as year-to-date."

"Benton County had 127 foreclosures last month, up 119 percent compared to 58 in May 2006."

"Logan County, along with Sequoyah and LeFlore counties in Oklahoma, have been impacted less than surrounded areas."

Mortgage fraud? "Is Enid, Oklahoma a hotbed of mortgage fraud? A new report ranked Enid No. 2 in the nation among 'potential breeding grounds' of mortgage fraud involving subprime loans. Enid was second only to Jackson, Mich., according to the study, which tracked loans originated in 2006."

"The ranking was based on an index of early payment defaults, loans 90 days late within 90 days of origination, the borrowers never made a payment." "Enid also ranked high in potential fraud involving prime loans, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association, which commissioned the report."

"If many loans are going bad in Enid, said Enid banker Bob Emery, who also is a property appraiser, 'local banks aren't making the loans. It's probably from the Internet — quote, unquote — banks.'"

New legal action? "Sparked by the suspension of a Pueblo real estate appraiser, the state agency that oversees the practice plans to examine all recent real estate appraisals in the southern part of the state in the next few weeks, its director said."

"Erin Toll, director of the Colorado Division of Real Estate, told The Pueblo Chieftain that her office will launch a full-blown probe of real estate appraisals in the Pueblo area because of the high incidence of foreclosures in recent years."

"'We're just going to be taking a much closer look at real estate activities in the southern part of the state because the mortgage fraud and the mortgage foreclosure rate is so high in Pueblo,' she said."

"It all began when a Pueblo real estate appraiser, James Esters, voluntarily surrendered his license to the board after allegations surfaced that he overvalued eight Pueblo properties."

"Toll said the board took the actions it did because it takes overvaluations seriously because they contribute to the state's rising foreclosure rate. She said there appears to be additional incidents of overvaluations in Pueblo, but Toll couldn't say how pervasive the practice is."