The Rocky Mountain News reports from Colorado. "Sales of new homes in the Denver area were down more than one-third in the first half of the year from the first six months of 2006, as the market heads for a 13-year low in sales activity. The report by the Genesis Group shows there were 5,842 new-home sales in the metro area in the first six months, compared with 8,758 sales during the same period in 2006."

"This is the largest percentage drop in sales since the 1980s, when Denver suffered a housing depression following the collapse of energy prices, said Mike Rinner of the Genesis Group."

"'This is not good news,' said Tom Clark, head of the Metro Denver Economic Development Corp. 'The home-building industry, in particular, is a bellwether for where the economy is going.'"

"Today's woes can be traced to 2000 and 2001, when the Denver area lost tens of thousands of high-paying tech jobs, but builders kept constructing homes, Rinner said. Builders were able to sell homes because of the lowest interest rates in a generation, he said."

"The so-called subprime market drove the first wave of the collapsing mortgage industry. 'Denver really should have taken this hit to housing in 2001,' said Jeffrey Willis of Berkeley Homes."

"Economist Tucker Hart Adams said the slide in new-home sales likely will accelerate, especially with the continuing mortgage crisis. 'Certainly, at least for the short term, it is going to be more difficult for anybody to get a loan,' she said."

The Denver Post from Colorado. "'There have been significant layoffs among homebuilders,' said Jeffrey Willis, with Berkeley Homes in Aurora. 'They have scaled way back with their projects.'"

"Despite that ratcheting down, the inventory of unsold new homes was 3,632, up 3.8 percent from last year. Nearly one of every five new- home sales is getting canceled as buyers back out of contracts. Visits to new developments were at their lowest level since 1994."

"The Denver metro area recorded 13,412 foreclosures in the first six months of 2007, up 40 percent from 9,574 in the first half of 2006. Foreclosures rose 62 percent in Denver, 50 percent in Adams and 41 percent in Douglas counties in the first half compared with the same period a year ago."

"At the current pace, about 3.6 percent of all owner-occupied homes in the metro area will end up in foreclosure this year, not far from the record 3.8 percent of homes that entered foreclosure in 1988."

"With inventories of unsold new and existing homes stabilizing, Rinner initially had hoped that the Denver housing market might be near a bottom. 'We might have been at the bottom except for the credit crisis,' he said. 'This is not a good time to be without financing.'"

From KOAA.com in Colorado. "The recent troubles in the mortgage industry could hurt some homeowners in Southern Colorado. The Colorado Springs housing market is currently considered a buyer's market, meaning over-extended borrowers will have a harder time selling their homes. Adding to their troubles, lending companies have increased loan requirements making refinancing more difficult."

"'If you can't afford your mortgage payment and you can't refinance out of it, with the housing market what it is, you're not going to have the ability to sell very quickly,' says mortgage broker Rebecca Hinds."

The Coloradoan. "Faced with a mountain of delinquent loans, Norlarco Credit Union - the eighth-largest credit union in Colorado - has been taken over by federal regulators while it sorts out its financial woes."

"'We had construction loans on the books from around the country,' including Florida, said John Olienyk, chairman of the Norlarco board of directors from 1991 until the NCUA took over in May. When construction tanked in Florida, Norlarco felt the hit."

"Olienyk also blamed the problem on the overall housing slump, including subprime mortgage loans, rising interest rates, decreasing demand and record-level foreclosures. 'All of those things combined to depress housing prices, so we got the slump in real estate that we are witnessing.'"

The East Valley Tribune from Arizona. "Scottsdale-based 1st National Bank Holding Co. laid off 351 mortgage-related employees Tuesday and announced an additional 190 positions will be eliminated through attrition."

"In the national wholesale mortgage business, 1st National salespeople bought loans originated by other brokers and sold them to Wall Street, said Greg Smith, chief operations officer."

"'We discontinued the wholesale operation because the market where we would sell these loans had dried up,' he said. 'The investors had gone away. The prices that the loans were sold for was no longer a viable business. We just felt at this juncture that the market was not likely to come back anytime soon.'"

"Some 5,873 Arizona foreclosure filings were reported last month. That's a 189 percent spike from July 2006, according to RealtyTrac."

"Anthem will reach 9,100 homes at buildout with more than 20,000 residents, according to the developer, Pulte Homes. Last August, Pulte officials said they expected to reach that buildout by 2016 but earlier, in May of this same year, they had forecast buildout by 2012."

"The timeline has been moved back slowly and now Brandon Jones, director of operations for Pulte Homes, said 'buildout depends on the market.'"

"Local real estate experts said more distant communities such as Florence and Maricopa are feeling the brunt of the slow housing market because of resale market competition."

"On Sandi Campbell’s street there are only a couple of occupied homes and several are being built that haven’t yet been purchased. She said she’s noticed fewer people moving in and buying homes 'but that goes with anyplace that is selling homes right now,' she said."

In Business Las Vegas reports from Nevada. "The wheels appear to be coming off the Las Vegas land market for now. The number of acres sold during the second quarter, excluding the Strip, was down 61 percent from the second quarter of 2006 and was down 49 percent from the first quarter of this year, Applied Analysis reported."

"With that softened demand in the second quarter, the price per acre paid was $718,500, 11 percent lower than the second quarter of 2006. That's 9.5 percent below the first quarter price of $793,700 per acre, the firm reported."

"What's happening in the marketplace today is continued softening demand and prices falling even further, said Craig Cherney, director of a private equity land acquisition group that buys raw land and entitles it."

"Cherney, who until recently was in charge of land acquisitions for Pulte Del Webb in Las Vegas, said the sticker price today is $700,000 per acre and property owners are lucky if they get $650,000."

"The reason: major public builders have stopped buying land given the housing slowdown and the large balance of lots they have, Cherney said. That's bad news for land owners, especially for those who bought in late 2005 or 2006 and are carrying debt, Cherney said. Land loans generally don't exceed three years, and the buyers were speculating on appreciation."

"That hasn't happened and many of those land owners are finding themselves in similar situations as homeowners as evidence by the high rate of foreclosures, Cherney said."

"'They are either going to have to cut their prices or give them back to the bank just like homeowners,' Cherney said."

"Many loans will expire by the end of 2007 and into 2008 and 2009. If the banks take them over, they will be aggressive in their pricing, Cherney said. With that in mind, he said he expects the price per acre to fall to the high $500,000s by the fourth quarter of 2008."

The Review Journal from Nevada. "More than 60 bank-owned and privately owned homes valued from $200,000 to $1.5 million will be auctioned Saturday."

"Home auctions are becoming more common in Nevada as the number of foreclosure filings increases to a rate three times the national average. The state had 5,116 filings in June, about one out of every 200 households, RealtyTrac reported."

"A recent auction held by Dallas-based Hudson & Marshall in which some 90 foreclosed homes were auctioned drew criticism from local real estate agents."

"Eric Young of Liberty Realty said he tracked the auctioned properties through the MLS and only one property showed a change in status from 'available' to 'pending' in the first week after the Aug. 5 auction."

"The MLS status for 16 of the 83 homes sold at the auction suggests that the high bidder at the auction may have met the reserve requirement of the banks, Young said."

"Andrew Pugh of SellFastLV.com said the Marshall & Hudson auction may be more 'hollow' than he thought. 'It looks like the banks are asking for higher bids from anybody on 16 of the properties that were supposedly auctioned off,' he said. 'I wonder if the winning bidders backed out or the banks are just fishing for more money?'"