The Press Herald reports from Maine. "Looking back, Maureen Green often wishes she had just gotten up from the table and walked away. In January 2006, Green and her husband, Loni, sat down to buy their first house, a modest two-bedroom home shaded by tall pines in the Lake Arrowhead subdivision. At the time, Green had no down payment, no recorded credit score and a part-time job earning $11 per hour."

"Her husband, who is diabetic, worked as a mechanic at a salvage yard, earning $9 per hour without benefits."

"But Green, like thousands of other borrowers with poor credit who obtained mortgages in the past few years, discovered there were lenders willing to loan her money, albeit at a higher-than-standard interest rate. Today, Green has learned that the loans she found easy to obtain are almost impossible to pay back."

"'Once I was sitting in that chair with that pen, I just wanted that house,' she said."

"During the first year in their new home, Green switched to working full time but the couple still fell behind in their property taxes. In January their lender began foreclosure proceedings. Green is expecting a court action later this week that may order her to leave the tidy one-story home where she has planted flower beds out front."

"'It was my first house, and it might be my last,' she said."

The Boston Globe from Massachusetts. "Just two years ago, East Boston was the next 'it' location. Developers snapped up triple-deckers to remodel and flip, and proposed converting factories into high-end condominiums."

"'It was on fire. It was going crazy here,' said David Barsky, who bought a house in the neighborhood in 2000 and embarked on an eight-unit remodeling project in 2006."

"Then, as fast as the boom started, it was over. In 2006, the real estate market statewide softened. As extreme as it was during the boom, East Boston's condo market was way out front during the bust: Sales here fell 30 percent in 2006, compared to a 10 percent decline citywide. And so far this year, condo sales in East Boston are down nearly 18 percent."

"Once-imminent luxury condos are suddenly on the back burner. Earlier this year, work on the massive East Pier, a 550-unit luxury condominium and apartment complex, stalled just months after it began. The developers now intend to begin building an apartment building this fall, rather than the condos that were initially planned to go first."

"Meanwhile, another waterfront development, Clippership Wharf, where 400 condos were proposed, is also going to be built as an apartment complex."

"With the housing market slowdown, and the stalling of major developments that would have dramatically altered the landscape, East Boston is 'where we were five or six years ago. We're in a day-by-day market,' real estate agent James Zarrella said. 'Not everybody is pounding the neighborhood to get over here and live. There just isn't that demand to be here.'"

"People who recently converted condos are now offering steep discounts or renting them out; in some cases, lenders took over the properties, he said."

"Barsky, who estimated he stood to make as much as $1 million restoring a huge Victorian, was unable to complete renovation before the market cooled. He ran out of money, sold it to someone with deeper pockets, and lost $500,000, including his house."

"Now he is working with another developer to try to get eight newly constructed condo units on Cottage Street sold before winter hits. He's worried the market could decline even more, and the condos, which were originally going to go on the market for the high $300,000s or low $400,000s, have already been marked down to the low $300,000s."

"Longtime East Boston realtor Tony Giacalone said the major benefit residents expect from the East Pier project was the waterfront access it would provide. He said he has never heard anyone talking about actually buying a unit in the development."

"'A lot of people would be just as happy if that were turned into a park,' Giacalone said, contending the projected unit prices are too high for the neighborhood."

The New York Daily News. "The growing wave of foreclosures casting a shadow over the nation's economy just crashed over 63-year-old Eva Murphy of Queens. The former airport worker says she became a homeowner after a representative of a company called 2000 Homes showed up on her doorstep in December 2005."

"The sales rep told her she could afford to buy a house even though she had bad credit and lived on an amalgam of government subsidies."

"The sales rep promised Murphy a house with a mortgage she could afford. She says he suggested a two-family home on Roscoe St. in Jamaica, Queens, for $430,000. After the closing, she discovered the price was actually $538,000."

"Murphy says she was told monthly payments would be about $2,000. She later learned they would be $3,990. She also learned that even though she has no full-time job, her mortgage application listed her as a $9,000-a-month 'marketing manager' for a company owned by her loan officer's husband."

"Ten months ago, her house ended up in foreclosure. 'It's a mess,' she said."

"Eitan Sror, chairman of 2000 Homes, provided a copy of the sales contract, which was dated May 4, 2006, and signed by Murphy, showing the price of the house was $538,000. 'I can't see how she would think otherwise,' he said."

"Sror said he didn't know about Murphy's loan documents, adding, 'We're not required to keep any information that has to do with the mortgage.'"

"Murphy says she doesn't know what she'll do if she loses the house. 'I didn't know there was so many dishonest people that they can just sell you a bunch of garbage,' she said. 'And this is what this is - a bunch of garbage.'"

The Philadelphia Inquirer from Pennsylvania. "Portents of economic doom darken the national real estate picture daily. Anywhere but here, it seems. Observers of the local real estate market say the eight-county Philadelphia region has so far managed to dodge the crashing prices that have beset some other major U.S. metropolitan areas."

"'While the market has cooled, we have yet to see any significant price declines - yet,' said Kevin C. Gillen, a Wharton School research fellow."

"For buyers, it's the wide selection of houses to choose from. 'This is a market you can take your time with,' said Steve Storti, senior VP for marketing with Prudential Fox & Roach Realtors. 'With so much for sale, there is not an extreme sense of urgency about buying now - because you might miss out on a better house.'"

"No one is willing to predict how long this region can stay above the national fray. 'It will be a while before we hit the turning point,' Gillen said. 'There are still a number of major adjustable-rate mortgage resets coming over the next six to eight months, which will determine how long it takes the lenders to stabilize themselves.'"

"'With national credit conditions becoming tighter' even as long-term fixed interest rates decline, he added, 'this will affect local conditions here, regardless of what we can do about our own market.'"

"The municipal and MLS data reviewed show that in 2006 and thus far in 2007, sales of existing homes dropped to slightly below the level of 2003 - the midpoint in the so-called 'hot market' of 2000-05."

"Sales of new homes - which typically drive median prices higher in a town - also declined, forcing suburban builders to turn to incentives and focus on smaller and less-expensive attached houses."

"The perception that the national housing malaise has infected this region is having an impact, observers said."

"'Chalk it up to the infrequent nature of the real estate business,' said Storti. 'Buying a home is either elective [you want to] or based on need [you're relocating]. If your perception of the real estate market is colored by the extremes that the media cover, then you aren't going to see the differences.'"

"Thus, buyers who don't need a new house aren't rushing out to look for one."

"Broker John Duffy said there was no comparison between that 1990s slump and now. He thinks that a lot of 'elective' buyers are waiting for prices to drop, and that it isn't going to happen."

"Yet the problem isn't just with hesitant buyers. 'There are still a lot of sellers who want us to list their houses for any number they come up with, and we just won't take the listing,' said Duffy, who owns Duffy Real Estate in Narberth and Wayne."

"The sooner sellers and agents allow prices to become more rational, the sooner sales will pick up, Econsult's Gillen said."

"Even if we do experience a meaningful price deflation, that isn't necessarily an overall bad thing, because it increases housing affordability and accessibility for [the region's] population."

"It's difficult to predict short-term fluctuations, Gillen said, 'because the near term is as much dominated by buyer-seller psychology . . . as it is by fundamental forces.' 'To paraphrase Dr. McCoy from Star Trek, 'I'm an economist, Jim, not a mind reader.'"