The East Valley Tribune reports from Arizona. "With the end of the year quickly approaching, Valley homebuilders are hustling to rid themselves of excess homes and hit sales projections by offering incentives and price discounts to potential buyers. Builders are working to meet the sales numbers they predicted at the beginning of 2007, trying to stimulate activity during the slowest time of year when people are focused on holidays, not home shopping, said John Fioramonti, at Meyers Builder Advisors in Scottsdale."

"'It’s a good time to buy,' he said. '(Builders are) going to be competing with each other like crazy for the next 90 days.'" "Real estate agents and home owners say the ability of builders to dramatically slash prices often makes it tough for nearby existing home sellers to compete."

"In a healthy market, the Valley’s existing home market should have roughly 30,000 homes for sale, and right now it has about 20,000 too many, said Ken Peterson, VP of sales and marketing for Shea Homes. At the same time, builders need to unload inventories, Peterson said."

The Arizona Daily Star. "In the boom of 2005, homeowners like Sue and Dave Broberg and Lisa and Robert Hall felt lucky to nab houses in new subdivisions on the outskirts of Tucson. But now, the Brobergs say there are many for-sale signs throughout their Northwest Side neighborhood. One is in front of their home."

"'It's a lot different than when we bought the house two years ago,' Robert Hall said. 'People were fighting over lots,' Lisa Hall said."

"But now, buyers no longer line up to buy homes in outlying subdivisions. Instead, builders slash prices, pack on incentives and still are left with unsold spec homes and empty lots. In many cases, homeowners trying to sell properties in newer developments are finding they can't compete with builders' rock-bottom prices."

"'The builders, they just flooded this market with inventory,' said Melinda Turner, who put her Sahuarita home on the market about a year ago without success. 'And the rest of us, the previous customers, got really screwed.'"

"'Certainly the prices have dropped precipitously, and the homes just aren't selling,' said Rancho Sahuarita seller Susan Chapman, whose house went a month without being seen by a single buyer."

"The situation is worse for homeowner Melinda Turner, who put her house on the market a year ago, anticipating a move to Idaho. In the meantime, her husband moved to Idaho, started his own custom home-building business, but had to move back to Sahuarita because the house still hadn't been sold."

"Turner said the house has been seen by many prospective buyers, but the serious ones ended up buying similar new homes from the builder. 'We ended up becoming the unofficial model home,' she said."

The Arizona Republic. "Elizabeth and Jose Torres were happy with their small Phoenix home. Even when a loan officer approached the couple in 2005 about buying a bigger home for a good price, they weren't interested, Elizabeth said."

"Eventually, though, the 'persuasive' loan officer sold them on the four-bedroom Queen Creek home, she said."

"Now, the couple is at risk of losing their home because they can't afford the mortgage payments and can't refinance because of a prepayment penalty they said they were never told existed."

"The Valley's housing non-profits are being deluged with calls from homeowners asking for help. 'We are getting three to five referrals a day about people facing foreclosures,' said Joann Hauger, executive director of Community Housing Resources of Arizona. 'There aren't any programs to help them, and many are upside down in their loan and can't sell or refinance.'"

The Pahrump Valley Times from Nevada. "Home foreclosure worries appear to have been reflected in the Wednesday legal notices in the PVT, which listed 18 notices of trustee sales. The number of such notices soared from nine in August and September 2006 to 47 in August and September this year."

"A drive around some new housing developments showed building activity was tentative. At the Beazer Homes Tesora at Pahrump project, 14 large homes from 2,357 to 2,995 square feet were already constructed on Sedgwick Avenue. But no one seemed to be on duty at the sales office Wednesday morning."

"A walled community of Beazer's Burson Ranch up the street, where the sign advertised homes of 1,625 square feet to 2,749 square feet, was empty inside the walls."

"A tour of Concordia Homes of Nevada's Pleasant Valley project off Homestead Road, showed 49 homes already constructed, but the only activity Wednesday was a landscape crew putting in plants at Pleasant Valley Park. A count showed 14 for-sale signs in front of homes while there were 11 homes with vehicles parked in front that probably weren't construction workers."

"'Our projects are moving right on along. I think we had four or five sales last month,' said Concordia Homes spokesman Stormy Andrews of the Pleasant Valley project in Pahrump."

"'We'll go through and build up an entire section and sell through it,' he said. 'Once we get through those, we start the next grouping.'"

"Rows of house frames were going up on cul-de-sacs in Mountain Falls in the Tivoli section and in Entrata. Luxury homes were going up in the Paradiso development, with advertised prices in the $400,000 range."

The Nevada Appeal. "Members of a legislative study committee agreed Monday they want to help homebuyers who are facing foreclosure through no fault of their own. But they made it clear they have a lot less sympathy for speculators left high and dry by their own greed."

"Legislative research analyst Dave Ziegler told lawmakers nearly 29,000 Clark County homes are up for sale, just under half of them vacant, which lawmakers interpreted to mean they are owned as investments by speculators. Ziegler said Nevada has had the highest foreclosure rate in the nation for nine consecutive months."

"Tony Ramirez, of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, said there are more than 15,800 properties in Nevada in pre-foreclosure status as of August. He presented figures showing another 11,700 properties have already been foreclosed on."

"While the vast majority of those homes are in Clark County, statistics presented by Ramirez show 40 homes foreclosed on in Carson City and 40 more in Douglas. In Carson City, he said 28 are in pre-foreclosure - 52 in Douglas."

"In Lyon County, the situation is worse with 46 homes foreclosed on and 86 in some stage of pre-foreclosure as of a week ago."

"Sens. Bob Beers, Las Vegas, and Warren Hardy, Henderson, said they want to know how many of those homes were purchased as speculative investments and have never been someone's primary residence. Hardy said that information is needed 'so we can determine as best we can determine whether this is the investment market correcting itself or is it a true crisis.'"

"Panel head Assemblyman Marcus Conklin said he has been told up to half the homes in foreclosure are owned by speculators. Hardy made it clear he doesn't support much help for those owners."

"'There's got to be pain associated with the greed,' he said. 'If we soften the load for the individuals who created this, there's no incentive to correct it.'"

"Gail Burks of the Nevada Fair Housing Center said it's important to act quickly because whether borrowers were individual homeowners or speculators they're all caught up in a Titanic-like situation: Without efforts to resolve the crisis 'we're all going to go down together.'"

The Reno Gazette Journal. "Most homeowners in the North Valleys and Spanish Springs will see a drop in property values when they receive their annual property assessment notices from the Washoe County Assessor's Office in late November."

"It's the first widespread drop in residential land values since 1981-82 when the last real estate bubble burst, county assessor Josh Wilson said."

"Homes in the North Valleys and Spanish Springs are seeing the drop in housing values because the area, with all 54,000 parcels, was mass appraised in 2005-2006, just as housing prices hit their peak. Since then, housing prices have declined."

"The assessor's office provided a few examples of the changes in land values at several large communities. Sky Vista in Stead: The taxable land value for the standard lot has dropped from $92,000 to $78,000, a 15.2 percent drop. Woodland Village in Cold Springs: A drop from $82,000 to $74,000, a 9.7 percent drop."

In Business Las Vegas from Nevada. "Harvey Whittemore (is) the developer of Coyote Springs, which straddles the line between Clark and Lincoln counties. In 1998 he and a partner purchased 43,000 acres for $15 million."

"Q: What are the plans? A: The plan calls for 160,000 units on 43,000 acres. The exciting news is we have been at this for nine years and we are less than 12 months away from having homes."

"Q: How did the deal come about with Pardee Homes? A: Pardee has been selected as the master developer for all the single-family and multifamily homes. They have an option to purchase land every year. What they have done is take down the first almost 2,000 acres and started the process of developing the planning and different model types."

"Q: What is Pardee Homes paying her acre? There was a transaction listed on assessor records last year in which they paid $25.5 million for 3,605 acres ($7,074 per acre). A: That is private. I can't disclose that."

"Q: How much will homes cost? A: Everybody knows land is a finite commodity in the Las Vegas area, and we think that Pardee is going to have a huge price advantage compared to its competitors, and that's going to be reflected in price. I think you are talking 10 to 20 percent below Las Vegas market."

"Q: But the Las Vegas market price keeps coming down."

"A: That is one thing you are going to have to look at and say long term what is going to happen with respect to prices in Las Vegas. People who have to sell their products because they built their homes already, it wouldn't surprise me if prices would be in the $105 to $115 per square foot range. I think if you are a good shopper today, you can buy that. There is no way to replace those homes under present market conditions for that price. What does that mean on a macro basis, it means that I believe sellers today are having to sell below cost."

"Q: Have you done anything like this before? A: I don't think there are many people that have developed 43,000 acres. It is 10 times larger than the development we did in Sparks. We successfully developed more than 4,400 units with two golf courses and a whole resort component. My partners like to say the difference is just about adding zeros (laughing)."

The Salt Lake Tribune from Utah. "After years of increases, home sales along the Wasatch Front were down sharply in the third quarter, compared with last year. In Salt Lake County, 2,712 homes changed hands in the July-August-September period, down 33.8 percent from the same three months last year, according to the Salt Lake Board of Realtors."

"Bob Scofield listed his 9,200-square-foot home in Orem with a Realtor about five months ago at the appraised value of $725,000. He later reduced the asking price to $699,000 before taking it off the market and listing it on a for-sale-by-owner Web site for $679,000. It's now listed at $659,000."

"'Things have definitely slowed down a bit,' Scofield says."

"Craig Christensen, of Saratoga Springs, and his wife moved into their new home in July and consider themselves lucky to have even sold their former home at a price with which they could live."

"But now the couple, like others who have purchased in higher-end areas, are watching as building in their neighborhood has come almost to a halt. Sellers in their area have reduced asking prices as a way to get properties sold."

"Instead of being surrounded by scores of other families in houses priced from $400,000 to $700,000, the Christensens are surrounded by empty lots and unoccupied houses with for-sale signs in the windows."

"Craig Christensen said he's worried about the growing number of for-rent and lease-to-own signs cropping up nearby, including one in an unsold house next door. He and his wife have a nagging feeling their home is not worth what they paid for it and they may have to wait years to turn any type of profit if they do sell. They plan to stay put for a while."

"'This is definitely not what I had in mind when we decided to move,' he said. 'I'm very nervous about how the market is going.'"

The Deseret News from Utah. "The Wasatch Front housing market has caught the blues that have plagued much of the rest of the nation. Some areas, such as the Capitol Hill and Avenues areas of Salt Lake City and parts of Lehi, saw the average sales price drop. The Capitol Hill and Avenues drop in price was almost 14 percent, although the number of homes sold in those areas dropped less than many other areas, with a 9 percent reduction."

"The hardest homes to move are those over $500,000, said Gary Cannon, president of the Salt Lake County Board of Realtors. Few buyers can afford those homes, especially with more creative financing options being eliminated."

"'The median price being pushed to $300,000 requires an annual income of around $90,000,' he said. 'That's a good chunk of dough, and not a lot of people make that.'"