Hoboken Now reports from New Jersey. "Hoboken-based Metro Homes has shut down a 224-unit high-rise project in Asbury Park, citing the impact of the subprime mortgage collapse and real estate slump, the Asbury Park Press reported. Dean Geibel, the company's president, told the newspaper it has halted construction and sales on the Esperanza 'until such time market conditions allow us to move forward.'"

"The project was built on the site of a failed condo project that remained an unfinished steel skeleton for 17 years until Geibel's company blew it up in 2006."

The Express Times from Pennsylvania. "Homes sales in the Lehigh Valley plummeted in November compared to last year, according to an industry group. According to the Lehigh Valley Association of Realtors, 410 homes sold in the region in November, down 30.4 percent from 589 sales in November 2006."

"Last month's figure is also down 25.6 percent from 551 sales recorded in October. "Bethlehem-based economist Kamran Afshar said the latest trend 'looks like a crash, but it's just a correction.' It is not clear when the current dip will end, he said."

"'It will be some time until it stabilizes,' said Afshar. 'I don't think we have seen the bottoming of this process, probably not until next summer.'"

The Times on New York. "Only now is the slump in America’s residential property market reaching the very top of the tree – Manhattan."

"Finally, almost belatedly, the few square miles of upmarket central New York real estate is beginning to suffer the impact of this summer’s credit crisis. Wall Street bankers are delaying the purchase of new apartments, keenly aware that the country sits on the brink of recession, and boom in the Big Apple is showing signs of abating."

"According to one of the leading experts on the Manhattan real estate market - Gregory Hymes, chief economist at the property company Brown Harris Stevens – although residential property prices hit a record high in the third quarter of the year, estate agents are beginning to see a slowdown in activity as Wall Street bankers guard their bonuses."

"Mr Hymes said: 'People do not like to buy in uncertain times. Some of the problems arising from the stock market turbulence in the summer will be resolved shortly. But some of the problems will take years to unravel.'"

From Reuters on New York. "Bonuses affect the sales volume and prices for the entire market by setting the tone of buyer sentiment. 'It primes the pump, so to speak,' said Jonathan Miller, director of research at Radar Logic. 'A net decline in payouts are very likely to first impact transaction levels.'"

"Looming layoffs could exacerbate the pain. Last year, the securities brokerage firms accounted for 177,000 jobs, according to Moody's Economy.com. The overall financial sector accounts for 7.5 per cent of Manhattan jobs but 28 per cent of the overall income, the research firm said."

"Marisa DiNatale, senior economist at Moody's Economy.com expects the financial sector to shed 10,000 jobs across the greater metropolitan area of New York City's five boroughs, northern New Jersey, and three counties north of the city."

"'Probably about 70 per cent would be in New York City. Most of them would be in Manhattan,' she said."

The Times Record Herald from New York. "Normally at this time of year, homeowners place holiday decorations on their lawns. This year, many in the area are putting up foreclosure signs instead."

"'From all the people that I know who've been in the real estate industry for years, they're trying to stay optimistic,' said Yvette Rooney, a real estate agent in Middletown. 'What's different in this environment, though, is how bad the mortgage industry has positioned people. It's making a cycle that won't stop.'"

"The influx by New York City home buyers over the past decade means a lot of variable-rate mortgages are now due for a rate increase. The region's ever-increasing home prices means many have been priced out of the market, yet were given subprime mortgages anyway."

"'They're creeping up,' Rooney said of local foreclosures. 'They'll be more visible in the new year, because a lot of adjustable rates are set to balloon up.'"

"Rooney also blames adjustable mortgage rates for the current crisis, saying that less than 10 years ago, the number of people with adjustable mortgages was 3 percent. Since 2005-2006, that number has increased to 33 percent."

"'A lot of people from the city came to Orange County and it started getting pricey; it started getting like another Rockland or Westchester County,' she said. 'What happened is that a lot of brokers gave what clients wanted — the lower rate — and this is because people are not educated on what 'rate' really is, because everyone, including the brokers, tell people that rate is the most important thing. It's not.'"

"'You can have a great low rate but a horrible mortgage,' she said. 'Since adjustable rates in most cases were lower than fixed rates, that's what people thought they should get, not knowing that it's a bomb waiting to explode.'"

"Home sales and prices fell across the region in November, according to data reported by county boards of Realtors. The decline across Orange, Ulster and Sullivan counties mirrors the slump playing out across large swaths of the country."

"Paula Meloi, owner of ERA Meloi Realty in Port Jervis, whose firm does business in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, said her business has been doing a lot of foreclosure work lately."

"In another sign of the slowing market, homes are taking longer to sell. There are a lot of expired listings. People are jumping from Realtor to Realtor looking for answers,' said Meloi. "The answer really is price.'"

The Advocate from Connecticut. "Potential bargains abound for home buyers in Stamford as the median price of a single-family house dropped in October to $610,750, its lowest October level since 2003." "The median October price in Stamford reached a peak of $660,000 in 2005, up from $622,500 in 2004, the Warren Group said."

"Many sellers in Stamford were seeking prices the market could not support, said June Rosenthal, owner of Juner Properties residential real estate in Stamford, and the subprime lending fiasco has hampered real estate markets nationwide."

"'Connecticut's housing market has fared better than those of its neighbors throughout most of 2007, but July's credit crisis hit New England hard,' said Timothy Warren Jr., CEO of the Warren Group. 'It didn't spare the Nutmeg State this time. Those effects have spilled over from September, when they first became evident, and sales continued to plunge in October.'"

"The median October price of a single-family house in Greenwich was $1.45 million two months ago, compared with $1.15 million a year ago and $1.675 million in 2005, which was an all-time high, the Warren Group said."

The Providence Business News from Rhode Island. "The median price for single-family homes sold in Rhode Island fell to $236,000 during October, the lowest since at least January 2005, according t The Warren Group. The October price is a 10-percent drop from the October 2006 price and a 4-percent drop from the $246,000 median price the state registered in September 2007."

"CEO Warren said the October numbers are a further effect of the July credit crisis, which started affecting median prices during September."

"'And we’re not just seeing this trend in Rhode Island; Sales and prices in Massachusetts and Connecticut also started to plummet in September and have continued declining in October, so I think this is part of a bigger trend,' Warren said. 'Foreclosures also play a part in keeping prices down, even as they flood the market with more homes for sale.'"

The Worchester Business Journal from Massachusetts. "At a glance, things in the Central Massachusetts home loan industry look dismal. Many mortgage brokers have gone out of business, and many of those that remain have slashed their staff numbers by well over 50 percent. But some in the business say the current situation is more silver lining than black cloud."

"'I'm actually kind of happy,' said Christopher Tremblay, CEO of Mortgage Dreams LLC in Worcester, which has reduced its staff from about 50 down to 15."

"Tremblay and other mortgage executives say it has been obvious for years that many brokers and lenders were acting unethically, with strong support from banks and other lenders. They said both increased caution on the part of lenders and regulations now being passed at the federal and state level should help deal with that problem."

"'What I hope we can do is keep the undesirable people from coming in and out of our industry,' said Jim Picciotto, president of Framingham-based Patriot Funding, which has laid off about two-thirds of its employees in the past two years."

"Tremblay said the number of mortgage brokers across the country ballooned since the 1990s, from 100,000 to 500,000, due in part to people looking for easy money. Massachusetts began licensing mortgage lenders and brokers in 1992 and saw the number of licensed companies go from 540 in 1997 to more than 2,000 today."

"'You could have put a monkey behind a desk and they could have got somebody financed,' he said."

The Eagle Tribune from Massachusetts. "A growing number of homeowners across the Merrimack Valley and Southern New Hampshire are in danger of losing their homes - or have already lost them - because they can no longer afford their mortgages, according to statistics."

"The culprit? Adjustable-rate mortgages with low 'teaser rates' offered by unscrupulous brokers to people who really couldn't afford the homes they were buying in the first place. The result? Hundreds of homes in Lawrence, Methuen and Haverhill, dozens more in Andover and North Andover, and scores more in New Hampshire are being foreclosed on at record rates."

"In New Hampshire, staff members from the Banking Department are holding workshops across the state to reach out to homeowners who may be facing foreclosure. 'Some of those folks we have helped,' said N.H. Banking Department Commissioner Peter Hildreth. 'Unfortunately, a lot of them are in houses they simply can't afford.'"

"'It's created a perfect storm,' said Tom Farmer, spokesman for the Massachusetts Housing Finance Agency. 'In many cases the house is worth less than the loan. So if you owe $150,000 but the house is only worth $120,000 now, you need to get the mortgage company to eat the $30,000.'"

"From September 2005 to September 2006, 276 foreclosure petitions were introduced in Lawrence. That number jumped to 704 from September 2006 to September 2007. While Lawrence led the pack during that period, Haverhill came in second, with 206 filings in 2005-2006 rising to 398 in 2006-2007."

"In New Hampshire, meanwhile, Hildreth, the banking commissioner, said 2,000 to 3,000 homes could be foreclosed on by the end of 2008. He said the problem is particularly pronounced in the more populated parts of the state and along the border with Massachusetts."

"'Rockingham County and Southern Hillsborough County will feel the brunt of it,' he said. 'That's where housing prices were high to start with. People had to really stretch to afford some of those homes.'"

"Terence Egan, editor in chief at The Warren Group, said...as people fall behind in their payments, they normally would sell their homes to get out from under the loan. But declining home prices are making that impossible."

"'Home values going down has exposed a lot of problems,' Egan said."

The Telegraph from New Hampshire. "The foreclosure situation in New Hampshire will get worse before it gets better, with around 6,000 state families facing the possibility of losing their home this year and about that many in the same boat in 2008."

"The current inventory of houses on the market is at about 13 months, meaning it would take more than a year to sell them all at current rates, even if no new homes were put up for sale."

"'That is the highest (rate) we had seen in well over 10 years,' said Dean Christon, executive director of the New Hampshire Housing Financing Authority. On average, prices have declined less than 5 percent from last year's peak through this past summer."

"New Hampshire has a lot of adjustable-rate subprime loans, where much of the problem lies. 'The only surprise is that the subprime piece was significantly larger than some may have realized,' Christon said."

"In the second quarter of this year, 6 percent of all loans in the state were subprime adjustable – meaning they were loans given with relatively few checks on income or credit and had low interest rates that would increase sharply after a couple of years. That category of loan did not even exist during the last housing crunch."

"They account for a whopping 49 percent of all foreclosures in the state."

"As happened in the rest of the country, the popularity of these loans has skyrocketed in New Hampshire. In 2004, 10 percent of new loans were subprime, either fixed rate or adjustable; in 2006, that tally had risen to 22 percent."

"The more rural counties had more suspect mortgages – in Coos County, for example, 38 percent of loans were subprime – which seems to cast doubt on the commonly expressed theory that many such loans were taken out by first-time homeowners moving over the border from Massachusetts in search of lower taxes."

"'A lot (of subprime loans) did get used for refinancing,' Christon said."