The Canton Repository reports from Ohio. "Several Stark County residents featured in two Repository articles about home sales were in discouraging predicaments last spring. All were able to extricate themselves from their situations. But for the home sellers, it came at a price. Tim Manning put his former Lawrence Township home on the market in August 2006 at $174,900. After lowering the price numerous times and hitting other snags, he finally sold the house."

"But he had to make payments on both that and his newly built Tuscarawas Township home until that happened. 'We thought, 'Oh my, we’re not going to get rid of this house,' recalled Manning. 'We’re going to be stuck with two homes. We went through hell to sell that house,' said Manning."

"Nancy and George Niarchos put their two-bedroom Jackson Township condo, bought for $137,900 in 2003, on the market in November 2006. The move came as they bought a larger single-family home elsewhere in the township. The couple, who asked for $139,000 for the Villages of London Square condo, didn’t receive an offer for nine months and considered selling it through an auction."

"In the end, an elderly woman moving here from Florida bought the home for $123,600 in August."

"'We took it for less than what we paid for it, which was disheartening,' said Nancy Niarchos. 'We hadn’t had any offers. ... we both looked at each other and said we have to sell this condo to this lady.'"

The Beacon News from Illinois. "Bettye DeRamus, the director of Aurora-based Consumer Credit Counseling Services, had more resources and repayment programs to offer her clients in 2007 after mounting foreclosures nationwide became impossible for lenders and government agencies to ignore."

"Foreclosure proceedings filed in Kane and Kendall counties, which jumped to 1,600 in 2006 after hovering around 1,000 for years, approached an unthinkable 2,700 in 2007."

"Only about a quarter of foreclosure proceedings in this area tend to end with the home being auctioned off in court. But even homeowners who escape that fate must skimp on necessities, declare bankruptcy or struggle for years to escape a mountain of debt."

"Most of the homes affected by the mortgage crisis were sold between three and five years ago. Around that time, lenders began courting people with lower incomes and spottier credit histories. They competed to offer sub-prime loans that offered borrowers artificially low monthly payments for the first several years."

"In the Fox Valley, where developers were building homes at least as fast as residents could move into them, lenders were only too eager to follow that trend. Over the past two years, as area homeowners have started reaching the end of the low-payment period, they have seen their payments skyrocket. DeRamus says she has watched some clients' bills double, from $500 to $1,000 a month."

"'From Big Rock to Burlington to Sleepy Hollow, no area doesn't have a foreclosure,' said Lt. Tom Bumgarner of the Kane County Sheriff's Department, whose coworkers are stretched thin monitoring the resulting paperwork. 'There's no town or village in the county that hasn't been touched by this.'"

The Chicago Tribune from Illinois. "The vultures are circling. In an abrupt reversal, the commercial property industry that started 2007 giddy about its prospects enters 2008 facing falling property values, a seized-up credit market and concerns a slowing economy could dampen future leasing and rental rates."

"The downtown Chicago leasing market faces 6 million square feet of new offices in development that will start coming online in 2009. Also, some older office buildings that had been eyed for conversion into residential condominiums may remain in the office supply."

"'It seems pretty obvious now that many buyers will have problems meeting pro forma [rent and income] projections and that there was too much optimism in these deals,' said David Funk, director of the Cornell University Program in Real Estate."

"In Chicago, office building sale prices fell 17 percent in the fall compared with the spring. Last month, only two properties sold for a total of $91 million, compared with a year earlier when 16 properties sold for $2.3 billion. Nationwide, the dollar volume of sales is off about 55 percent, reported Real Capital Analytics."

"'Commercial property performance always comes down to jobs,' said Jeff Samaras, an executive VP at real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield Illinois Inc. 'If the economy gets into a mess, all bets are off.'"

"The new year could bring a new reality for landlords and investors, said Christopher Carroll, managing director of a Chicago-based financial-services firm. 'No one can bet on selling a building for a higher price unless they have a plan to create value through sound operations,' Carroll said."

"'In 2008, I expect to see [lenders] repricing properties on a grand scale, saying you can have this at 30 or 40 cents on the dollar' for certain buildings in some markets, said Carroll."

The Fond du Lac Reporter from Wisconsin. "More and more Fond du Lac residents are losing homes as foreclosure rates increase across the nation. The Fond du Lac County Sheriff's Department has recorded 210 foreclosures so far this year. That's up 54 from the 166 foreclosures in 2006 and more than double the 99 foreclosures recorded in 2003."

"'I have never seen foreclosures on a daily basis like this before,' said Len Bacon, owner of Century 21 Fox Valley in Fond du Lac."

"Bacon, who has been tracking local real estate for more than 20 years, said the increasing number of foreclosures is not related to the nationwide mortgage crisis or subprime lending."

"Many foreclosures are the result of buyers taking on too much debt, becoming overextended and not being able to make their payments, Bacon said."

"Bacon said many homeowners borrowed too much, often more than the value of their home. 'It's difficult for the average American to turn down what appears to be a gift horse,' he said."

The Small Business Times from Wisconsin. "There is finally national concern in the news today about rising foreclosures in the housing market. Unfortunately, this is last year's news."

"I wrote about the rise in residential foreclosures in December 2006 and touched upon it again in January 2007. Most of the national business news channels hadn't really featured this until late in 2007. Why's this suddenly an issue? It has been an issue for more than a year for many people."

"Will there be a lot of new houses and condos for sale at bargain-basement prices? Don't count on that. Builders will take less money, sure, but they won't give houses away. As for condos, some buildings will become apartments until the market bounces back. This is happening already."

"There is one house north of Racine, in a small suburb called Wind Point on Lake Michigan that was foreclosed. The bank or the real estate agent thought they could get a huge return on it. They put it on the market for $595,000 more than a year ago. Though it wasn't worth it, they thought it would command that price because it was in an affluent neighborhood."

"The taxes on the property just went up several thousand dollars. The assessor thinks it's worth a lot. That house is now $410,000 without one serious offer on it. Looking at it more than a year ago, I said it should sell close to what the mortgage is on it. That would be somewhere in the upper $300,000s."