The Baltimore Sun reports from Maryland. "Richard Lunsford feels as if he's watching the economy fall apart, and along with it, his plans for retirement. Housing sales are weak - a pointedly painful fact for Lunsford, who runs a construction business from his Pasadena home. 'Right now, there's hardly any work at all. No one's buying houses, no one's repairing houses, no one's building,' he said. 'I probably won't get to retire. I'm living on my savings right now.'"

"Those who planned to make money trading in their big homes for smaller ones can no longer count on quick sales or top dollar pricing. Two weeks ago, Wendy Sigler rearranged her 401k to help mitigate potential losses'. In her early 50s now, she had hoped to retire from her job within a decade, but she's no longer sure that will be possible."

"The equity that she and her husband have in their Ellicott City home has steadily declined, while expenses have risen."

"'The tentative [retirement] plans that I had put in place change with the fluidity of the market on a month-to-month basis,' she said. 'A lot is going to depend on what happens over the next few years in the economy. I have to have enough money before I can even think about retiring.'"

"Half of working families do not put anything away for retirement, and those who do have average savings of just $35,000."

"'We have a lifelong financial savings plan crisis in this country today,' said Joseph DeMattos Jr., the Maryland AARP director, adding that there needs to be some sort of bipartisan political intervention to stimulate a savings spree."

"Lunsford needs the housing market to rebound before he can even think about retiring, and he has all but given up on doing it early."

"'My father is in the same business, and he's having the same problems,' Lunsford said."

The Capital from Maryland. "The rise in home foreclosures across Anne Arundel County could slow economic growth this year, stunting consumer spending, pulling down home prices and affecting developers putting together new deals, economists and observers of the local market said."

"There were 1,800 foreclosure filings in the county by the end of last year, a roughly 40 percent increase from the 1,300 filings in 2006, said Clerk of the Circuit Court Robert Duckworth, who added he hasn't seen this many filings since the dot-com bust around 2000."

"'It's a problem in Anne Arundel, absolutely,' said April Richardson, a foreclosure attorney in Annapolis, who said she has seen foreclosure cases increase in areas such as Annapolis and Crownsville over the past year. 'I have homeowners who live in multimillion-dollar homes that are in the same position. It's affecting upper-class and well-educated people.'"

"The foreclosure problem stems in part from an inflated home market that saw skyrocketing home prices and sales, but then began to decline."

"Lakshman Achuthan, managing director of the Economic Cycle Research Institute, said foreclosures also will add to the housing supply and cause a downturn in home prices. 'You get in a little bit of a vicious circle,' he said."

"'The days of having close to 100 percent financing are certainly behind us for the time being,' he said."

The Washington Times. "The overvaluation of homes has created a buyers strike as potential buyers sit on the sidelines waiting for prices to fall. James Haffly, an Alexandria defense worker, would like to buy a house in the Washington area but thinks that prices are way too high and must come down substantially."

"'Housing is out of reach for many folks here unless they have a rich relative,' he said, noting that having a high-income, dual-earner family doesn't suffice anymore to buy a typical 'starter' home for about $400,000."

"He's hoping that the 1 million to 2 million foreclosures predicted nationwide this year will help to drive down prices to affordable levels."

"'I mean, here we are at $125,000 a year, and to buy a home on the low end means spending 40 percent of our take-home pay. Something ain't right. I wouldn't buy in this market, not with rent amounts at half or less of what a house payment would be,' he said."

The Washington Post. "The slump in home prices in the Washington region is deepening and spreading, according to data compiled for The Washington Post that shows that for the first time, every local county saw a decrease in prices for a significant period of last year."

"The current slump is worse in counties far from the Beltway, such as Prince William, where prices fell 13 percent year over year. Prices have plunged in...Sterling, Manassas and Bowie. Those drops challenge the notion that a strong local economy would shield the region from the worst of the mortgage crisis."

"Instead, the depression in housing prices across the region is deepening and accelerating, according to the data."

"Kristin Cockrell and her husband put their red-brick, three-bedroom Sterling Park house up for sale in April 2006 for $425,000. Then $379,000. They kept cutting to $350,000, then $325,000. Now, the couple hopes the new $300,000 price will attract the buyers they need in order to sell and move closer to family in San Diego."

"'Watching the price fall right before your eyes, it's hard,' Kristin Cockrell said."

"Numbers show downward patterns in neighborhoods characterized by long commutes and lots of newly constructed homes. For example, MRIS shows that prices fell 18 percent in December in Sterling Park, about 30 miles from the District in the 20164 Zip code, as a spike in foreclosures depressed prices there."

"On one street, three houses were recently for sale. A few blocks away, there is a cul-de-sac with two for-sale signs. Two blocks over, homeowners took their place off the market after it languished; it is now for rent."

"Fast-climbing prices transformed Sterling Park over the last seven years. Median home prices in the neighborhood...rose nearly 100 percent from $237,086 in 2001 to $468,496 in 2005 at the height of the market, according to a review of MRIS data conducted by a local real estate agent."

"As of mid-December, 39 percent of houses for sale in Sterling Park and neighboring Sterling were either foreclosed on or being sold in a short sale, according to Danilo Bogdanovic, a Loudoun County real estate agent."

"'The only thing selling right now are foreclosures,' said Bogdanovic."

"As banks discount properties for sale or allow owners to sell them for less than their mortgage value..the median sales prices in the Sterling Park Zip code dropped from $365,000 in December 2006 to $298,000 a year later."

"'It used to be location, location, location. In this market it is price, price, price,' said Rick Martindale, an agent in nearby Chantilly. Martindale recently lowered the price of a four-bedroom foreclosed house in Sterling Park from $330,000 to $250,000."

"After 25 years in Sterling Park, Betty Skelton wants to move into a retirement community. But on her block, at least two other homes are for sale. 'I saw another sign up. I don't remember seeing the sign up before,' she recently lamented."

"After two months on the market, Skelton isn't ready to budge from her $399,900 asking price. During the housing boom, similar houses were selling for $500,000, a price she acknowledges was inflated."

"'I am not going to be able to go down further than where I am,' she said. 'I don't think I can give the house away.'"

The Times Dispatch from Virginia. "Chesterfield, Hanover and Henrico counties recorded the fewest number of building permits last year since Integra Realty Resources began tracking the numbers in 1992."

"'The market correction that began in 2006 is definitely continuing,' said Tom Tyler, senior analyst with Integra Realty in the local office in Glen Allen. 'Once we get the fourth-quarter figures in, we may very well see another drop. This correction will probably continue well into 2008.'"

"Christine Chmura of Chmura Economics & Analytics in Richmond said she expects construction starts in the country, state and or region to continue to fall this year."

"In the Richmond metro area, building permits for single-family houses are down 42 percent since peaking in January 2007, she said. By comparison, in the 1990 recession, permits in the Richmond area fell 40 percent."

"'A similar trend is occurring in the state, where permits are down 49 percent from their peak, compared with a 52 percent decline in the 1990 recession,' Chmura said."

"Some areas of the state are slower than others, such as Fredericksburg and Culpeper, said Rich Napier, past president of the Home Builders Association of Virginia. 'Hopefully, we can move forward, wave the flag and people will buy homes. You've got be optimistic when you are in this business,' he said."

The Daily Progress from Virginia. "With more than 600 residential units slated to be built over the next two years in downtown Charlottesville, some developers and city planners are predicting that the combination of the flagging economy and the amount of competition will precipitate the downfall of a few of these high-rise projects."

"All of the projects are set to be finished within an 18-month span, leading some to question whether the downtown market can absorb more than 600 condos at once. 'I think that a number of those projects that have been approved probably will never get built,' said John Matthews, a local architect."

"Only one of the towers - the 57-unit Waterhouse on Water Street - has broken ground. And that was no easy task, said Bill Atwood, Waterhouse’s architect and developer. It took time to pre-sell nearly 50 percent of Waterhouse’s units - the magic number bankers and developers look to lock up before they move forward."

"'The credit market is so bad and the banking business has gotten so tight that it is extremely difficult to get a project started,' Atwood said."

"'Are we going to go full-bore ahead without any pre-sales or testing the water? No,' said Bob Englander, the developer of the site on the corner of West Main and McIntire."

"Englander’s plans are still being molded. This summer when he received a zoning change by the city, he announced that he was going to put 79 units in the nine-story tower. Now, though, he says the building could have as few as 50."

"He’s confident that construction can begin by the end of this year but acknowledges there are no guarantees. 'We have one foot on the accelerator, one hand on the gear shift and the other foot on the brake as well,' Englander said."