The LA Daily News reports from California. "Foreclosures soared 435.5 percent in the San Fernando Valley last year as nearly 3,000 homeowners surrendered to higher monthly house payments brought on by rising adjustable rate loans, the San Fernando Valley Economic Research Center at California State University, Northridge, said Tuesday. The center's numbers cover an area from Glendale to Calabasas, where sales of new and previously owned houses and condominiums fell an annual 32.6 percent."

"Realtor Patricia Beltran is about to be counted in this year's foreclosure statistics. The payment on her four bedroom, three bathroom home in Porter Ranch has jumped $1,200 to about $5,000 a month. She can no longer afford it and is desperate to sell."

"'I, like a lot of other people, was under the assumption that after two years I would refinance and my payment would go down,' she said."

"Beltran, who bought the home 2.5 years ago for $620,000, tried to refinance last summer, but by then credit standards had tightened and the market, and her source of income, was dwindling."

"'There's nothing we can adjust for you because you won't be able to pay it anyway,' she recalled a loan officer saying last summer."

"She listed the house four months ago for $765,000 and has since dropped it to $719,000. Beltran, a single mother, now has 11 listings, and eight of the sellers are in the same fix."

"She's been in the business for seven years and used to do 25 to 30 sales a year. Last year she did six. 'We're surviving off her (daughter's) paycheck. She's a college student,' Beltran said.

"In December, the median price of a previously owned home or condo in the San Fernando Valley fell an annual 7.2 percent to $580,000 and sales fell 51.5 percent to 804 units."

"Daniel Blake, a CSUN economics professor and the center's director, notes that December's median price is 12.1 percent under the record $660,000 set last May. But even with the kind of market distress we are seeing now, percentage price declines won't match sales declines."

"'Prices would have to fall by half to even get to the 2001 (level) and that's a huge drop. I don't think it's going to go that far,' he said."

The Daily Breeze. "South Bay home prices experienced across-the-board declines in December as the market continued to cool, according to a report released Tuesday. Each city cited in the report had a year-over-year drop in median price for all homes sold in December - from Carson, down 15.5 percent, to Torrance, which fell 4.8 percent."

"As for the drop in South Bay sales, one notable omission in the CAR report may bring this reality home to area residents. Manhattan Beach, which CAR consistently lists as one of the top 10 highest-priced areas, if not the highest, was excluded from the December report of individual communities."

"That's because the trendy beach city did not meet the report's threshold of at least 30 home sales in a month."

"'The Manhattan Beach market is somewhat uncertain more because in the last 10 years it has gone up more than any other market in Los Angeles County,' said John Parsons of Horrell Realtors in Redondo Beach. 'It used to be second or third to Palos Verdes Estates or Rolling Hills Estates. But now it's more than anything on The Hill.'"

The San Gabriel Valley Tribune. "In Los Angeles County, the median home price fell 16.9 percent to $487,190 in December, from $586,540 a year ago."

"Locally, Pasadena took the biggest hit, with a year-over-year price drop of 30.1 percent from December 2006. Azusa weathered a decline (-17.6 percent) that outpaced California's annual price drop."

"Marty Rodriguez of Century 21 Marty Rodriguez in Glendora, said that Pasadena's sharp decline probably reflects that fact that homes in that city were priced substantially higher than many surrounding cities to begin with."

"'The higher the price the harder they drop,' Rodriguez said. 'Those very, very expensive homes probably aren't selling that well.'"

"'The whole year of 2007 was a pretty sharp decline,' said Tom Adams, owner of Century 21 Adams & Barnes in Glendora."

"'The downturn, Adams said, has been a normalization process that's weeded a lot of people out of the industry, which he views as a good thing. 'I think it has taken a little while for the public to realize now is a good time (to buy a home),' he said."

"Rodriguez said homeowners looking to sell must realize what houses are selling for now. 'The reason we have so much inventory is that the sellers don't understand,' she said."

The Voice of San Diego. "As economists and real estate professionals offer split opinions on what's ahead in 2008, data released Tuesday recapped an indisputably dreary end of 2007 for those on the selling side of San Diego County's housing market."

"The year's foreclosure filings in San Diego County totaled 38,917 -- triple the total in 2006 and eight times as many as 2005, foreclosure tracker RealtyTrac reported."

"And Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller home-price index for November 2007 (showed) San Diego County's prices for resale detached homes dropped 3.4 percent in one month, a significant monthly drop surpassed only by Los Angeles among the 20 cities examined in the index."

"Between November 2006 and November 2007, prices declined 13.4 percent, a yearly decline second only to Miami's 15 percent drop. And the county's prices were down from the peak in November 2005 by 16.3 percent."

"Rob McNelis, president of One Stop Lending and Realty in Santee, said there's an industry understanding that any homes that come on the market between the second week of November and the second week in January are desperate sellers. And so since Tuesday's data referred to deals struck before that time, he expected the data to get worse in the next couple of months."

"'Scary as it may sound, that's not going to be the scariest number,' he said. 'December and January are going to be worse.'"

"Bank-owned homes constitute a large portion of the homes on the market, 31 percent of all home sales in December, according to analyst Andrew LePage from DataQuick."

"'We are experiencing ... the effects of someone who's drank too much wine,' said John Robbins, immediate past chairman of the national Mortgage Bankers Association. 'The good news is we've stopped drinking. The bad news is we're going to have a hell of a headache.'"

The Union Tribune. "Tania Jones and her husband recently were able to purchase a home in Rancho San Diego for $417,000, but only after Tania spent five months working at her hospital job 12 hours a day, five days a week to pay off bills and save enough for closing costs and to put some extra money in the bank."

"The couple could not have afforded the original asking price of $485,000 for their 1,200-square-foot house, Jones said. Now with a mortgage payment of $3,300 and other monthly bills totaling $2,500, they have to live frugally, watching what they spend and rarely going out to eat, she said."

"'I still think it's expensive to buy a house here in San Diego,' said Jones, who previously paid $1,200 a month in rent for an El Cajon apartment."

"'When we were looking at houses in La Mesa, all the ones that were under $400,000 were very beaten up. In five months, the price on our house went down, so I feel very lucky,' she said."

The North County Times. "Riverside County had one of the worst foreclosure rates in the nation during 2007, seeing a meteoric 191 percent jump from the previous year to about one home out of every 23 entering foreclosure, according to RealtyTrac. 29,826 county homes were in some stage of foreclosure in 2007."

"An avalanche of data showing a slumping housing market has led some in the housing industry to forecast a long, steep decline in area home prices. Others, such as the California Building Industry Association, have predicted the housing market will see a modest recovery this year."

"'I see this being a tough market on through 2010 and into 2011,' said Lyle Anderson, a Poway real estate agent. 'I had people come to me last year who've been in the business 20 years and saying everything's going to be fine this year. I'm looking at them thinking, 'What are you smoking?' I don't see it.'"

"Norm Miller, a professor with the University of San Diego's Burnham-Moores Center for Real Estate, said he agrees with Anderson that local home prices will continue to decline for two or three years. He said the market would then stabilize but recovery would not come until 2012."

"'We're seeing a real, fundamental decline in house prices,' Miller said. 'Home appreciation does not pay for mortgages. That's the lesson we've learned.'"

The San Francisco Chronicle. "In the Bay Area, December sales of existing, single-family homes plummeted 38.1 percent from a year ago, according to the California Association of Realtors."

"Meanwhile, the average cost of those homes fell 8.6 percent in the region, the November Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller Home Price index said. That's the largest drop since it began reporting numbers in 1988."

"'Basically, the markets are coming back into a bit of reality,' said Maureen Maitland, VP of index services at Standard and Poor's. 'We're definitely in a housing recession.'"

The Bay Area News Group. "Bay Area foreclosure filings continued to soar at the end of 2007 compared with a year ago, with one home in every 93 slipping away from its owners."

"The number of San Joaquin County foreclosures rose 301 percent from the last quarter of 2006, the most in the Bay Area. Next were Santa Clara (254 percent), Contra Costa (218 percent), San Mateo (193 percent), Alameda (180 percent) and Solano (125 percent) counties."

"California led the nation in total foreclosure filings and the number of homes in some stage of foreclosure last year. In all, 1.9 percent of households in California received foreclosure filings."

"Alan Fisher, executive director of an organization that advocates increased access to credit and banking to low-income and minority communities, said that...upper-middle-class homeowners who saw the downturn coming were able to sell their home and had enough equity to come out with a profit. They may be renting now and waiting to buy."

"'You don't see them on the foreclosure rolls, but they are affected by the phenomenon,' he said."

From The Sun. "Buck Byers remembers the humorous scene like it was yesterday. At the housing boom's peak, dozens of trucks crammed the street in front of his San Bernardino lumber operation while their enraged drivers yelled vulgarities as they navigated through the congested mess."

"'That was all good, but that's not today,' said Byers, owner of Barr Lumber on Mill Street."

"Traffic problems are the least of his worries these days. The housing market is racing downhill and local lumber dealers like Byers are struggling to keep workers employed."

"'Right now we're just trying to keep our people employed, our trucks running,' Byers said."

"Among the company's six branches - four of them in the Inland Empire - Barr Lumber has laid off 80 employees since August. Its San Bernardino work force was cut in half and went from generating $8.5million per month in sales to $ 3 million over the last year."

"It used to charge customers double for lumber, compared with what it charges now."

"But 2008 doesn't hold much promise for a turnaround. Byers is almost certain more layoffs are on the way. 'The biggest reason is because all the development companies are holding their cards so close,' he said. 'You have no idea what their financial positions are.'"

"Even 57-year veteran Barry Johnson at Chino Lumber is trimming to the bone on his budget. Johnson remembers charging more than $3 per 2-by-4 a couple of years ago compared with about $2 these days."

"'I haven't seen these prices since the mid-'70s,' Johnson said. 'This could top that." The lumber industry's last calamity was during a nationwide recession in the early 1990s, Johnson said."

"Byers said the industry will have to hunker down until business improves. 'Everybody always asks, 'Is this the bottom of the market?' he said. 'I'd like to think it is, but I consistently see it getting worse. This is the worst we've ever seen it. It makes profiting virtually impossible right now.'"

"Byers still daydreams about 2004, his best year ever. 'It was unbelievable the amount of work we were doing,' he said. 'It was like we were the smartest guys in the world in the best market.'"