The Bend Bulletin reports from Oregon. "Paul Helikson stepped into the swirling snow on the steps of the Deschutes County Courthouse on a Thursday morning just before Christmas. Another day, another foreclosure auction. As is usually the case, nobody raised a hand to bid on the little north Bend house, where the owner owed the bank more than $12,000 in unpaid mortgage payments. In fact, as is often the case, no potential bidders showed up at all."

"More than 590 properties entered the earliest stages of the formal foreclosure process last year in Deschutes County, according to records on file in the Deschutes County Clerk’s Office, the highest number this decade and, even in proportion to the county’s growth, the highest rate of potential defaults per 1,000 housing units since the post-9/11 recession of 2002."

"Failed investments account for some of it. One investor went on a buying spree from September 2006 through February 2007, county records show, taking out mortgages on 17 different properties. He stopped paying on all of them last July, leaving about $23,305 per month in unpaid mortgage payments in his wake."

"Other cases, like the single mother’s home that Helikson auctioned on the courthouse steps, were driven by a combination of loans that were given out too generously at the peak of the housing boom’s price spike, a borrower’s job loss, a health problem, or some other financial setback that caused their payments to fall behind."

"Thirty-eight Bend-area houses were designated 'short sales' on the Central Oregon MLS Thursday, agent Jane Flood said, out of a total of about 1,200 listed for sale. But that doesn’t mean they are the only homes that will ultimately sell short."

"Often, broker Terry Denoux said, borrowers will list their homes while a foreclosure is pending, fishing for the best deal they can find to pitch to the bank."

"Some houses that were bought with 100 percent financing 12 to 18 months ago may have lost 10 percent of their market value since then, depending on where they are and what they are, Denoux said, so picking them up at auction at the lender’s asking price might be a mistake."

"'To a lot of people, the word foreclosure indicates, 'Oh! Good deal! Fire sale!' Denoux said. 'And sometimes that’s not the case.'"

"Flood, who contracted with RealtyTrac to send her sales leads last year, said she dropped that contract this year to concentrate more on relocation business, even though she still bills herself as a 'foreclosure specialist.'"

"'I felt I knew everything I wanted to know about foreclosures,' Flood said. 'And, you know, some of the people you couldn’t help.'"

The Register Guard from Oregon. "Foreclosures against Lane County homeowners increased in 2007 at a rate almost seven times higher than those statewide, according to RealtyTrac. 1,227 homes in the Eugene-Springfield metropolitan service district entered the foreclosure process in 2007. That’s an 83 percent increase over the 672 Lane County homes that were foreclosed upon in 2006."

"'I’m not surprised, given what’s been going on in the national housing market,' said Tim Duy, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Oregon."

"'It was unrealistic to expect we weren’t going to be hit by similar trends,' Duy said. 'In Eugene, we didn’t have the hot housing market. Still, the weaker underwriting standards (for mortgages) were pushing people into houses they probably couldn’t afford. Now they’re in foreclosure as a result.'"

"'What I think is happening here, the biggest factor is the slower appreciation of home prices,' said economic consultant Bill Conerly of Portland. 'If you can’t make (mortgage) payments but your house is going up in value, you can sell it and come out without a foreclosure. With slower appreciation, it makes you more vulnerable.'"

"Lane County records confirm an increase in homeowners in trouble, with 2,207 notices of default filed in 2007. There were 1,844 notices filed in 2006. But the county records also indicate the trend may be increasing. There were 238 default notices filed this month through Tuesday, compared with 121 during the same 29-day period during January 2006."

"Todd Williams, legislative committee chairman for the Oregon Association of Mortgage Professionals, said that neither his organization nor the mortgage industry as a whole dispute that many inadvisable home loans were made during the housing boom of 2002 through 2005."

"'A lot of folks chose to buy a house and get a loan that, really, they could never afford,' Williams said."

The Chronicle from Washington. "The subprime mortgage crisis may not have hit Lewis County as hard as it hit the rest of the country, but there was still a noticeable impact throughout 2007."

"Lewis County had 231 foreclosures filed last year, up 32 percent from 2006. 'Going back to about August of last year, we started seeing a lot of subprime companies having problems with people not being able to make payments,' said Sharyll Fisher, branch manager of Chehalis’ Horizon Mortgage. 'It leads them into foreclosure, so the subprime companies sitting on a lot of loans (that are not being paid back) go into bankruptcy or try to sell.'"

"'Banks are trying to recoup some of what they’re sitting on,' she added. 'It’s definitely a tough market right now.'"

"Gary Rask bought out his parents’ former home in Winlock from his sister about two years ago. Rask, retired and on a fixed income, took out an adjustable rate mortgage with a 6.75 percent interest rate and a monthly payment of just under $700."

"'Then, all of the sudden, I get this notice from the mortgage company,' said Ras. 'It said my payment would be going up, and said it’d be sizable.'"

"His payment jumped to about $900 a month, and the interest rate rose to 10.75 percent."

"He was able to refinance the loan and, with a little help from his children. 'At the time, with the estate and the income, they had to put me in the adjustable rate, and said that it could go either way,' he said. 'As it turned out, it went up.'"

"The adjustable rate mortgage was, essentially, a gamble. 'You can’t foresee what’s coming down the road,' he said. 'If I’d gotten locked in, I’d have been fine. I got caught up in the system.'"

"Ted Holmes, a title examiner for Lewis County Title Company, said he was surprised the subprime drop didn’t come sooner."

"'We’ve been saying for a number of years, we knew it was coming,' Holmes said. 'You could see it. We were getting applications and so on from lenders who send those things through the mail like candy.'"

"Lewis County Title Company was averaging over 200 orders a month for more than two years when the mortgage boom was on, he said. 'People were selling off bad paper,' he said. 'They’d get in any way they could.'"

"The rising real estate prices could only hold out so long. 'That kind of came to a screeching halt last year,' he explained."

"The two kinds of loans that became problems were option-arm loans and 228 loans. The thought was that, in two years, the home would have appreciated in value. When the housing market slowed that theory proved false."

"A huge number of those loans were done about two years ago, said Diane Inman, working with Serenity Mortgage and a broker since 1974."

"'I’m not so sure everybody, officers included, understood the impact,' she said, regarding the volume of subprime loans issued. 'A lot of loan officers were newer, and just didn’t have the experience of being in a market where someone would really have to hand in their keys.'"

The Columbian from Washington. "Foreclosures increased significantly in Clark County in the last three months of 2007, reflecting the increasing problems of overstretched homeowners. The 494 foreclosures filed here in the three months ending in December more than doubled the 208 foreclosures filed in the same period in 2006, according to RealtyTrac."

"The end-of-year surge coincides with an increase in the number of new and pre-owned homes for sale in the county and doesn't surprise those who've been tracking the local market."

"'The wave is finally hitting the beach,' said Dick Riley, co-owner of appraisal firm in Vancouver and an economic forecaster for The Columbian."

"He blamed subprime mortgage loans sold during the 2005 housing boom - now 12 months past due - for the rise in fourth-quarter foreclosures. In many cases, lenders gave buyers a false sense of what they were worth, Riley said."

"'People bought homes that they couldn't afford and had no business buying,' Riley said."

The Bellingham Heraldfrom Washington. "When it comes to foreclosure filings, Whatcom County took some lumps in 2007. There were 379 Whatcom County foreclosures filings in 2007, an 83 percent increase from the previous year, according to RealtyTrac."

"What could be a troubling sign for Whatcom County is what’s been happening lately. There were 133 filings in the fourth quarter of last year, the highest quarterly total in the past three years. The next highest was in the second quarter of 2007, when 90 were filed."

"Glenn Crellin, director at the Washington Center for Real Estate Research at Washington State University, said the biggest problems in the state will probably be in the greater Seattle area, but overall the state won’t be hit hard."

"'Washington wasn’t as involved in the high-risk loans as other parts of the country,' Crellin said."

"'I really don’t think we’re in a hurtful area,' said Mark Cross, president and owner of Security First Mortgage and Escrow in Bellingham. 'We haven’t seen a big price drop. We’ve seen some corrections.'"

"But he also acknowledged that the mortgage market is national, and mortgage loan requirements have tightened here, just as they have everywhere else. Some people have borrowed against all of their home equity, and lenders let them do it, Cross said. Now, with steep price increases cooling and refinancing harder to get, those people are getting squeezed."

"'I have people calling me and saying, 'I can make my payment but I don’t have any equity in it. Why should I be making payments on it? I might as well mail the keys back to the bank,' he said."

"Tony Brooks blames a mortgage broker for the loss of his home, and wanted state lawmakers to know his story. Brooks drove twice to Olympia from Seattle in the span of a week to testify for a crackdown on brokers."

"'There are predatory lenders out there ripping off people with subprime loans,' Brooks said. 'By me going down there, they will see somebody that it happened to.'"

"Proposals targeting mortgage brokers that would require full disclosure on all points in a loan, such as possible fees and interest rates, in plain language, require brokers to act in good faith toward borrowers, and increase state oversight."

"'Mortgage brokers are an unregulated group of people that sometimes prey on people's lack of knowledge,' said Sen. Brian Weinstein, who sponsored the good-faith bill."

"The mortgage brokers oppose Weinstein's bill, fearing it will open floodgates for lawsuits. 'We're already serving our customers in a fashion that already represents a commitment to the customer,' said Dave Erickson, the Washington Association of Mortgage Broker's president."

"Erickson also doesn't buy the dire predictions, saying that the percentage of subprime loans in trouble in Washington is small compared to other states, and that property values are holding steady. Mortgage brokers, he said, are taking an unfair amount of the blame."

"'There's plenty of borrowers who say 'I didn't know, nobody told me,' and yet you see their fingerprints all over the disclosures mandated by federal and state laws,' Erickson said."

"Brooks ran into trouble when he refinanced his home in Seattle's Rainier Valley area in 1998. After being fired from Boeing, a divorce, and the opening of his barbershop, he was left in a financial bind and refinanced with a subprime loan to tap the equity in his home."

"By 2002, he had filed for bankruptcy twice, and was falling into more debt after his monthly payments went from $1,400 to $2,900, something Brooks said this broker didn't tell him would happen."

"He acknowledges that he didn't know much about loans when he refinanced, but he expected his mortgage broker to look out for him. 'I'm a really hard worker,' Brooks said. 'When you go out to refinance your life's work, you'd think the broker would be there to help you.'"