The Hackensack Record reports from New Jersey. "What do you do if you're a single mother who can't afford your mortgage payments of more than $3,700 a month, but you can't sell your house for anywhere near the amount you owe on the mortgage? That's the dilemma facing Anna, a Bergenfield, N.J., woman who bought her Cape Cod-style house, with no money down, for $445,000 two years ago. Now, in a much slower market, her real-estate agent says she'd be lucky to get $380,000."

"'The values of a lot of these houses were inflated as a result of the real-estate boom. Now we're in a bust. The values aren't there. It's all starting to catch up with everyone,' said Frank Ciambrone, a Rochelle Park, N.J., real-estate lawyer."

"The solution for Anna is the one being used by an increasing number of distressed homeowners: a short sale. She reluctantly decided to give up the house and move in with relatives in the Bronx."

"'It's painful,' Anna said. 'My children are not really happy, but we had to make this change.' She recalled her renovations to the house but decided a short sale was the right choice because at least she's not 'just waiting for a foreclosure.'"

"Another short-seller, a Lodi, N.J., woman who asked not to be identified, owes $620,000 on her two-family house, which she bought in 2006. She works on commission and got a so-called stated-income mortgage. She said the mortgage broker encouraged her to overstate her income to qualify for the loan."

"But when her commissions slowed, she could not afford the monthly payments of $6,100. She found a buyer willing to pay $525,000, but in the long wait for approval from her lender, the buyer gave up on the deal. Now she is looking for a new buyer."

"'I'm partly to blame,' the homeowner said. 'I should have known better.' But she thinks the lender should have known better, too: 'I should never have been able to get that loan, and I'm sorry I did.'"

"Sal Poliandro of Re/Max Properties in Ridgewood tells of a Hackensack short sale in which the homeowner owed $650,000 because he refinanced to pull out equity at the peak of the boom market. But the monthly payments were impossible. The house ultimately sold for $430,000 -- $230,000 less than the amount owed on the mortgage."

"'The seller's goal was to stop making payments without ruining his credit and his life,' Poliandro said."

The News Journal from Delaware. "Debbie Chase never imagined she would find herself in foreclosure. After moving into a bigger house but failing to sell the old one, Chase and her husband now find themselves with two mortgages -- and they can't pay both. The family has since moved back into the smaller house and has completely stopped making payments on the big one."

"We really don't want to go through a foreclosure, but in this market we know we won't get what we need to pay off the house,' said Chase, who is still trying to sell."

"For Chase and a growing number of the 938,000-plus Americans in foreclosure, the next step is coming into focus: just walk away."

"'A homeowner with a mortgage that exceeds the value of his house has a strong incentive to default,' Martin Feldstein, a Harvard professor, wrote in a Wall Street Journal editorial. 'Optimists note that homeowners with negative equity have generally been reluctant to default in past years. That was sensible when house prices were rising. But with house prices falling, defaulting on the mortgage is the rational thing to do.'"

"In January, Chase stopped making payments on the new home in January. 'Our plan was to start getting the new one back on track,' she says. 'Now we're just trying to unload it. If the first house had sold, we never would have been in this position.'"

The News Post from Maryland. "Outspoken local appraiser Wayne Six addressed a packed room of more than 100 real estate professionals at Dutch's Daughter Restaurant, saying 'there is a ray of sunshine in the storm.' Six was referring to the current housing market where prices are falling, and foreclosures are rising along with expenses."

"He noted there were only 375 houses on the market in Frederick County on June 2005. That was the turning point for the housing market."

"'We knew it was coming. For several years we had prices going up 20 percent a year. Did anyone's income go up 20 percent a year?,' Six said. 'A normal market for Frederick County is 1,000 to 1,200 houses. Having 375 was bad, it meant people bidding on properties and a lot of unhappy people.'"

"Inventory as of March 3 was 1,900 homes, he said, down from 2,500 in September. 'It might level off quicker than we thought,' Six said of the inventory of unsold homes. 'But I'm also worried that everyone and his brother is waiting to put their house on the market.'"

"'The cows are out of the barn and (Realtors) are getting blamed for letting the door open,' he said referring to foreclosures."

"Many property owners Six called 'big hat, no cattle.' 'They have a big house, big car, swimming pool, but no equity' and are constantly refinancing to keep afloat."

"Someone moving from a townhouse to a single family home can find a bargain, he said, because townhouse prices fell less than those for single family dwellings. He gave an example of a house in Clover Ridge, built in 2005 and sold then for $600,000. It just sold for less than $400,000."

"Another bad sign is that more unfinished houses are coming on the market, Six said, prompting him to offer the following advice to the Realtors: 'When you try to sell that, you need to knock off more than just the cost of finishing the house,' he said."

The Washington Post. "The four-bedroom, 1950s rambler on Hanover Avenue in Springfield was an illegal boardinghouse, neighbors complained in February 2007. County inspectors...cited the owner, Elsa DeLeon, for a series of code violations and ordered her to bring the property into compliance."

"DeLeon, a Honduran immigrant, told The Washington Post at the time that only eight people lived there, all family members who were needed to help make the mortgage on the house she bought for $550,000 in 2006."

"By May, it was in foreclosure, sold to Deutsche Bank National Trust of Kansas City for $120,600, according to county records. The house has been vacant for months; DeLeon could not be located to comment."

"It will go up for auction today, along with hundreds of other foreclosed properties areawide, at the Washington Convention Center. The starting price is $169,000 -- less than half the value of surrounding homes."

"This situation is not what Fairfax County officials had in mind when they started cracking down on overcrowding. The goal was to restore stability in older neighborhoods."

"'It's mixed feelings,' said Supervisor Jeff C. McKay. 'You hate to be the keeper of a neighborhood with a lot of foreclosures, but a lot of these are due to our systematic strike-team efforts. When you can't rent rooms in a boardinghouse, you're going to go out of business.'"

"Asked whether they prefer living near an empty, foreclosed house to one that is overcrowded, some Springfield residents have mixed feelings."

"'Do you want me to shoot you or stab you? Neither choice is good,' said Harry Gault, who lives in the 6300 block of Dana Avenue in Springfield, where two of the three houses targeted by the strike team are in foreclosure."

"Gault said that he supports the county's toughened enforcement stance but that it might have been more effective had it started before the subprime market collapsed. 'They should have cracked down a long time ago,' he said."

The Free Lance Star from Virginia. "Looking for more peace and quiet at work? If so, you might be jealous of John LaFratta. LaFratta runs a law office in Richmond. He handles home foreclosure legal work across central Virginia for law firms in Bethesda, Md., and Virginia Beach."

"What that means is that LaFratta spends a good deal of time these days traveling from courthouse to courthouse auctioning off foreclosed properties."

"Problem is, nowadays banks are often owed more on the homes than what the houses are fetching on the open market. So the minimum bid required to buy the house at auction is typically too high for most."

"But LaFratta and other attorneys handling foreclosure auctions are required to go through the motions even if no buyers show up. He reads the notice from the newspaper--'frequently to myself,' he says--before opening the bidding. When nobody bids, the bank adds another home to its growing real-estate portfolio."

"'People just aren't real comfortable investing money right now,' said Rich Donaldson, a member of the Fredericksburg firm TLC Property LLC, which buys foreclosed properties. 'Everyone's waiting for the bottom.'"

"LaFratta had two public auctions scheduled Wednesday in front of King George County Circuit Court. LaFratta told an audience of one what was needed to buy the two-story home in the Oakland Park subdivision off Fletchers Chapel Road in King George."

"The original principal amount from March 2005 was $330,600, according to the ad. The opening bid was $299,000. Donaldson, the lone attendee, shook his head as he heard the figure. '$299,000, going once, going twice, sold,' LaFratta said."

"The winner? HSBC Mortgages Services Inc., which would likely put the home on the market soon. LaFratta said the four auctions he did earlier that day in Spotsylvania had similar results. He's starting to get some bidders in the Richmond area, but buyers remain scarce farther north."

"But the show must go on. LaFratta's Wednesday had started in Goochland County at 8 a.m. Before returning to Richmond for criminal court that afternoon, he had one more auction at 12:30 p.m. in Westmoreland County."