The Fosters Daily Democrat reports from New Hampshire. "It doesn't take more than quick drive down area roads to realize home sales have stalled. In Strafford and Rockingham counties, 'For sale' signs are reappearing in front of homes that went unsold last year, or worse, in front of foreclosed homes up for sale by a bank or lender. And they're everywhere. In the first quarter of 2008 alone, 70 foreclosures have been filed with Leo Lessard, registrar of deeds for Strafford County, up from 36 during the same period in 2006, and just five in 2005."

"Like Lessard, Rockingham County Registrar of Deeds Cathy Ann Stacey has seen substantial increases in the number of foreclosures in 2008. 'In the first three months of the year, we had 190 foreclosures,' Stacey said. 'We had just 92 last year."

"Lessard said his office saw many people refinancing their homes during the 2003 to 2005 boom. Of those, Lessard says many did not reinvest that money in rebuilding home value."

"'Many people pulled equity to take a vacation or buy that big screen TV,' Lessard said Monday. 'It's not something that's advisable, considering the market has now fallen.'"

The Boston Globe from Massachusetts. "While the Boston-area housing market remains among the most expensive in the country, it is now relatively more affordable than it was earlier in the decade. Median home prices in metro Boston fell to $398,970 in 2007."

"That's 4.2 times the median family income for the area of $94,169 - the lowest that this ratio has been since 2001, according to Moody's Economy.com. Housing specialists consider prices affordable at three times income. The current national average is 3.5 times income."

"When Heather MacFarlane looked for a condominium in 2005 after getting divorced, she was turned off by high prices and unappealing properties. The few she liked were snapped up by someone else. She decided to rent and furiously saved money."

"A larger down payment and lower prices enabled her to purchase a two-family in Roslindale for around $500,000. The downstairs unit is rented, making her comfortable about taking on a bigger mortgage on her income."

"'I can't believe I'm doing this,' said MacFarlane. In 2005, a two-family 'would've been way out of my price range.'"

"Many prospective buyers are staying on the sidelines on the assumption that home prices will continue to fall. 'I don't think it's hit rock bottom,' said Rick O'Hare, who is waiting for prices on a lake house in the Middleborough area to come down further."

"'Even up to a few months ago, if you could breathe, you could get a mortgage,' said Adam Rosenbaum, a realtor in Arlington. 'With all the subprime fallout and the rising debt, that's no longer the case.'"

"Now, Rosenbaum said, many of his clients - faced with having to come up with heftier down payments - have begun inquiring, not about square footage, but how much he thinks a particular property will appreciate."

"'I'm not a prophet, I'm a realtor,' he said. 'While I anticipate prices will come down a bit more, I tell my clients if they see the right place right now, and have the down payment, buy it....If you're planning on staying there more than five years, you're probably not going to lose money.'"

"Tony Annino of Belmont is in the 'wait and see' camp. Annino said his job in the finance industry and his reading so much about the economy and the housing market have made him nervous about buying now."

"'I'm definitely cautious,' he said. 'We're looking to buy a place primarily for the equity. I don't want to buy something if we're in the third inning of a nine-inning game here. If we want to upgrade in a few years, I don't want to be selling the property for the same price I paid for it.'"

The Record Online from New York. "When it comes to selling a house, times are tough all over. Last year, the number of homes sold fell in 31 of the 37 Orange County municipalities tracked by Orange County Association of Realtors. Some of the (formerly) hottest bedroom communities have been hit the hardest."

"From 2002 to 2007, Orange County's median home price jumped nearly 50 percent to $322,500. Every town, village and city in the county posted sizeable five-year increases in price."

"'That just emphasizes the point that we as an industry make regarding homeownership being a long-term investment,' said Ann Garti, CEO of the Orange County Association of Realtors. 'The average time that a family lives in a home is seven years. Over a seven-year (period), you would have seen a very nice appreciation of your investment.'"

From Newsday. "When George Cornielle paid $812,500 for his East Massapequa high ranch in 2005, he said he was told by his mortgage banker that it was a good deal -- and that he could afford it. Now, just over two years later, Cornielle is in foreclosure, unable since last November to make his $4,100 monthly mortgage payment."

"When he initially applied for a loan to buy the house, Cornielle said in court papers filed last month, the loan application he signed was blank. When he saw it later, the application said he earned $14,500 a month and had two children. The reality, Cornielle said in the court papers, is that he earned less than $4,000 a month -- and has one child."

"Cornielle is suing the Garden City mortgage bank and its owner, Aaron Wider, along with the bank that now holds his loan, GMAC Mortgage Corp. The lawsuit alleges that the appraisal of the East Massapequa house that valued it at $830,000 was fraudulent. The fair market value at the time, the lawsuit says, was $425,000."

"'My underwriters are authorized to do anything in their power to protect the continuity of my company,' Wider said in the depositions, which took place in Garden City last fall. 'They work for me. I pay their salary.'"

The Asbury Park Press from New Jersey. "Monmouth and Ocean counties led the nation last year in the percentage of borrowers extracting cash from their houses, usually through refinancing or home equity loans."

"A staggering seven out of 10 high-risk borrowers in both counties — those with low credit scores — refinanced loans to obtain extra cash, Federal Reserve data for the end of 2007 showed. Such mortgage debt will continue to weaken the housing market at the Shore and around New Jersey this year, experts and consumer advocates say."

"'It's no secret that we live in a credit-dependent society,' said Brett Lopes, VP of Intercounty Mortgage in Hazlet. 'In the same way that people don't handle credit cards correctly, they perceived their house was worth more and more and they used it like a credit card.'"

"Toi L. Collins, director of housing counseling at the Affordable Housing Alliance in Eatontown, said she recently heard from a woman who owned a $600,000 house in Fair Haven who was facing foreclosure. After a long telephone conversation, Collins couldn't convince the woman to come in for help in negotiating with her lender."

"'You go through the whole spiel about what they have to do, then you don't hear from them again,' Collins said. 'They just want to bury their head in the sand and not even deal with it.'"

"There were 12,376 foreclosure lawsuits filed in New Jersey Superior Court in the first three months of this year, state officials said Friday. If foreclosures continue at that rate for the year, there would be nearly 50,000, double the number from just two years ago."

The Courier News from New Jersey. "As homeowners throughout the country expressed their concerns about losing money on their homes in a new national poll released Monday, Central Jersey real-estate professionals say the same worries are reflected locally."

"Lee Caprarola, a mortgage banker with Wells Fargo in Somerville, believes that prices have not firmed."

"'It's difficult to say if prices are leveling,' Caprarola said, 'because the behavior of people who choose to sell may be doing one thing, whereas the behavior of people who are forced to sell could be different. For example, I have financed a number of short-sale properties lately, and those prices still appear to be under pressure.'"

"'I do lots of new construction as well, and builders are using price and/or financing concessions and/or free upgrades, as a way to turn up or down the volume on sales activity,' Caprarola said."

"'The real estate market has been dead for us here at Sleepy Hollow Realtors since October, with only recently some activity. Buyers are offering well below asking price for properties and then expecting the sellers to make all repairs if any. Then we hope the bank appraisers will appraise the property for value. It's like pulling teeth, even if you make a deal. If we are lucky to make a deal — about 40 percent of them die for one reason or another,' broker Joe Burris said."

"'I still see prices going down and this is likely to continue,' said George Pantozzi, a sales associate in Raritan Borough. 'Because of the property-tax crisis, in many cases, the option of renting out the property is out of the question, because it will create a negative cash-flow situation. Who could afford a negative cash flow?'"

The Philadelphia Inquirer in Pennsylvania. "Several people involved with short sales locally called the lender-approval process that accompanies them long and frustrating."

"It took Jennifer McMahon and her husband, Christopher from May 2007 to March 2008 to persuade Countrywide Mortgage to agree to a short sale on the five-acre farmette in Glenmoore, Chester County, that they had bought for $379,900 in 2006."

"'This was our dream home,' Jennifer McMahon said. 'When we started, our credit was really good, and even though this kept us out of foreclosure, we've lost a ton of money.'"

"They made some bad decisions, she acknowledged, and got caught in a vise as their 9.95 percent adjustable-rate subprime mortgage began to adjust and their property-tax bill skyrocketed. To make payments, she even liquidated a $15,000 retirement-savings plan, 'and I was penalized by the IRS for doing that.'"

"Last month, the McMahons closed on the sale of their house to an out-of-town investor, according to their agent, Nicholas Vandekar. Countrywide settled for $316,000 of the $360,000 owed."

"As it happens, the McMahons had not sold their old house in Malvern, which they were renting to cover its mortgage and tax bills. They have moved back in."

"Jennifer McMahon said the couple never should have been approved for the mortgage they got. They bid too high, she said, in a market that was stable. 'We went in with good credit, and we came out completely trashed,' she said."

The Morning Call from Pennsylvania. "Sheets of uncovered insulation flap in the breeze from unfinished townhouse units in Allentown. Workers at a closed roofing plant near Quakertown are looking for new jobs. A manufacturer of construction trucks says sales are down. For more than a year, 'for sale' signs have lingered in front yards across the Lehigh Valley."

"Rafael Peralta and more than 100 co-workers lost their jobs when a Quakertown area plant that supplied roofing tiles to home builders closed last month."

"The 56-year-old Allentown resident is worried about making his monthly house payments, even though he and his wife don't have one of those risky subprime mortgages. After 28 years on the job, he's looking for work and watching his money closely."

"'Things are a lot tighter now,' Peralta said. 'I'm worried.'"

"Peralta's former colleague Bill Snyder, said when the national housing market began to plummet, the company cut back on workers' hours. 'It finally trickled down to us because we supplied the roofs for the home builders,' Snyder said. 'No one needs roofs.'"

"At the Carriages at Jordan Creek in Allentown, slow sales have halted completion of additional units. At one end of a row of nine town homes and one single-family home, six unfinished units sit next to three units that are for sale. Across the street are older, established homes that predate the development."

"Of the homes builder Schoch Homes Inc. completed in the development off Front Street, only one has sold. The other three have been on the market for more than a year, said real estate agent John J. McDonald, who is handling the sales."

"An adjacent lot was cleared to build 11 more homes, but McDonald said work on the new units won't start until the economy picks up."

"'They do intend to finish them but it is all a matter of the economy,' McDonald said of the developer. He added, 'There are a lot of townhouses on the market. There's probably an overabundance of them.'"

"Foreclosures...have reached the highest level in the Valley in more than a decade, said Jack Gross, owner of Cassidon Realty in Bethlehem, which sells repossessed properties for banks."

"Home sales fell in February to the lowest monthly level since 2001, according to statistics from the Lehigh Valley Association of Realtors. While real estate agents say the large number of homes for sale in the Valley is a boon for prospective buyers, many may remain on the fence for a while longer before purchasing."

"A group of Lehigh Valley bankers says the current housing slowdown won't go away overnight and will affect builders, residents with less-than-stellar credit and businesses considering an expansion."

"Free-flowing credit that allowed people to buy homes with little or no money down during the boom years earlier this decade has tightened. That means some people may not be able to buy a home, and homeowners won't be able to refinance as easily."

"The housing market has slowed here, after home prices rose 10 percent or more each year from 2003 to 2006, according to the Lehigh Valley Association of Realtors. An influx of more affluent buyers from New Jersey who helped fuel the boom, however, has also slowed."

"'The New Jersey homeowners would still like to buy in the Lehigh Valley,' said Bob Rupel, president of Lafayette Ambassador Bank. 'What's put that action on hold is they can't move until they sell what they have.'"

"Bankers said the current climate will encourage a return to more conservative lending, in which people borrow what they can afford, and not more. 'There are a lot of basics to this,' said David Lobach, CEO of Embassy Bank, in Hanover Township, Northampton County. 'Can I afford it?' is a very important question.'"