The Independent Record reports from Montana. "Speaking at a seminar on foreclosures and their impact on Montana families, Sue Woodrow, community affairs manager for the Helena Branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, said there are some hotspots of foreclosure activity in Montana, but that the situation here is nowhere near as grim as in parts of the Southwest, Midwest and Florida. Woodrow cautioned that one in five loans made in Montana in 2006 was a high-cost loan, a category that includes adjustable rate mortgages."

"'So the thing we’ll be watching out for is what happens when those start to reset,' she said."

"Sheila Rice of the Montana Homeownership Network in Great Falls said there are only six bank-owned homes that have been foreclosed in the Helena area, compared to 60 in Great Falls. She cautioned, though, that her organization typically counts around 800 foreclosures a year in Montana, but anticipates 1,200 before 2008 is done."

"She said that in addition to creative financing, many borrowers ramped up credit card use and home equity lines, which put further stress on family budgets."

"'There was a feeding frenzy there for a long time, where people felt like if I didn’t do this now, I will never be a homeowner,' she said. 'And in fairness to the buyers, in 40 to 50 percent of the subprime loans, they could have gotten a prime loan and were up-sold.'"

The Idaho Statesman. "First-quarter 2008 Treasure Valley single-family residential home sales plunged 37 percent from a year ago, according to industry statistics. Experts said many homes that were sold in the last quarter of 2007 closed in the first quarter of 2008, but not enough to rescue the quarter."

"'That tells you how dismal the first quarter of 2008 really was,' said real estate agent Mike Pennington."

"'I'd say that in the 14 years I've been selling real estate in the Treasure Valley, I don't think I've seen numbers as pitiful as they seem to be be,' said associate broker Shaun Tracy. 'Things have slowed to such a crawl that a lot of Realtors, lenders and builders are not going to make it in this environment.'"

"He knows of a couple who are both Realtors and who have just one sale between them this year. 'And this is beginning to look like the new normal for now,' Tracy said."

"Median home prices have taken it on the chin, too. In Ada County, the median price for a single-family home in March was $210,000, down 7 percent from $224,900 in March 2007. Canyon County's median price of $149,900 last month was down 7 percent from $163,300 in March 2007."

"However, median prices in both counties were still well above 2004 levels."

"Meanwhile, the bulging inventory of unsold homes remains a problem. According to Intermountain MLS statistics, there were 7,195 homes listed for sale in Ada and Canyon counties at the end of the first quarter, about 12 percent more than the 6,448 listings at the end of 2007. The MLS reported that 1,651 homes changed hands in Ada and Canyon counties from January through March."

"The number of Treasure Valley homes scheduled to be sold at a foreclosure auction this month has reached a 'staggering' level, according to a local report released Tuesday."

"IdahoDataProviders said 200 trustee sales are scheduled this month in Ada County, a 203 percent increase from 66 trustee sales the same month a year ago. In Canyon County, 162 homes will go on the block, a 74 percent increase from 93 trustee sales in April 2007."

"IDP president Charlie Nate said lenders are starting foreclosure proceedings quickly, hoping that potential buyers or investors may surface soon after a notice of default is published. Nate called the level of increase 'staggering, but it's not over yet.'"

"'I think they (lenders) are not wasting a minute, because if nobody buys that house, it goes back to the lender,' Nate said."

"Nate said real estate agents and lenders are showing the strain of the ongoing housing slump. 'You should see the ones I talk to,' he said. 'It's like they're dead. You can hear it in their tone of voice.'"

"Associate broker Shaun Tracy...said that as homes in foreclosure are sold off in a neighborhood, nearby homeowners will take notice of the lower prices the houses fetch and will be more likely to be reasonable in pricing their own homes."

"'What will happen is that there will be a repricing of the market,' he said."

"Ada County's vacancy rate for rental housing in the first quarter was double the rate for the same period last year, according to a new survey." "It's a curiosity, because there should be more potential renters, considering that sales of single-family homes remain in the doldrums because of a glut of homes and the difficulty customers are having obtaining credit."

"Tony Drost of First Rate Property Management said his company's vacancy rate is just 2 percent. 'I should be happy with a 2 percent vacancy rate,' Drost said. 'But there are certain properties that are not getting rented out, and that makes the owner unhappy, which makes me unhappy.'"

"Drost thinks some properties he manages are remaining vacant because potential renters are turning to property managers who do not screen renters as closely as they should."

"'I had 10 applicants rejected just this week because of bad credit,' he said. 'It looks like over the winter everybody decided to stop paying their bills.'"

"The biggest jump in vacancies was for five-bedroom homes, which climbed from 5.7 percent a year ago to 14.3 percent in the first quarter."

"Mike Rampelberg of Greater Boise Property Management said the vacancy increases are attributable to a flood of available properties, as homeowners who have not been able to sell their houses have decided to turn them into rentals. Homes that were rented before they were even vacant a year ago are languishing on the market this year, he said."

"Nevertheless, Rampelberg said he's seeing a 'good supply" of out-of-state renters looking for single-family homes, compared with two years ago when they would have been looking to get in on the residential buying frenzy then still sweeping the Treasure Valley."

From KTVB.com in Idaho. "As it makes it's way down the street, it seems like a typical charter bus But once inside you realize Davy Thomson isn't showing the sites instead he's showing reposessed and foreclosed homes."

"This home was reposessed and is on the market for half a million dollars. It's unfinished and would take money to complete, but those on the tour know that just a few years ago, the bare land the home is on would have cost that much."

"'The house we just showed you cost half a million dollars, this house, 90 thousand dollars they range in price for every type of buyer,' said Thomson. 'There are anywhere between 700 and a thousand foreclosed houses on the market right now.'"

From KOMO TV in Washington. "The national economic crisis is hitting the county. Budget Director Bob Cowan is warning the County Council of a $20 million shortfall in the 2008 budget and a $60 million shortfall in 2009."

"'The current plan will cut the prosecutor's office, it will cut the sheriff's office, it'll cut the jail, it'll cut the public defender,' said sheriff's spokesman John Urquhart. 'So I think the public can expect there will be an awful lot of criminals that won't get arrested, won't go to jail and won't get prosecuted.'"

"'There was a sense in the county courthouse that I was only trying to scare people,' said County Executive Ron Sims. 'I said 'I'm not trying to scare you; I am trying to tell you there is no money.'"

"So what's wrong? King County budget money kept climbing as long as homes were being built and sold. The slowdown is hitting home, hard."

"The county is also being hit with a low rate of return on investments, and had what the budget office calls 'write-downs resulting from impaired investments.' Another part of the problem is that people are holding on to their wallets. They aren't buying anything, from cars to refrigerators."

The Democrat Herald from Oregon. "Tim Groome can’t think about the houses on Grace Street without a sigh. His company, Premiere Estate Homes of Jefferson, has built 14 houses there under the name. All but one feature a prominent 'For Sale' sign. And have since last July."

"'If this were two years ago, they’d have been gone a week from being completed,' said Groome, president of the company."

"Communities such as Lebanon are seeing a trickledown effect, said Jacki Nicklous, president of the Santiam Board of Realtors. Sellers in Bend, Arizona and California aren’t seeing buyers come to call, so they’re not able to purchase the mid-valley properties they may have been eyeing."

"The word 'recession' has also been a factor, she said. Even when layoff talk is just rumors at the watercooler, 'it’s still enough to scare people into waiting.'"

"Groome figures even a full-blown statewide recession won’t slow Oregon down for long. 'It never has,' he said."

The Bend Bulletin from Oregon. "Median home sales prices in the first three months of 2008 fell almost 12 percent in Bend and 14 percent in Redmond from the first quarter of 2007, according to a report from the Central Oregon Association of Realtors."

"Elsewhere in the region, home prices dropped 15.5 percent in Sisters, 27.5 percent in La Pine and 9.1 percent in Jefferson County, but prices rose 16.5 percent in Sunriver and 8.1 percent in Crook County, the report said."

"The number of homes sold in Bend in the quarter dropped 44 percent, to 222 units, and 30.3 percent in Redmond, to 92 homes."

"Local real estate officials weren’t surprised by the declines in sales and prices. 'That’s the market,' said Tom Greene, president of the Realtors association. 'Sellers aren’t going to get what they got in 2006.'"

"At the end of March, Bend and Redmond had 12 and 13 months’ worth of homes on the market, respectively, Greene said. 'We’re coming to the realization that the recession is one of the reasons we’re down,' Greene said."

"'Lending practices have changed dramatically,' said David Block, an appraiser for Bend-based Cornerstone Appraisal Group. 'People can’t get out of their properties because values have dropped and they can’t get a loan.'"

"The region’s two highest-priced markets — Sunriver and Sisters — both maintained year-over-year gains in median sales prices, according to the MLS data. Sunriver’s price gain was based on 11 sales, however, a 65 percent drop from the same period in 2007."

"'January and February were not good for anybody out here,” said Mike Riley, general manager and principle broker for Coldwell Banker First Resort Realty in Sunriver."

"Heavy snowfall this winter contributed to the sales drop — so did people’s reluctance to drop their asking prices, Riley said. 'Sunriver is a second-home market — it isn’t affected in the same way,' Riley said. 'A lot of owners haven’t budged in their prices or panicked.'"

The Lake Oswego Review from Oregon. "Recent real estate reports show that Lake Oswego and West Linn are not immune to market pressures. The number of active listings in February 2008 was 893 compared to 641 in February 2007. In February 2006, the number was 354."

"Local Realtors and mortgage experts agree that the inventory of homes is high. 'The buyers are being very careful because of all of the negative news coming from Wall Street,' said Realtor John DeCosta. 'The (lending) environment now is very rigid and down payments are more in the 25 to 30 percent range.'"

"He said the number of closed sales this quarter is almost half of that from the first quarter of 2007. 'Builders are being squeezed to sell their inventory before the construction loans expire,' said DeCosta. 'Builders are leading the sellers in dropping prices and putting deals together.'"

"The average sales price for a Lake Oswego/West Linn home in February 2008 was $568,000, as opposed to $497,000 a year ago. In 2000, it was $325,000."

"Broker Dale Kuhn said she has seen an increase in inventory for higher-end homes. 'I think we’re seeing people come down in price and being a little more realistic in pricing,' Kuhn said. 'People realize we no longer are having 15 to 16 percent appreciation rates.'"

"She said the national media has portrayed a gloom-and-doom housing crisis in the United States. In addition, she said the Lake Oswego and the Portland area did not partake to the degree that cities like Miami in the speculative boom."

"'I don’t think Portland and Oregon struggle. Florida and California have gorgeous weather,' she said. 'People don’t move here for the speculative market.'"

The Oregonian. "Until recently, a vibrant housing market provided many of the jobs and much of the income that stoked the southwest suburbs' economy for the past half-decade. Much has happened in the past year to erase the double-digit profits that home sellers were taking for granted."

"The number of houses on the market, for instance, has increased almost sixfold since 2006, giving buyers the upper hand. The multiple offers and bidding wars common among prospective buyers as recently as 2005 have been replaced by sellers trimming asking prices 10 percent and more to keep buyers from shopping elsewhere."

"Ron Ares jumped from his job as marketing director for a high-tech company to a family-run real estate business in West Linn three years ago. That may as well have been a lifetime ago. The market hit its peak, in terms of median sales prices and number of houses sold, last July or August, Ares said."

"'Inventories were half of what they are now, full-price offers were commonplace and if buyers didn't have all their ducks in a row, they were likely to miss out on houses that were selling the same day they came on the market,' said Ares, a Tigard resident who specializes in the southwest suburbs. 'It was one open house, one advertisement and 'Katie bar the door.'"

"'What I'm telling clients is, if you need to sell and don't want to get stuck, look at what the peak pricing was and take 5 percent off the asking price,' Ares said. 'Otherwise, they'll just be chasing the market down.'"

"Dale Kirby wasn't surprised at the reaction she got when she told friends and family in December that she was putting her Tigard-area house on the market no later than March. 'They all said, 'Ooohhhhh, what a horrible time to try to sell your house,' ' Kirby said, laughing."

"Her three-bedroom, 2.5-bathroom house, built in 2001 overlooking Fanno Creek, was listed March 14 with an asking price of $417,500. Kirby said she'd have asked $35,000 more if she had listed the house at the same time last year. She attributed the reduction to the softened market."

"'I bought it three years ago, pretty much at the height,' she said. 'I offered almost full price and it had been on the market for only two days.'"

"Despite a regionwide housing inventory that's swelled to nearly a year's worth of dwellings, Kirby is confident the right buyer will walk through her door. 'The house is all detailed out right now and looks great,' she said. 'Besides, everything always works that way for me.'"