Some housing bubble news from Wall Street and Washington. Staten Island Advance, "Rep. Vito Fossella has an idea on how to jump-start the moribund housing market: Give folks a $10,000 break on their federal taxes if they buy a home. Fossella pushed his bill during a press conference yesterday in front of George and Margaret Brodbeck's home in Great Kills, a well-kept four-bedroom that the couple has had on and off the market for the last year."

"After 36 years on Katan Avenue, Mrs. Brodbeck said she was looking to downsize and move closer to her mother in Dongan Hills. She thought selling would be easy."

"'We were accustomed to homes in this area selling very quickly. Mentally, I thought I'd be leaving immediately. I was very, very surprised,' she said of the lack of buyers."

"The house is back on the market now for $579,000."

"'This legislation would help folks like George and Margaret, as well as millions of other buyers and sellers across America,' Fossella said."

"Fossella said the House is currently considering a $7,000 tax credit for people who meet certain income limits and purchase foreclosed homes. 'It clearly is not reflective of what will work here on Staten Island,' he said."

"He pointed to a 40 percent drop in home sales over the past seven months and a 400 percent spike here in foreclosures during the first quarter."

"'Anything that will jump-start the market for us and customers and clients is certainly important,' said Dawn Carpenter, president of the Staten Island Board of Realtors."

The New York Times. "The Bush administration and Democratic leaders in Congress are counting on the Federal Housing Administration to rescue hundreds of thousands of homeowners from foreclosure by helping them refinance from risky subprime loans to stable government-backed mortgages."

"But the F.H.A., the government agency that insures home loans for many first-time, minority and lower-income buyers, is grappling with financial woes of its own."

"Housing officials say the agency will face a deficit for the first time in its 74-year history, starting in the fiscal year that begins in October. And they blame a rapidly growing and increasingly troubled sector of the F.H.A.’s mortgage portfolio, known as the seller-financed down payment loan program, which has suffered from high delinquency and foreclosure rates in recent years."

"The nonprofit companies say they actually helped make the F.H.A. competitive by providing down payment assistance, attracting home buyers to the F.H.A. who might have gone elsewhere."

"'All we do is give them the down payment money to get them over that obstacle so they can start enjoying the benefits of homeownership,' said Ann Ashburn, president of AmeriDream of Gaithersburg, Md."

From CNN Money. "Housing counselors are often the last and best line of defense for borrowers facing foreclosure, and the $15 billion housing rescue bill now before the Senate allocates $100 million for foreclosure prevention counseling."

"But most housing advocates agree that cash isn't the biggest obstacle to achieving this goal - lender cooperation is. 'The counselors are working as hard as they can,' said Jim Carr, chief operating officer for a non-profit neighborhood advocacy group, 'but the servicers are not cooperating.'"

"Only about a quarter of the borrowers helped by members of the Hope Now alliance - the coalition of lenders, investors and community groups spearheaded by the Treasury Department to fight the foreclosure crisis - have actually had the terms of their mortgages made more affordable."

"The rest of the 1.1 million borrowers Hope Now has helped were simply given extra time to make up their missed payments."

From Your 4 State in Maryland. "You've heard a lot about the troubled housing market, but there's always another side to the story. Buyers in our area are getting great deals, especially on foreclosed homes."

"'It's a fabulous time with a lot of foreclosures. Probably one third of the houses I showed were foreclosures,' says Cynthia Moler, a realtor with Coldwell Banker."

"The market may take some adjusting from sellers, but it's ideal for buyers. The Senate is now debating a bill that would give a $7,000 tax credit to anyone who buys a foreclosed home."

"Realtor Jeff Matthews recalls one of his previous deals. He says, 'I had it listed about a year ago for about $329,000 and it went to foreclosure. I saw it on the market last week for $239,000."

"Moler adds, 'Before, it was a terrible thing to be in foreclosure. How embarrassing. But now, it seems to be happening to everyone.'"

"That means many of the houses are in desirable areas. 'A lot of the properties that are in foreclosure or are getting ready to be in foreclosure are in fantastic neighborhoods, some of the best neighborhoods in our town,' Moler says."

The Boston Globe. "On April 16, Housing For All, a nonprofit organization that promotes the development of affordable housing, will cosponsor another forum, 'Foreclosures in Metro West: Exploring Federal, State, and Local Efforts to Address the Crisis.'"

"'Part of our mission is to wake Framingham up to how serious the issue is,' said executive director Chris Ross. 'There are things that town government needs to look at.'"

"The South Middlesex Opportunity Council, a Framingham-based social service agency, can offer small loans to homeowners in a temporary pinch. If a homeowner already owes several thousand dollars, the agency usually refers them to legal services, according to Ozzy Diagne, director of its Housing Services Center."

"The agency also can help sell a property quickly before foreclosure or negotiate a deal with the lender to prevent its seizure, he said, but most residents aren't aware of their options."

"'Faced with foreclosure, they usually just pack and leave,' Diagne said."

The Idaho Mountain Express. "Because of its affluence, the Blaine County economy is buffered to some degree from the national economic engine, but there's no doubt the nationwide real estate crunch is hitting home."

"In the first three months of 2008, seven Blaine County properties were foreclosed, according to Sun Valley Title Co. It's a statistic that builds dramatically on three years of steadily climbing figures. In all of 2005 there were three. In 2006 the number jumped to five, and in 2007 there were 12."

"Sun Valley Title Co. Manager Cassie Jones said that for people with no equity in their homes, sometimes it's cheaper to pay rent, and those who took too much of a risk to buy a home are turning their backs on their investments gone bad."

"'One of the problems: People are just walking away from homes,' Jones said. 'The government is trying to do things, give longer grace periods. It's just a whole vicious cycle that starts here and who knows when it stops?'"

The Mail Tribune from Oregon. "As the nation's subprime mortgage crisis comes to a head, more houses are being abandoned in Medford, real estate agents and city officials say. Foreclosures have skyrocketed, and more than 750 Jackson County property owners defaulted on mortgage payments in 2007."

"Garbage bags, children's toys, lawn care equipment and beer bottles are strewn about this east Medford house, valued at $453,000. Inside there's a piano; outside, there's a swimming pool filled with murky green water. There's so much junk the city has posted notice that the accumulation is unlawful."

"But there's no one home to clean it up. Unable to make mortgage payments, the homeowners walked away."

"Dave Myers, an agent in Medford, is marketing the abandoned east Medford house, but he doesn't know the owners' story. Myers, who has been marketing foreclosed property for banks for 10 years, said since October 2006, the number of default notices that have been filed in Medford has jumped from three or four per week to 30 or 40 per week."

"'There are probably a couple hundred (houses), I would say, that have reverted back to the bank,' he said. 'It happens on all income levels,' he said, adding that house values in foreclosures he handles range from $85,000 to $650,000."

"On the other side of town, the city finally had to board up the windows of an abandoned house because of vandalism. The West Eighth Street house has a real market value of $178,000. City officials say the homeowners walked away from the little house, probably because of foreclosure."

The Daily Star. "The increase in foreclosures has been seen across New York state and the nation, said Philip Lentz, director of communications for the State of New York Mortgage Association, which helps low- and moderate-income families become homeowners."

"Patrick O'Rourke, a housing counselor with Quaranta Housing Services Center, part of Opportunities for Chenango in Norwich, said too often someone in financial trouble doesn't make his mortgage a priority and ignores mail about delinquencies, thinking the problem will go away."

"When someone arrives in a shiny new truck to discuss missed mortgage payments, O'Rourke said, he asks if that person wants to live in his or her vehicle."

"O'Rourke added that he repeats an adage he heard many years ago: 'Even if you have to eat dirt, make your mortgage payment.'"

From The Day in Connecticut. "A typical homeowner in New London County has lost $22,000 in equity over the past year, according to figures released Monday."

"Fairfield County, which had driven much of the real estate splurge statewide over the past few years, saw sales down more than 28 percent in February and median prices off nearly 7 percent. In the stratospheric world of Fairfield County real estate, this meant a drop of nearly $40,000 in median prices, to a still-amazing $517,250."

"'In both Connecticut and in neighboring Massachusetts, sales began to drop in late 2005,' said Timothy Warren, CEO of The Warren Group, in a statement. 'In Massachusetts, prices began to follow in 2006. But in Connecticut, it has taken until now to see the declining sales catch up with the prices.'"

"Vincent Valvo, group publisher for The Warren Group, said the lower end of the market, which represented about 30 percent of all loans in 2006, was hit hard by the subprime mortgage meltdown, to the point that many potential homeowners have nowhere to turn for loans."

"'That's a reflection of the complete evisceration of the subprime and low-documentation segment of the market,' Valvo said. 'A big chunk of the market isn't buying anymore.'"

"Still, Valvo said increases in home prices of 10 to 15 percent were unsustainable, a result of irrational exuberance, and he, for one, thinks that is a good thing."

"'That's not going to happen in the next 10 years, and how would our salaries keep up without it leading to rampant inflation?' he said. 'We really ought to be grateful.'"

From The Sun. "The value of Britain’s homes slumped by a staggering £100 billion last month, shock figures revealed yesterday."

"Lib Dem spokesman Vince Cable said: 'The Government is only just waking up to the problem, despite the fact it has been warned for years that there were great economic dangers from the bubble in the housing market, linked to exceptionally high levels of personal borrowing. For too long this Government did nothing.'"

"'There will be an epidemic of repossessions unless the Government forces lenders to moderate the process by offering shared ownership and payment holidays to keep people in their homes,' Cable said."

"Halifax recently calculated that the UK’s housing stock was worth £4trillion, meaning last month’s fall wiped off £100 billion of value, said banking analyst Bruce Packard."

"He added: 'It’s bad news for all those estate agents who assure me house prices will always go up because Britain is an overcrowded island.'"

From Aftenposten. "More than 140 Norwegian building firms have filed for bankruptcy so far this year. Concerns are growing that Norway's building boom of the past several years is quickly turning to bust."

"The amount of building bankruptcies is up 30 percent over last year. Most of them are linked to customers' inability or unwillingness to pay their bills."

"'It was difficult to draw in the money, especially from the private market,' said Petter Håkelien, who led a company that filed for bankruptcy just before Easter. His firm, which specialized in building garages and homes, had 20 employees and annual turnover of about NOK 15 million (NOK 3 million)."

"He told Aftenposten that he thinks others in the field will be forced to go out of business as well. 'I predict that 2008 is going to a real downturn for many of them,' he said. 'Everything we earned during the good times has been eaten up by price hikes and higher pay for workers.'"

"New statistics also show a fall in new home sales of as much as 20- to 30 percent. Prices in both the new and resale home markets have also been showing signs of slippage."

"Håkelien told Aftenposten that he thinks the 'large and well-established' firms will survive, even though 'the good times are definitely over.' After 25 years in the business himself, he said he's thinking about finding a completely different line of work."