The Boston Globe reports from Massachusetts. "Only about 64 percent of those born in Massachusetts still live in the state, according to a report by Northeastern University's Center for Labor Market Studies. 'The problem is that we just can't get people to come to Massachusetts as much as they want to leave,' said Andrew Sum, author of the report. 'We need to start asking what we can do to make Massachusetts a more desirable place to live, why people don't want to come here to live.'"

"Between 2000 and 2007, more than 300,000 residents - about 5 percent of the state's population, left Massachusetts. Those who left Massachusetts say they are repelled by the cold, the high price of housing, the taxes - in essence, everything."

"Kevin and Meg Buckingham wanted to raise their children near family and friends in Massachusetts, but they couldn't afford to stay. Both had good jobs...but the house they wanted was out of reach."

"Last year, the couple moved to Knightdale, N.C., where they built a 2,000 square foot, four-bedroom house for $171,000. 'There was no way we could ever do that in Massachusetts; the only thing we could find with the same amenities and the same room was for more than $1 million in Newton,' Meg Buckingham said."

"Cindy Homer grew up in East Boston (and) went to Anna Maria College in Paxton. The 55-year-old mother of three now lives in a 2,500 square foot home in New Mexico for which she paid $160,000."

"'I love the people and the scenery and the seasons and the ocean, food, and cultural activities in Massachusetts,' Homer said. 'You have everything there that anyone could possibly want, but the cost of living is outrageous.'"

The Boston Herald from Massachusetts. "In a sign of the times, the owners of some grand Nantucket estates are knocking millions off their price tags in a bid to lure buyers."

"Former Tyco International CEO Dennis Kozlowski's seaside retreat, which was being marketed at one point for nearly $20 million, was recently put back on the market. The new price: $16.4 million. Kozlowski is now serving time in federal prison for fraud related to looting millions from Tyco."

"'That is a huge price reduction,' said Mary Taaffe of Windwalker Real Estate. 'Let's put it this way: Two years ago, at that price, that property would have gone into a serious bidding war.'"

"The long-awaited redevelopment of the landmark Anthony's Pier 4 site into waterfront condos, shops and offices has been placed on hold.

"Retail development king Stephen Karp contends the timing is still not right for launching construction of his Pier 4 redevelopment."

"'The market obviously isn't there for high-end condos right now,' Karp said. 'You don't want to outthink the economy.'"

"During the frenzied days of no-down-payment loans and cursory credit checks in the early 2000s, two out-of-state lenders gave more than $1 million in mortgages to a Dorchester woman who lives in public housing and barely speaks English, the Herald has learned."

"The loans, originated by New Jersey-based Equity One Inc. and the now-defunct Meritage Mortgage Corp., foreclosed last year, making 243-245 Washington St. and 16 Dacia St. among the 233 foreclosures to hit Dorchester in 2007, city and land records show."

"The foreclosures have also left the borrower, Angela M. Torres, who speaks only Spanish, in financial ruin. 'I have nothing,' Torres told the Herald in Spanish last week. 'I don't have a business. I don't have a car. I don't have a house. I don't have anything.'"

The Taunton Daily Gazette from Massachusetts. "Mary Ellen Rochette, executive director of the non-profit Pro-Home Inc., says she and her staff of three are struggling to keep up with an influx of residential owners desperate to stave off the threat of foreclosure."

"Foreclosure petitions from March to April on single-family homes in the Silver City jumped from 16 to 23. For condos, the number of recorded petitions went from three to six, and for multi-family homes (including both two and three-family units) petitions increased from 8 to 13, according to TWG."

"Alan Pasnik, data analyst for The Warren Group, said the prognosis isn't bright for a resolution to the housing market's foreclosure crisis any time soon. 'I think it will go at least into the middle of next year,' Pasnik said. 'We're nowhere near the end of this. It's not pretty.'"

"Rochette said her office has been getting many more calls, during the last six months especially, from people who bought multi-family homes as an investment and are now facing foreclosure proceedings."

"Those buildings, not unlike single-family homes and condominiums, are worth less now than when they were bought four or five years ago. As a result, Rochette said, banks will often turn down an application for refinancing if an owner is 'upside down,' or owing more money than the building is worth."

"Paradoxically, the downturn in the real estate market and lower prices are attracting more first-time home buyers looking for good deals, some of whom have likely availed themselves of Pro-Home's free seminars."

"And that, Rochette said, has led to an increase of tenant turnover and left landlords scrambling to fill vacancies. Another troubling aspect of multi-family foreclosure is that tenants will often find themselves caught in the middle and forced to look for new housing when a landlord surrenders an apartment house to a bank or mortgage company."

"Despite that fact, Rochette said there is not yet a shortage of available apartments in the city."

The Telegram from Massachusettes. "At the end of April, some 4,000 renters in the city received postcards depicting a classroom blackboard with the phrase, 'I will never rent again,' repeated line after line, as in an antiquated schoolhouse form of discipline."

"Those cards kicked off the initial marketing for the School House Lofts, a condominium project that renovated the former Adams Street School into 28 units."

"And while the charm and character of exposed wood and brick, large windows and competitive prices have brought steady sales to places like Kettle Brook Lofts and Fremont Lofts, not all have fared as well."

"The highly anticipated renovation of the former Crompton & Knowles building at 21 Illinois St. into 37 loft-style units garnered only eight buyers. Information provided by The Warren Group shows that in the first quarter of 2008, some 70 condominium units were sold. That is down nearly 50 percent from the 137 sold in the same quarter of 2007."

"But that trend hasn't kept developers from pushing ahead with condo projects."

"The ballooning inventory is one part of the challenge for sellers. That could be compounded by the dropping price of single-family homes, which could siphon off some prospective buyers who could not afford a house a year ago."

"Timothy M. Warren Jr., CEO of The Warren Group, said the median price for a single family home is inching closer to that of a condominium."

"'They may be looking for that maintenance-free and problem-free existence. But it must be worrisome to developers who are trying to make some decisions on how marketable they are. The danger is that they could sit on the market for a while and get stale,' Warren said."

The Star Ledger from New Jersey. "In the past two years, as Newark's housing bubble experienced a messy burst, 11 of the 57 houses on the block have gone into foreclosure. This block is the hardest hit in the county, according to preliminary data from the Rutgers University Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, which is in the midst of a detailed study of Essex County foreclosures.

The Star-Ledger spent a month studying Norwood Street, examining public records on the 11 foreclosures, analyzing eight years worth of real estate transactions and interviewing dozens of the people involved. What it found on this short, one-way block in Newark's Vailsburg section is characteristic of what happened across urban New Jersey and the nation."

"Two of the foreclosures were the result of alleged flipping schemes, where houses were bought at low prices and then quickly resold without significant improvements for nearly twice their original value to unwitting buyers; another foreclosure came from a high-pressure predatory loan operation."

"But mostly there was greed: In a housing market overheated by the easy availability of subprime loans, where home prices were increasing nearly 50 percent a year, inexperienced and fiscally naive investors -- many of whom were depending on rental income to pay their mortgages -- jumped at a chance to make easy money."

"One of the houses caught fire twice in March, set aflame by squatters shortly after the tenants were evicted. Another has become a drug house, with junkies freely wandering through an open back door. Several others have been stripped by scrap-metal scavengers, making them uninhabitable without rehabilitation."

"'I don't care where you go in this city, we're all crying the same cry,' said Ewart Howell, a Norwood Street resident whose bank recently told him his house has lost $100,000 in value because of vacancies on the street. 'The homeowners who have been here for a while, we didn't create this problem. But we're the ones who are feeling it.'"

"Before the bottom fell out, this part of Norwood Street was a real estate boomtown. From 2000 to 2007, there were 36 home sales that involved market-rate conditions."

"In those cases, the average home was increasing in value by $76,000 a year. Expressed as a percentage, home values were increasing 47.5 percent a year -- in other words, doubling every 25 months."

"'It's crazy, what some of these houses were going for,' said Leonard Wright, 49, who still lives on the first floor of his boyhood home on Norwood Street. 'I was a paperboy, so I know all the houses on this street. Some of them were going for 300, 400 grand. And I can tell you, they just ain't worth it.'"

"No.25, the green-sided house, and No.44, the prematurely aging duplex with the boards on the doors and windows, were caught up in what appear to be flipping schemes: They were bought for low prices by local real estate companies, then sold a few months later for nearly double their original price -- even though no significant improvements were made -- to naive investors."

"Now they sit empty as they progress toward sheriff's sale, where they will likely be turned over to banks that already have more foreclosed houses than they know what to do with. Neighbors say the houses have been ransacked, their pipes and wiring stripped."

"No.41, a small, two-family home, (is) owned by Vanessa Parker, a Newark resident who was making a first stab at real estate investment when she jumped into a hot market in 2006 and bought the property for $300,000."

"To pay for it, she got an adjustable rate subprime mortgage with an initial rate of 9.35 percent. Parker, who worked at a bank, knew it was a lousy rate, but figured she could refinance after six months of on-time payments."

"Then she lost her job and was out of work for three months. Then she said her credit report got an erroneous blemish on it, which further delayed refinancing. Then the house needed repairs, which decimated her already thin savings."

"Within less than a year, she had defaulted. She is now trying to sell the house to avoid foreclosure. 'Everything went the total opposite of how I wanted it to go,' Parker said. 'It's just been a total disaster.'"

The Intelligencer Journal from Pennsylvania. "Jim Gillespie, CEO of Coldwell Banker, faults the national media's focus on foreclosures and the subprime mortgage crisis for keeping home buyers on the sidelines these days."

"'This is the absolute best time in my 33 years in real estate to buy a home,' he said last week during a visit to Lancaster."

"Gillespie, who oversees a brand with 117,000 agents and brokers worldwide, said he had come to town 'to support our new affiliate' and to help in its efforts to recruit more agents."

"Lancaster County reflected the national trend - but to a lesser extent - with sales of both new and existing homes dropping from 6,453 in 2005, also a record year locally, to 5,735 in 2007, an 11 percent decline over two years, according to figures from the Lancaster County Association of Realtors."

"That decline steepened in the first quarter of this year when home sales in Lancaster County dropped 29.5 percent, compared with the first quarter of 2007."

"Most real estate booms last about five years, Gillespie said, followed by a two-year 'correction.' But the boom that ended in 2005 had gone on for 10 years and the current correction is in its 34th month, he said."

"When will the downturn end? Gillespie said he has no idea, but that doesn't change his advice to potential buyers. 'You should not try to time the market,' he said. 'People who try to time the market get burned.'"

"Home purchases are important investments, regardless of the state of the market, Gillespie said. They usually increase in value between 1 percent and 2 percent above the rate of inflation and offer significant tax write-offs."

"'We're three years into this thing. If people wait too long, prices will go back up and inflation may kick in with higher interest rates,' he said."

The Courier Times from Pennsylvania. "If anyone seemed safe from defaulting on home loans, it was her. The Morristown single mother of three is a full-time real estate paralegal."

"Extra money from after-hours work preparing home-sale documents for attorneys paid for her kids' drum lessons, karate classes and academic tutoring for her developmentally disabled twins. It also allowed her to purchase investment properties."

"But, as lenders backed away from extending loans even to qualified homebuyers, her part-time work dried up. Three missed mortgage payments later, she was scrambling."

"'The work is nonexistent,' said the woman, who wished to remain anonymous. 'They were very apologetic, but it's affecting everyone. Their real estate business has really fallen off, and they have to do other things as well.'"

"Paul Auerbach, an associate broker in Upper Southampton, has been working almost exclusively with homeowners facing foreclosure for more than 30 years. This, he said, is the worst he's ever seen."

"In 2006, a total of 133 properties sold at sheriff's sale in Bucks County; last year, the number rose to 275, and through May of this year 169 were sold, county numbers show. And they're not just lower-priced properties, Auerbach said. He's worked with clients who have million-dollar homes - which are now worth much less."

"'I haven't ever had as much in the upper price range,' he said."

"The Morrisville mother of three's mortgage company basically said: 'Get more income.'"

"She's waiting to hear back from her lender to see if the company will transfer three missed payments to the backend of her loan, lessen the monthly payments for a while and put off adjusting her interest rate."

"'If I pay everything on time for a year then maybe I would be able to refinance,' she said."

"In the meantime, she is looking for work cleaning homes or in the medical field as a patient observer. Even working at McDonald's isn't looking so bad, she said."