Sonoma News reports from California. "During the most recent real estate bubble, speculation drove home prices up as inventory tightened. But according to Sonoma Valley real estate professionals, home ownership is becoming viable again in a market that, at times, has seemed almost dormant. 'During the past three months, we have seen a lot of activity,' said Mike Caselli, president of the Sonoma Valley Board of Realtors. 'If someone is thinking of making a purchase in Sonoma Valley, now is the time to buy. They don't want to sit on the sidelines until they get caught in an escalating market again.'"

"'Some people got into a fix because they had adjustable loans with teaser rates that eventually went up,' said Jim Duncan, an owner/partner in Coldwell Banker de Anza. Duncan agreed that people should not be looking at real estate in the short term. 'Short term speculation isn't working right now,' he said."

"'Very sadly there has been great pain inflicted on some people who were (whether they understood it that way or not), effectively speculators, speculating that the market would always go up a double digit percentage a year,' said Herb Heil, a long-time Valley Realtor. 'However, there appears to be greater realization that there are no sure things and that there is always an element of risk.'"

The Bay Area Newsgroup. "Josefa Ramirez and her husband, Juan Carlos, both 43, spent 10 years moving in and out of San Francisco apartments before buying their two-bedroom, one-bath Antioch home in 2006 for $375,000."

"Paying $2,700 a month for their 'fixer' required a new roof, wiring and landscaping. Their loan adjusted in June to more than $3,200 a month."

"Ramirez, a hair stylist, said business has been slow and Juan Carlos was laid off from his construction job with a local contractor. Recent houses in their north Antioch neighborhood are now selling for around $150,000. They stopped paying in February."

"In Pittsburg, Jose Reyes said he had no choice. He and his partner paid $900,000 for their Highland Ranch home, more than 4,000 square feet and six bedrooms. When his partner died in early 2007, Reyes used the insurance money to keep paying the option-payment adjustable-rate mortgage while he tried for a year to sell it."

"'When the real estate agent did the comps around the place, it was about half of what we paid,' Reyes, a bank executive, said. His $3,500 monthly mortgage payment wasn't even touching interest and a principal payment was more than $6,000 a month."

"'When in March, I came to the full realization of the value of the house, there wasn't a question of 'Should I continue making a payment?' Reyes said. Instead, he went to live in the 1800-square-foot house he and his partner had been renting out to help pay for the new home."

"In Antioch, the Ramirez family await word that their lender is willing to modify their loan. The cable has been shut off, karate lessons canceled, belt-tightening is a way of life."

The Guardian. "With a sun-drenched boardwalk just a short ferry ride across the bay from San Francisco, the former shipyard community of Vallejo ought to be buzzing. But it isn't - the city has officially gone bust."

"For years, taxes and fees rolled in as developers speckled the city's scorched hills with immaculate estates. The sub-prime mortgage crisis in the United States was a jolt. Homes in many estates lie empty because their owners could not afford loan repayments and, with lots of vacant homes, construction has halted."

"'There aren't many housing starts so we aren't getting the fees,' says council spokeswoman JoAnn West."

"John Quigley, a professor of economics at the University of California, says: 'Vallejo may be extreme but other cities exhibit the same symptoms.' In some parts of the state, he says, property prices doubled over 15 months in 2003 and 2004. The extent of the boom has made the downturn more dramatic."

"'I don't see any evidence that we've hit the bottom in California,' he says. 'You're talking several years of decline.'"

"In Hyde Park, a gated community in the hilly suburbs of Vallejo. But the estate is peppered with for sale signs, many of which bear two giveaway words - 'bank owned.'"

"At the peak of the market two years ago, a typical Hyde Park home of four or five bedrooms went for $1m and the estate was sold out. Buyers can pick up a house now for as little as $400,000 (£205,600)."

"'The banks are competing with themselves to drop prices,' says Ron Lee, a broker at a north Californian estate agency. And lenders have become more circumspect. 'At least you have to prove your income now,' Lee says. 'They're not just taking your word for it.'"

The Morgan Hill Times. "Developer Dick Oliver, addressing the council at an April meeting, said his company alone has built more than 100 below market rate homes during the past 10 years and he's been pleased to do so. 'The problem now is that we've been caught in a financial crisis,' he said, adding that he wants to bring in some fairness to the way the state-mandated affordable housing program is administered by the city."

"South County Realty Broker Chris, a third-generation Morgan Hill native, agreed. 'It doesn't pencil anymore,' he said. 'The requirements are so stringent, the number is so tough - it just doesn't work.'"

"Borello said city services, which are straining for cash in the weak economy as well, are missing out on property tax prices thanks to below market rate homes. After crunching numbers on his desk calculator, Borello said almost $700,000 in city revenue is lost when a property is sold at an 'affordable' price, rather than the market-rate price."

"Borello said regular home buyers are paying the price since the developer is forced to pass on the building cost for low-income homes to the market-rate home prices."

"'Buying a home isn't necessarily a right, it's a privilege,' he said. 'You have to budget yourself to make it work. You just reevaluate things, reprioritize things. People shouldn't feel entitled.'"

The Lodi News Sentinel. "Roughly 50,000 homeowners throughout San Joaquin County - one third of the total - will receive notices next month showing what they likely already know: That their home values are in a free fall."

"Ken Blakemore, the county's assistant assessor, said the notices should arrive July 10. They're the largest number to show declining values in a generation, if not ever, the longtime county official said. Blakemore noted values, on average, have declined 30 percent across the county for homes sold since January 2004."

"Paul Mertz, a Lodi real estate agent, said there's no doubt many of the notices will be sent to Lodi. But because the city had fewer new homes built during the housing bubble, fewer are subject to the 'price slaughtering' that neighboring cities are seeing, Mertz said."

"The county sent out 20,000 notices showing a decline in home values last year, Blakemore said. Tens of thousands of reassessments were made during a mid-1990s recession as well as during the early 1980s, he added. This year's levels are the largest Blakemore has ever seen."

"As for next year's assessments, Blakemore said it's hard to say at this point whether the housing market will stabilize. 'We've got our fingers crossed that values will be flat,' Blakemore said."

The Fresno Bee. "The housing market is so sluggish that some developers are offering to rent their houses to prospective buyers. Leonel Alvarado, president of Century Builders in Fresno, said he will rent houses at two developments with the goal of selling them a few months later to the tenants."

"'We're trying different things other than reducing prices,' he said. 'We're trying to get a little action going.'"

"The price of a single-family home is usually too high for the practice to work well for a developer, said Alan Nevin, economist for the California Building Industry Association."

"'The numbers don't make a lot of sense except on modestly priced single-family homes,' Nevin said. 'You're supposed to get rent equal to 1% of the value of the house. That's difficult to do with detached homes, even in Fresno.'"

"Such rental programs are more likely to be with a local builder than a nationwide or public company. The big builders with stockholders are more likely to slash prices to get the properties off their books."

"'They don't want to do some complicated rent-to-own program and still own the houses. It doesn't help,' said Jonathan Dienhart, an analyst with Hanley Wood Market Intelligence."

The Lompoc Record. "Nearly 800 homes have been foreclosed and 15,000 have been reassessed at significantly lower values since January in Santa Barbara County, but officials are concerned the data doesn't indicate that the area's real estate crisis has hit bottom yet."

"From the first of the year to Thursday, 780 homes have been foreclosed in the county and nearly nine homes are foreclosed a day, according to Clerk-Recorder-Assessor Joe Holland."

"A lower assessed value means lower property taxes, because they are 1 percent of the assessed value, according to Prop. 13, but many people owe much more than their house is worth because of the drop in market and assessed values."

The LA Downtown News. "For the developer of a just-opened $30 million housing complex, Mark Farzan has an unlikely emotion: disappointment."

"From the beginning, they expected to bring the 168-unit development at Broadway and Eighth Street online as condominiums. They outfitted the residences with high-end appliances and distinct hardware, hoping the effort would pay off with buyers who value attention to detail and top-notch accessories."

"They also planned units smaller than the norm, which in 2006 was a strategic decision to attract buyers priced out of the quickly escalating for-sale market."

"But like many other developers across the nation, Farzan and Afari were hit hard by the credit-squeezed real estate market. Last month, they announced that the building would still open, but that it would arrive as apartments instead of for-sale residences."

"Ironically, it was not the developers who were having trouble with money. When banks began to tighten lending standards and home prices were slipping, it was the buyers at the Chapman - some of whom had reserved units as much as a year ago - who slowly started to peel away, unable to secure loans, said Farzan."

"'We have all our financing in place,' he said. 'It was the buyers who couldn't get the loans.'"

"After originally listing the units for $300,000-$600,000, as apartments, the Chapman Flats are leasing for $1,500-$2,200 per month. Most units have one bedroom and one bathroom."

"Tyler Wilson, one of the first residents in the Chapman, searched extensively for a Downtown apartment with his fiance before settling on a one-bedroom unit, which he said is about 900 square feet and costs $1,850 per month."

"'I looked everywhere and thought this place was relatively well priced for what you're getting,' he said. 'I wanted to buy here, but I couldn't. I didn't have the money.'"

The North County Times. "A report showed home prices and sales figures picking up slightly last month in North County, but it isn't totally clear whether the market will stand up to a continuing wave of foreclosures, an economist said Thursday."

"Robert Brown, the Cal State San Marcos economics professor who prepares the monthly HomeDex report for the North San Diego County Association of Realtors, said he'd hesitate to predict when a seller's market might return because foreclosures continue to pop up."

"Including condominiums and townhouses, 1,001 homes were sold last month, up from 875 in April, according to the Realtor group. Last month, a total of 673 houses and condominiums were auctioned or seized from homeowners who had fallen behind on their mortgage payments, up from 580 in April, according to Foreclosureradar."

"The median sale price was 21 percent below year-ago levels in May; April prices were about 20 percent under year-earlier levels and March prices were 23 percent lower, according to the report."

"Lenders have been aggressively cutting prices on the homes they seize from delinquent borrowers, and owner-occupants aren't usually eager to compete, said real estate agent Gloria Gelet."

"A couple Gelet is representing moved to Austin, Texas, last year after the husband was offered a job he couldn't refuse. They've cut the price on their 1,700-square-foot house near Guajome County Park in Oceanside to $505,000 and again to $455,000, but it still hasn't sold. Bank-owned houses in the neighborhood are going for closer to $400,000, she said."

"'The foreclosures and bank sales right around there are just killing them,' Gelet said. 'They got caught right in the middle of the madness.'"

"Those foreclosures bring the area's total number of lender-owned homes to more than 2,000, according to the service, and an additional 5,000 are in earlier stages of the foreclosure process. As of May 31, a total of 7,700 North County homes were listed for sale on the service that most local real estate agents use, up from 7,300 at the end of April."

"'The real question to me is the presence of these foreclosures, these short sales, that are still on the market,' Brown said."