The Great Falls Tribune reports from Montana. "Zahara Valley Golf Club and a nearby residential development were hit by the national economic downturn and the credit crunch, but things are looking brighter, officials said. The golf course closed early this year, sparking rumors that it would close for good. That's not the case, said Brad Davey, development coordinator for the housing development. 'This economy just really kicked us, just like it did everyone else,' said Davey."

"Davey said that while the course isn't on the open market, Zahara Valley did recently sell some of its equipment. 'We had way too much stuff,' he said."

The Idaho Statesman. "September was the third month in a row in which default filings increased in the Treasure Valley. From January through September, 3,662 foreclosures have started in Ada and Canyon County, a 137 percent increase over the same period in 2007, according to Idaho Data Providers."

"'The filings during the first part of October are pointing toward another record month,' said Charlie Nate, president of IDP. 'In fact, I am projecting that locally we may see over 500 new foreclosures in October. That number was incomprehensible only one year ago when we were already well into this crisis and only experiencing just over 200 filings a month.'"

"'Lenders are beginning to foreclose on spec homes,' said Lance Churchill, president of Frontline Cos., which specialize in buying homes in foreclosure. 'It looks like the banks are finally losing their patience with the builders.'"

"'It is a double edge sword,' Churchill said. 'There are so many of them that there are a lot of great opportunities if you want a home to live in. But flippers are having trouble because there are fewer buyers and it is much harder to fix a house up and sell it.'"

"Capitol West Appraisals of Boise says in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Seattle that Countrywide Financial loan officers pressured its appraisers to increase valuations or otherwise compromise appraisal standards in three loan transactions and, when the company refused, Countrywide put Capitol West on its 'Field Review List.'"

"'Countrywide is in a position to force out of the business honest appraisers,' said Steve Berman, the lead lawyer in the case. 'They can use their market power to basically blackball these people.'"

The Register Guard from Oregon. "While Oregon-based banks have fared better than counterparts in some other areas, they have not been immune. The Legislative Emergency Board last month approved a request by state regulators to increase the state’s existing staff of 12.5 bank examiner positions by 40 percent. The letter requesting the additional positions revealed much about the condition of Oregon banks. It pointed out that of 22 banks examined by the state in the past year, 10 received 'less than satisfactory' composite scores in the confidential rating system used by both federal and state regulators."

"'We’ve all gotten a black eye from some of the things that have happened in the brokerage firms,' said Tom Widmer, CEO of Eugene’s Century Bank."

The Mail Tribune from Oregon. "The collapse of the credit and housing markets has put a halt to resort development in central Oregon. 'With the state of the economy, we're not going to see new resorts in the next couple of years. That's an absolute certainty,' said Steven Hultberg, a Bend attorney who represents several resorts."

"In recent years, new resorts such as the 1,800-acre Brasada Ranch between Bend and Prineville boasted of selling more than 200 lots for between $200,000 and $450,000 in a matter of hours. Now those buyers have disappeared."

"At the upscale Pronghorn resort east of Bend, partner Scott Denney likes to share the story of one of his buyers, a person with excellent credit and worth hundreds of millions of dollars who was seeking a loan for a $625,000 lot. First the bank told him he'd have to put 25 percent down. Then it was 40 percent, and finally it was 60 percent."

"'"Right now the banks are just taking a position that they are not in the real estate lending market anymore,' said Dennis Pahlisch, a Bend home builder and partner in a proposed 4,125-acre resort in Crook County."

The Oregonian. "The deal that Gresham City Hall brokered to build the first phase of residential development in Pleasant Valley is 'very unlikely' to go forward now that Pacific Lifestyle Homes Inc., one of its three private partners, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the city's executive manager said."

"Pacific Lifestyle owns 37 acres in Pleasant Valley. Matt Lewis, the company's planning manager, said he wasn't sure how it would be disposed of as part of the company's larger restructuring. 'Unfortunately the downturn in the market didn't allow the private sector to make the needed investments,' he said."

The News Tribune from Washington. "How’s the market for condominiums in downtown Tacoma? 'What market?' says Judy Mayfield, head of sales for The Esplanade, the 162-unit project on the Foss Waterway, now nearing completion. After two years of extolling the virtues of the nine-story luxury project, Mayfield and her staff have yet to close a deal on a single unit."

"Median prices of downtown condos dropped more, too, going from $274,000 in the first three quarters of 2007 to just $224,000 in that period this year. 'The timing couldn’t have been worse,' Mayfield said."

"This weekend, a dozen new condominium projects in the downtown area, The Esplanade included, will open their doors for the sixth annual Tour of Urban Living sales event. That’s fewer participants than in past years, said Debbie Bingham, the City of Tacoma community coordinator who helped organize the tour. The reduction is not because there are fewer new projects, Bingham said, but because some developers decided economic conditions were so bad it wasn’t worth putting up the marketing costs."

"About half of the projects on the tour are finished; the rest are in various stages of construction. J.J. McCament, who worked with the City of Tacoma for six years to recruit condo developers to the downtown area, remains confident in the long-term condo market and says, bad as things may seem, the current situation is just a pause in the action."

"'This is a normal predictable market correction,' she said. 'I think that our pricing was starting to get out of adjustment with the wages in the area.'"

"Jim Allotta is in a tough industry. His business, Allotta Appraisal Services, has faced some challenges in the past year including a declining housing market and predatory lenders who try to dictate appraisers’ work. The previously booming housing market brought appraisers who didn’t know much about the process and told lenders what they wanted to hear."

"Q: What role did appraisers have in this?"

"A: Before we hit the crunch, we had a period of extremely fast appreciation in the industry. Real estate was appreciating faster than any time in history. A lot of the predatory lenders took advantage of the fact that we are in a turmoil with respect to the appraiser process – prior to that a lender would choose an appraiser based on the quality of work. But when we went through this rapid appreciation, there were no holds barred. New appraisers were coming into the industry not ever appraising before ... and it’s just like shooting fish in a barrel."

"They got in the industry and they were immediately successful. And the more successful they were was because they didn’t know how to appraise correctly, but they were appraising to numbers instead of the characteristics of the property."

The Seattle PI from Washington. "The tower cranes piercing Seattle's skyline won't vanish because of the banking crisis, say local developers, architects and commercial banks. But economic woes may cut the number of new cranes. 'All the cranes in the sky now are likely projects approved by banks over the past 18 months,' said Tracy Edgers, senior vice president of Wells Fargo Bank, a significant source of Seattle construction lending. 'My guess is you won't see too many new cranes going up any time soon.'"

"'There are fewer lenders making loans today, so we're taking the lower-risk transactions -- the best-conceived projects, being built for something there will be demand for,' Edgers said."

"To justify a loan, a proposed building might have to generate more income for a given level of debt than was true a year ago, said Edgers. 'What's going up now has to be absorbed -- condos have to be sold, office space has to be leased.'"

The Seattle Times from Washington. "Thousands of desperate homeowners — people like David Hall and Cheryl Miller — have fallen behind on their house payments and face foreclosure. They've turned to their lenders and local housing-counseling agencies for help, quickly overwhelming both. Statewide, August foreclosure activity was up 64 percent from the previous August, reported RealtyTrac. That represents 2,762 households in the state in trouble."

"'This is terrible,' Miller, a county employee, said of the descent into foreclosure. 'I've never seen anything like this.'"

"It's a far cry from the experience of buying their Auburn home in 2006, Miller said. 'The most exciting thing in the world ... like having a new child or winning the lottery' is how Hall described the purchase."

"When her adjustable-rate mortgage reset, the payments on Carol Clark's Kent condo rose from $1,297 to $1,825, including homeowners' dues. A single mother with a good job and two kids in college, Clark fell behind. Late fees added to what she owed, putting her farther behind."

"'I can afford my home if it gets refinanced at a fixed rate,' she said, hopefully."

The News Miner from Alaska. "The number of single-family homes sold this autumn in Fairbanks is almost 4 percent less than the numbers from last fall, according to the Greater Fairbanks Board of Realtors. The average reported sales price of $215,967 in the borough was down by about 4 percent from last fall."

"Gwendolyn Jenkins is finally set to close the sale of her family’s Harvard Circle house next month after watching it sit on the market since mid-summer. Jenkins, who is set to move with her husband and children to the San Diego area to be close to family and take advantage of rock-bottom California home prices, said she grew nervous after hearing of an eight-month backlog of homes for sale in Fairbanks this summer."

"'We’d talked to numerous other people that have had their houses on the market. And they are just having terrible luck,' Jenkins said."

"Alaska Housing Finance Corp. chief Dan Fauske said the statewide housing market may be slower than during red-hot construction years earlier this decade but stressed that it remains relatively stable. 'When you’re doing 100 miles an hour and you slow down to 55, it seems slow,' Fauske said. 'So you have to caution people, ‘Look, we’re back to normal.’ ... It doesn’t mean we’re in a decline.'"