The East Valley Tribune reports from Arizona. "The mortgage crisis is emptying out East Sierrita Road. Families are leaving the homogeneous neighborhood south of Queen Creek by desperation or by force. Zakary and Rachel Lutterman bought a home on Sierrita during the dizzied real estate market of 2006, forced to the Valley's fringes by surging prices. The Luttermans could afford the $201,000 price tag with their two incomes, but didn't study how their lender engineered the mortgage with an adjustable rate. 'There are just all these little loopholes that, at the time, you don't pay attention to,' Rachel said. 'You're excited.'"

"The bank foreclosed on the house next door. Months behind on their payments, the Lutterman household is nearing the same end. 'We got married, we got the house, got the great job,' Rachel said. 'Things were going really, really well. And then it all just went downhill.'"

"Tony Ciciora and his wife, Dora Gamez-Ciciora...arrived in the Valley at the peak of the housing bubble, with prices 50 percent higher than they were just two years earlier. Sellers would receive offers on a house within hours of putting it on the market. Dora said the frenzy made her anxious that they were already priced out of the Valley. 'It was getting like California at first,' she recalled thinking."

"Talking with a customer at the salon where she works, Dora said she heard there was a bundle of houses selling for around $200,000 down south on Hunt Highway. Dora and Tony liked what they found there, particularly the price, which at the time seemed reasonable. In August 2006, they moved into a just-finished, 1,700-square-feet house on East Pinto Valley Road that they intended to make their permanent home."

"The Village at Copper Basin's fall was as dramatic as its rise. Dora Gamez-Ciciora didn't need to look for symbolic signs of trouble. A year after buying their home, Dora said she saw nearby houses going for $170,000. Then $150,000. Property records show the houses on Pinto Valley and Sierrita are now worth around $130,000."

"Suddenly, her husband, Tony, could no longer find construction jobs in the Valley. Dora took a second, part-time job as a waitress while Tony travels to California and Washington state for work. Many of the neighborhood's remaining homeowners said they are fighting to make their payments. Dora's next-door neighbor took in a boarder. Others are attempting to renegotiate their loans."

"Still, a number have chosen to get out. One of the neighborhood's original owners last year sold a house on Quartz Way for $80,000, property records show."

The Arizona Daily Star. "The lender for master-planned Gladden Farms in Marana has filed a notice of trustee's sale for about 605 acres, most of which is vacant farmland just east of the development. The notice filed last month by a division of GMAC Bank also includes a small portion of subdivided but undeveloped lots. Gladden Farms acquired the land in 2005."

"Dean Wingert, senior VP for Gladden Farms, said in a prepared statement the project's developer and owners have a long-standing relationship with GMAC, but problems arose following a recent appraisal of the vacant land. 'They did an updated appraisal of the vacant land, and it came back with a very low value on today's conditions,' Wingert said."

The Spectrum from Utah. "The local housing industry witnessed its worst year in decades in 2008 as diminished consumer confidence, strict lending standard, and a market flooded with bank-owned properties curtailed demand for new homes throughout much of the year. The volume of building permits issued by the City of St. George fell dramatically in 2008, with only 172 single-family residential projects recorded for the year. In contrast, the city listed 493 residential projects in 2007, and over 1,000 at the height of the housing boom in 2005."

"'This is the most severe downturn we've seen, at least in the last 30 years,' said Community Development Director Bob Nicholson regarding St. George homebuilding in 2008."

"Allan Carter, the director of development services for Southern Utah Title Company, said 60 percent of home sales in the fourth quarter of 2008 were either foreclosures or short sales."

"He said the market for high-end homes remains nonexistent in Washington County, with an existing inventory of approximately 200 homes in the area priced above $800,000. He said only two or three of these homes are sold each month."

"Tracy Ence, VP of construction for Ence Homes, said the company is heavily involved in the construction of more affordable housing, with prices starting at $155,900 for a single-family home. 'The market now requires you to have a low-priced home,' he said."

The Las Vegas Business Press from Nevada. "Las Vegas has earned plenty of nicknames over the years, such as 'Sin City,' 'The Entertainment Capital of the World' and 'Lost Wages.' Deutsche Bank gaming analyst Bill Lerner has coined a new moniker, 'The Bone Yard.' The Wall Street researcher is predicting any number of planned hotel-casino projects or high-rise condominium developments could be halted, delayed or stopped altogether this year."

"'We have never tracked a greater number of stalled projects in Las Vegas than today, primarily resulting from a weak consumer, an even weaker high-rise residential market and the limited availability of credit,' Lerner said in his most recent investors note."

In Business Las Vegas from Nevada. "The 700-residence mixed-use ManhattanWest faces foreclosure after a senior lender stopped funding the project under construction. After the success with $230 million Manhattan Condominiums on Las Vegas Boulevard South, that is quite a comedown for Alex Edelstein, the dot-com millionaire and founder and CEO of Group Gemstone, ranked as the fifth fastest growing private company in the country. Its development arm, Gemstone Development, built the projects."

"About two months ago in an interview with In Business Las Vegas, Edelstein said his project wasn't having financial woes like other projects because he had locked up financing early. That changed last month when a syndicate of 30 Midwestern banks stopped funding its $100 million senior loan with only three quarters of the first phase of the project completed."

"Sales have been slow with 140 contracts written so far, but the question remains how many are going to close, he says. Buyers of other condos have not been able to close because of the credit crunch."

"'The problem is the market value of completed condos and office space has dropped so low that I can't make a compelling enough case that we will be able to pay the banks back all of their loans,' Edelstein says. 'The market has valued this stuff well below what it cost to build and either the market will have to rise or there will have to be some big write-offs.'"

The Review Journal from Nevada. "Home sales nearly tripled in December from the same month a year ago, though median prices declined 32.7 percent, the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors reported Thursday. The inventory of homes for sale remained relatively stable, up 0.6 percent from a year ago at 22,144 units."

"December is traditionally a slow time of the year in real estate because of the holidays and colder weather, said Sue Naumann, the Realtors association's president. 'This shows that buyers are realizing that this is a great time to buy a home,' Naumann said."

"She stopped short of predicting when local home prices may rebound, but continued to emphasize that the market presents opportunities that 'can't last much longer.'"

"Amid predictions that home values will decline further, some real estate skeptics are saying it's better to hold off a few months for that 'smokin' deal.' 'It's a tough situation,' Frank Nason of Residential Resources said. 'Some of my agents represent investors scooping up deals. They don't really care if they've found the bottom. They're getting homes below replacement cost, they're holding them for three to five years and they're getting cash flow. So to them, it's a no-brainer.'"

"Median home prices dropped to $175,000 in December, the lowest level since 2003. Condo prices are down 51.4 percent from a year ago at $89,900. Bank-owned properties, or foreclosures, accounted for 41 percent of all listings in December and slightly more than 75 percent of all closings, Nason reported. Short-sale properties, offered at less than the mortgage owed, accounted for 31 percent of listings and 11 percent of closings."

"The percentage of vacant listings continues to increase, Nason said. He found 65.2 percent of single-family listings vacant in December, compared with 44 percent in the beginning of 2007. Condo vacancies rose to 74 percent from 57 percent during the same period."

Las Vegas Weekly from Nevada. "There is construction at Inspirada, the massive master-planned community in the southern reaches of Henderson. Several homes are going up, and the neighborhood is full of bulldozers, Port-a-Potties and bundles of wood marked 'Inspirada.' But most of the land on the 2,000-acre site is vacant dirt."

"'Things stand very poorly,' says Monica Caruso of the Southern Nevada Homebuilders Association. 'This is more than a slowdown coming from the boom. The home-building industry is on hiatus in Southern Nevada.'"

"'Las Vegas really grew in 2004 and 2005 and 2006,' notes real estate analyst Ken Perlman, with Sullivan Group Real Estate Advisors. On average, he says, around 20,000 new homes a year were being sold in Vegas in the early years of the decade, peaking at a ridiculous 41,000 in 2005, driven both by easy credit and by speculators. 'Las Vegas really stole demand from the future,' he notes."

"'The age of excess in 2004-06, those days are over,' says Dennis Smith, president of Home Builders Research. 'They will never return.'"

"The scene creates an odd visual congruence: an echo of Vegas’ business-as-usual building boom, with the kind of empty, lonely grandeur you might see on old blocks in Detroit or Chicago, where a lone house guards an otherwise decimated block. But people are still moving in. Keith Neuhart moved from Orange County to Henderson with his wife in November. Their home is at the edge of development at Inspirada. He stares out at the rocky fields where the rest of Inspirada may one day rise. But workers, he says, are busy. 'They’re constantly working every day. There’s always movement and machinery.'"