For Don and Rebecca Spendlove, just keeping a roof over their heads has taxed their mental, emotional and physical as well as financial capabilities.

The Nipomo couple have found themselves in the same situation as millions of other Americans: Their homes are worth less than they owe, their mortgage terms are crushing their finances and the specter of foreclosure is looming.

Their struggle may be emblematic of the times. Just across their street, in fact, a home has sat vacant for more than a year, the yard untended, the windows coated with dust.

“Our neighbor … just walked away,” said Don. “He said, ‘I’m not paying.’ He just moved away.”

The Spendloves find their situation embarrassing, but they’re willing to talk about it in hopes they can help others avoid the pitfalls that led them to a crisis they never expected to face.

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Martin Montes, 37, a Culver resident, didn’t see it coming.

He bought a new home in 2007, when he had a good job and the economy was fine. But a year later a slew of events - a new baby, a reduction in his weekly hours at Bright Wood Corp., from 40 to 28, and a high-interest loan - made mortgage payments impossible to pay.

It’s a story that’s becoming increasingly familiar and like many, Montes thought he had no choice but to wait for the bank to foreclose on his property.

In the fourth quarter last year, 4,680 homes in Oregon were in foreclosure proceedings - an increase of 26 percent from the third quarter, according to the state Department of Consumer and Business Services.

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Allegations of mortgage fraud are on the upswing

Three years ago, Donna Robbins tried to use her soaring equity to remodel her house in this Napa Valley community.

Instead, she says she got cleaned out.

Robbins claims that friends from church who ran a finance company agreed to arrange a home equity loan to pay for a new kitchen, bathrooms and landscaping.

As with most financial transactions, there were papers to sign. But Robbins says that what she was told were loan documents were in fact papers that transferred the title to her property.

These new owners subsequently defaulted on the mortgage, according to public property records and a lawsuit Robbins filed in Napa County Superior Court. Now, the house she had inherited from her parents is in foreclosure and Robbins is facing eviction, along with her boyfriend and their seven children.

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Office developers and investors expect San Francisco rents to decline over the next three years, which may delay new construction as a result, according to a survey by UCLA Anderson Forecast.

The results were more pessimistic than the projections of the group itself, which noted that local occupancy and rental rates have all been increasing in recent years and employment growth is the fastest in the state. The dour view may be tied to the slowing national economy and a hangover effect from the technology crash of 2001, it said.

“They don’t see demand recovering to the point that it’s in balance with supply,” said Jerry Nickelsburg, economist with UCLA Anderson Forecast, which performed the survey in conjunction with law firm Allen Matkins Leck Gamble Mallory & Natsis LLP. “Overall, they see the market kind of where it is today, not a robust market.”

UCLA Anderson’s model, on the other hand, showed the office sector strengthening in 2009 and beyond, which would boost demand for office space and rents, he said. If builders choose to hold off on new construction as a result of an overly negative assessment, San Francisco could face a shortage of office space by 2011, the report said.

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By April, 2009, hundreds of thousands of option ARM mortgages will begin resetting, bringing on a fresh wave of foreclosures

The American homeowner must feel like one of those characters in an old cartoon who has just been hit by a falling piano. After dusting himself off and touching the large bump on his head, he probably doesn’t expect another piano to be dangling overhead. But he’d be wrong.

But what’s often funny in a cartoon is anything but in real life. With the subprime mortgage crisis already crippling the U.S. economy, some experts are warning that the next wave of foreclosures will begin accelerating in April, 2009. What that means is that hundreds of thousands of borrowers who took out so-called option adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) will begin to see their monthly payments skyrocket as they reset. About a million borrowers have option ARMs, but only a fraction have already fallen due.

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As values tumble and more foreclosures loom, homeowners get chance to sell out for less than the amount of their mortgages

Homeowners in danger of foreclosure increasingly are looking to beat the bank to the process by selling their homes for less than the value of the mortgage, with their lender’s permission.

Dumping a house for a fire-sale price ordinarily would not be encouraged by banks. But the housing crisis is so severe that both lenders and struggling homeowners see so-called short sales as an acceptable alternative: The home seller avoids the trauma of a foreclosure, and the lender gets back as much of the loan as possible, without the expense of being saddled with a foreclosed property.

The practice offers good deals for buyers, but real estate agents say the growth of the short-sale market is having a detrimental impact on the overall housing market because it brings down comparable-sales data, making neighborhoods look less valuable.

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It was one of the Bay Area’s most trusted banks. Now some consumer advocates question its lending practices in certain East Bay neighborhoods.

The bank was World Savings, bought by Wachovia in mid-2006. They were a popular lender. But now some advocates want to know why so many of their loans were made in some of Oakland’s low-income minority neighborhoods.

“It’s very frightening, it’s upsetting,” said Annie McKenzie.

“Our neighborhoods are becoming blight because of all the foreclosures,” said Diane Busby.

Welcome to zip code 94621, where homes are going vacant and residents are uneasy.

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Wall Street credit markets are still sluggish and skittish, and questions still hang over mortgage lending in the public mind, but refinancing mortgage and consumer debt still is not only possible but remains a good way to get ahead, lenders and borrowers say.

Getting a lower interest rate on home debt, reducing a monthly house payment, consolidating debt, getting cash out of home equity for a special purpose - all are still available to homeowners with some equity in their home.

Having “good” credit helps, but even that isn’t always necessary, to hear Shawn Mason tell it.

The Moore man refinanced the loan on his home, a 1,410-square-foot house built in 1968, specifically to get his credit back in shape following bankruptcy.

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Consumer home-buying intentions in the Toronto area have dropped sharply this year, according to a Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. report.

About 6 per cent of households in the Toronto area intend to buy a home this year, down from 9 per cent in 2007, the federal housing agency said yesterday.

“With the cost of buying a home moving upward, some people are re-evaluating their home-buying decision,” said CMHC analyst Jason Mercer in an interview.

Among potential first-time buyers, who have been a key driver in Toronto, buying intentions have also cooled. The report says 40 per cent want to buy this year, compared to 47 per cent last year, taking some additional steam out of the market.

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A Des Moines real estate investor accused of consumer fraud has been banned from doing business in Iowa.

A Polk County District Court judge on Monday ordered John Davis to stop selling, renting, leasing or investing in real estate in Iowa.

The order resolves a consumer fraud lawsuit filed by the Iowa attorney general’s office against Davis and his companies in 2006.

Davis, who agreed to the terms of the order, also was ordered to pay $30,000 to reimburse consumers.

Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller says the lawsuit alleged that Davis sold homes at highly inflated prices to customers with average or below average credit scores. He says Davis also used phantom down payments to help customers get mortgages.

Miller says all the loans cited in the lawsuit ended in foreclosure.

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