• by Valerie Rains, Shine staff

You don’t have to take on a full-fledged renovation to get prospective buyers interested in your house—in fact, that may even turn some people away in a challenging market. After all, every penny that you’ve sunk into an obvious upgrade is money that the seller is mentally adding up as a factor in the price—and may represent an aesthetic choice the buyer would not have made. (Cancel that appointment at the Sub-Zero showroom, STAT.) There are simple ways, however, to make your home seem infinitely more appealing with very little investment—and very little effort.

1. If you do only two things before showing your house, clean, and clean some more. “People want to come into a space and visualize themselves living there,” says Manhattan-based Corcoran Group sales broker Jeanine Schlifer. “If there are spills on the table, toys on the floor, and dog mess everywhere, people can’t focus on the space.” It’s worth it to hire a professional to come in for a deep-clean, as they may find dirt in places you can easily overlook, like scuffs on walls and smudged light switch plates. Nadia Geller of the new TLC show Date My House says that buyers pay most attention to the entryway—the first-impression spot for most visitors—as well as the kitchen and the master bedroom; those rooms in particular should be immaculate. The same goes for any architectural details (such as a fireplace) that might be called out on a spec sheet, Geller adds.

2. Accentuate the positive, camouflage the negative. If you have large windows or a great view, hang long, simple curtains to accentuate them. (Hanging curtains from just above and outside the window frame will also make ceilings feel higher and windows more impressive.) If you have spacious rooms, remove any too-bulky furniture or unnecessary pieces that would make the space feel cramped. Geller suggests looking at furniture catalogs to get ideas for pleasing furniture proportions, arrangements, and an idea of how many pieces to keep in a room. If your closets are tiny, pull out some of the clothes and store them elsewhere. “You don’t want it to look like you couldn’t fit one more thing on the rack if your life depended on it,” Schlifer says. A kitchen counter top cluttered with appliances can similarly make a buyer feel there will be no place to store their things; packing some of that away in cabinets will create the illusion of more space.

3. Appeal to the widest possible audience. If you have a hot-pink accent wall, paint over it with a more neutral shade that matches the other walls. Pack away that collection of Star Wars figurines. Stash kids’ toys or dog toys in another room. “Remember that you’re selling your home, not your personality,” Schlifer says. And a prospective buyer who hates dogs could get hung up on your giant training crate and pile of rawhide bones. (Be sure to also take pets to a friend’s house or a kennel and vacuum well before any showings—a sneezing, fur-allergic buyer is not a happy one.) Thin out your collection of trophies, knickknacks, and personal photos on bookshelves, and replace them with more books—even books from a secondhand store or thrift shop, says Geller; they’ll have a more universal appeal.

4. Create a welcoming environment. “You want buyers to make an emotional connection to your home,” Schlifer says, and you can go a long way toward achieving that by making the space feel warm, bright, and fresh. Replace dim light bulbs with new ones and make sure there is a pleasant, but not overpowering, smell in the house. (Try baking cookies or setting out a scented-oil diffuser.) Place fresh guest soaps in the bathroom, hang a new shower curtain and neatly fold matching bath towels. Purchase fresh flowers—a bunch of all one variety makes the cleanest statement—and put them out in a simple vase. Open the windows before people come in to let some fresh air blow through. The ultimate goal is to make people feel so good in your house or apartment, they won’t want to leave—ever.

5. Develop a quick-clean plan for last-minute showings. You never know when a realtor may have an interested client, so it’s important to have a speedy cleaning plan for spontaneous appointments. Invest in a nice-looking storage trunk for stashing day-to-day clutter in a hurry and make a habit of kicking up your regular cleaning routine a notch so there’s less to do before a visit.

For a lively discussion of the current mortgage crisis, see Dory’s Work & Money post, “Should we bail out homeowners with bad mortgage loans?”

And for a more lighthearted examination of how the current state of the economy affects our fashion choices, see Jennifer’s Fashion & Beauty post, “Could the subprime mortgage crisis equal no more muffin tops?”

Kurt Badenhausen, Forbes.com

Apr 22nd, 2008

The past five years have been a boon to the economies of cities across Florida as housing prices soared and new construction was rampant.

With these gains came an influx of jobs. In southwest Florida, which includes highfliers like Naples and Cape Coral, 25% of jobs were housing-related at the peak in 2006, compared with 10% nationally, according to the economic research firm Moody’s Economy.com.

Slideshow: Best Metros For Job Growth

With the housing market scorching, the Cape Coral metro area had the fastest job growth in the country the past five years, at 5.4% annually. Naples is close behind at 4.5% annually, fifth fastest in the country. A look at the 10 metros with the fastest job growth includes a who’s who of housing boom towns. Port St. Lucie and Ocala in Florida make the list. So do Las Vegas, Phoenix and Riverside, Calif.

“These were housing-juiced economies and were ground zero for the housing boom,” says Mark Zandi, chief economist for Economy.com.

As the housing market skidded, the fallout has been severe in these areas. Job growth slowed dramatically in all of these metros in 2007. Housing prices fell 11% in Port St. Lucie in 2007, and they got a 7% haircut in Vegas and Cape Coral.

Foreclosures are also a problem. They reached 4.2% of the homes in Las Vegas in 2007 and 3.8% in Riverside. These were the third- and fourth-highest foreclosure rates in the country among the 100 largest metro areas.

What’s next for these cities? We are not going to see a return to 5% annual job growth anytime soon, as the housing mess isn’t likely to sort itself out for at least another two years. And with the U.S. potentially in a recession or on its way to one, these economies could struggle, because most are tourist destinations.

There is hope, though, especially for job prospects in Las Vegas, Phoenix and Riverside. “These are good fundamentally solid economies and should rebound strongly,” says Zandi. Migration to these cities has tailed off, yet they still have some of the highest migration rates in the country. Las Vegas’ economy is tied heavily to tourism and gaming, but Riverside and Phoenix have diverse economies, and the population for both metro areas now tops 4 million people.

The recovery in Florida could be a little slower. Zandi points to two underlying problems for most locales: very high and volatile homeowners insurance rates and a complicated property tax system for nonresidents with vacation homes.

One area that is likely to maintain its torrid job growth is Provo, Utah, which had the eighth-fastest job growth the past five years, at 4.2% annually. Provo ranks 11th overall in our ranking of the Best Places for Business and Careers. Employment actually accelerated in 2007 and was up 5.5%. Crime rates in Provo are among the lowest in the country, and 31% of the adult population has a college degree, compared with 25% nationally.

Business costs in Provo are 6% lower than the national average. Good news for employers like Intel and Micron, which created a flash-memory joint venture in the area that started production last year. The venture is expected to eventually create 1,850 jobs with a total investment of $3 billion.

Our 10 metro areas with the best job growth increased employment by a cumulative 1 million jobs over the past five years. The story at the other end of the spectrum is not so bright. The 10 metros with the worst job growth lost a total of 286,000 jobs during the past five years.

The main artery for job loss in the U.S. runs through Ohio and Michigan, which had eight of the 10 metros with the biggest job losses. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both campaigned vigorously in Ohio in February, blasting the North American Free Trade Agreement. No doubt that was an appeal to voters in places like Canton, Dayton and Youngstown, where NAFTA is associated with sinking employment.

“NAFTA is used as a whipping boy for all the problems that these areas are struggling with,” says Zandi. Yet the culprit for most of the lost jobs in the area is the deterioration of the domestic auto industry. The struggles of Chrysler, Ford Motor and General Motors have caused thousands of jobs to flee locales with heavy auto employment, like Detroit and Flint.

Any turnaround in these cities is likely to take years, and there is no silver bullet that will do it. But Zandi has three tenets that these cities should follow. First, educate the population. In Canton, Detroit, Flint and Youngstown, less than 18% of the adult population has a college degree. Next up, work on improving the infrastructure.

Finally it is important to keep costs down to try and entice new businesses. Michigan in particular has work to do on this front. Business costs in Ann Arbor, Detroit and Warren are all above the national average.

ByJeffrey Strain, Special to TheStreet.com

Recessions breed fear.It’s only natural. A slowdown in production at companies can result in layoffs and restructuring. People fret about their jobs and worry that it will be much more difficult to find new employment if they are let go. These are understandable concerns.

But for contrarians and bargain hunters, recessions provide a world of opportunities.

Here are seven ways that a recession can actually benefit your personal finances:

Affordable Homes

Those who bought homes looking to flip them for a quick profit and those who took out huge loans that they couldn’t afford to pay will look at a recession with fear, but a recession should have little meaning for those who bought a home with the purpose of living in it for a long time.

Recessions are usually short-lived, and the housing market should recover long before most people are planning to sell their house.

For those who had been unable to afford a house because of soaring prices in the past few years, a recession is a golden opportunity. It brings housing prices down to more affordable levels. That means that many people who wanted to buy a house will be able to purchase one.

Recessions are also a good time to look for investment properties or vacation homes if either had been in consideration.

A recession gives anyone looking for quality housing a lot more bang for their buck than when the economy is flying high. Being able to purchase a quality house at an affordable price can greatly increase a person’s net worth in the long run.

Low Mortgage Rates

In the attempt to ward off a recession, the Federal Reserve has made interest rates extremely low, resulting in more affordable loans for those who are in the market to purchase a house.

While these rates may not be available throughout the entire recession if inflation continues to rise, the rates will be around as long as the Fed can use them to ease the recession. Taking advantage of these low rates along with lower housing prices can truly make housing a deal.

Great Consumer Deals

As the economy sours and people buy less and less, stores need to provide better deals and discounts to attract consumers to their doors. This can mean steep discounts through sales and promotions, as well as financing that allows consumers to pay no interest over long periods of time.

These deals are not limited to the retail stores. It also means that there are great deals in the second-hand markets, since there are more people trying to sell and fewer people looking to buy. If you are an investor in collectibles and know them well, you can often buy collectibles at steep discounts during a recession that can be turned into a healthy profit when the economy recovers. For those who have saved money waiting for good deals, a recession is a great time to find those deals.

Inexpensive Stocks

While everyone is taking their money out of the market, hard economic times can be a great time to pick up stocks on the cheap when you look at them as long-term investments. Consumer stocks for large, stable companies such as Procter & Gamble that provide necessities such as soap and toilet paper will do well no matter what the economic conditions.

Recessions can be a great time to pick up undervalued stocks if you know what you’re doing. That can greatly improve your net worth when the stock market recovers.

Great Travel Deals

During times of recession, most people don’t think about traveling. For this exact reason, traveling can be a great deal when the economy is shaky. Lack of demand results in excess inventory, which forces hotels and other related travel industries to lower their prices. It also means a greater inventory to choose from and the ability to bargain for upgrades and other perks. That dream vacation that you have always wanted to take can be a lot more affordable during a recession, when travel related industries are begging for your business.

Streamline Your Finances

When things look like they are going to get a bit tougher, people begin to look at their personal finances a bit more closely and start to trim some of the fat. They look at ways that their money can be better spent and how they can get more for each dollar that they do spend. They pad their emergency fund a bit more and don’t spend quite as freely as they do during times of rapid growth. This trimming of the fat is a good exercise that can help you see the important financial goals that you want to achieve and, by doing so, help you reach them more quickly.

Lower Credit-Card Rates

If you have a good credit rating, you are in a position to get extra perks from your credit-card company. Credit-card companies see higher delinquency payment rates during a recession, and it becomes even more important for them to keep their best customers. That gives you extra leverage to ask favors from them, such as having your interest rates lowered and annual fees waived.

While most people will look at a recession with fear and uneasiness, it’s important to also realize that it’s an opportunity to get some great deals and improve your personal finances. Taking advantage will allow you to reap greater benefits from all those dollars you have saved.

By Rebecca Smith
From The Wall Street Journal Online

Utilities are turning to a new tool to help consumers conserve energy and cut costs: the monthly bill.

For many consumers, the utility bill offers little more information than the total due — not even a breakdown of that figure, which includes not only fuel charges but often a dozen or more other costs, including delivery charges, taxes, and charges for special programs like pollution controls on power plants or subsidies for low-income households.

The problem with such a simple bill is that it doesn’t give consumers any way to calculate how much they can save by cutting back on their energy use, or which measures on their part will save them the most. And that blunts a major incentive for conservation.

Now, many utilities are in the process of revamping their bills to give consumers detailed information, along with basic tips on how to reduce energy consumption. Some are going even further, testing advanced meters that allow consumers to monitor online the energy usage of the furnace, the air conditioner and other household appliances continuously, so that they can adjust their settings accordingly.

It’s an uneven transition. Many utilities say they’re still trying to figure out what information consumers need and how best to present it. But more are making the effort as they face growing complaints from consumers about energy prices and increasing pressure from regulators to help reduce energy consumption.

In the Dark

What is it consumers are missing? For starters, without an itemization of charges, consumers can’t tell how much of their monthly expense is fixed and how much is within their control. Also, without knowing how much they’re paying for each unit of gas and electricity they consume, it’s difficult for them to know whether they could get more benefit, for example, from buying a new Energy Star refrigerator or replacing a funky, old gas furnace. And without knowing how the prices of gas and electricity change according to levels of usage, consumers can’t gauge exactly how much any conservation effort on their part will save them.

Consider the bill the Georgia Power unit of Southern Co. sends to its residential customers. It simply breaks down the total amount to be paid into two components — taxes, and a service charge that lumps all other costs together.

Now consider what those customers could do with more information. Georgia Power charges its residential customers 4.657 cents a kilowatt hour for the first 650 units of electricity consumed, year round. The price rises to 7.738 cents for the next 350 kilowatt hours in the summer, but drops to 3.998 cents for those next units in the winter. Above 1,000 kilowatt hours, the price rises even more in the summer, to 7.976 cents, and drops even more in the winter, to 3.931 cents. In other words, a person who used 1,200 kilowatt hours of electricity a month would pay about 40% more in the summer than in the winter.

That means that measures that cut summertime electricity use, like buying more-efficient air conditioners or keeping the house a couple of degrees warmer, have more value to the consumer than measures that reduce wintertime use, like cutting back on lighting or electric heating. Knowing the rate tiers also would allow people to figure out how much they could save by cutting their use by, say, 10%. But the current bill doesn’t make any of that clear.

Georgia Power says it hasn’t offered detailed bills because its customers and regulators haven’t asked it to do so. But the utility says it is looking for better ways to communicate with customers and sees the bill as an underutilized tool.

Making Changes

Many other utilities already have made changes. DTE Energy Co., parent of Detroit Edison Co., revamped its bills to itemize charges and spell out its rate tiers. Vectren Corp., a utility based in Evansville, Ind., recently added charts to its bills so customers can quickly see how their gas and electricity use has varied over a 13-month period. The utility also added weather data showing the average temperatures for the current billing period, prior month and year-earlier period, so customers can get a sense of what role weather played.

“We felt there was a real need to help consumers understand their personal consumption better,” says Jeff Whiteside, a Vectren vice president.

Southern California Edison, a unit of Edison International, tapped bill consultants and focus groups to come up with a more readable, useful format for its bills. For instance, consumers told the utility they find the different rate tiers confusing, so the new bill will include a simple graph that shows where a household’s usage falls in the tiers and how close it is to lower-cost tiers, as an incentive to conserve.

Lynda Ziegler, the utility’s senior vice president of customer service, says the utility aims to customize bills eventually by suggesting steps customers can take to conserve energy, based on their particular usage patterns. “This is something we want to continually refine,” she says.

The Next Step

Over the next few years, consumers in many markets will receive much greater detail on their energy use than they do today, as utilities install advanced meters that can measure a household’s consumption continuously and communicate with devices in the home to measure and even control the energy use of furnaces, air conditioners and other individual appliances.

The ability to measure each household’s energy use throughout the day — rather than simply capturing a usage total once a month, as most meters now do — would allow utilities to charge different prices for peak and off-peak use, something they already do with many business customers. The idea would be to encourage consumers to spread out their energy use or reduce it outright so that utilities could avoid building costly new plants to handle peak demand — plants that consumers ultimately pay for. New bills could show consumers what they’re paying at different times of the day, giving them the information they would need to adjust their consumption.

Advanced meters also can allow consumers to go online and find out how much juice the refrigerator is using or how much gas the furnace is burning. Some consumers can already do this in pilot programs. Eventually, utilities aim to give consumers the ability to adjust the settings of their appliances and energy systems online, and to see immediately how those adjustments affect their costs and the utility’s carbon footprint.

Utilities have tried smart-meter pilot programs for years, but few gained much momentum until recently. With energy prices surging and concerns over global warming growing, there’s more incentive now to develop advanced meters. Utilities say they’re still feeling their way forward on this front, as they are with more-detailed bills. “There’s still work to be done to figure out what people want to see,” says Jim Rainear, general manager of energy services for Duke Energy Corp. The utility is conducting smart-meter pilot programs in North Carolina, South Carolina and Ohio.

Duke Energy also is exploring a number of other ways to encourage energy efficiency. For instance, by midyear it hopes to have an online tool available that will allow people to log in and answer a questionnaire about the details of their energy use. The utility will then use that information, along with its own record of the customer’s energy use, to help it suggest conservation measures.

Chicago-based Commonwealth Edison Co., a unit of Exelon Corp., already has moved in that direction. Its customers can go online and conduct home energy audits based on personal information and even compare usage against people who live in similar homes. ComEd and Duke reached the same conclusion: “We have got to get more personalized,” says Casey Mather, Duke’s director of mass-market strategy.

– Ms. Smith is a staff reporter in The Wall Street Journal’s Los Angeles bureau

By Terri Cullen
From The Wall Street Journal Online

Recently my friend Jason and his wife Angie bought a vacation home in Vermont, close to a number of the state’s major ski resorts. After years of taking expensive weekend trips to the state, they decided to buy there because they fell in love with a home and thought it would be a good investment.

The couple had to take on a second mortgage to buy it, and knew they’d need to rent it out to help pay the bills. The two were excited at the prospect of owning a second home, but a bit anxious at the thought of having to share it with strangers.

Buying a second home can be daunting financially: In addition to taking on a mortgage, vacation-home owners face a second set of utility, maintenance and tax bills. Toss in the stress of managing the home as a rental property, and some would-be second-home shoppers might be wiser and happier sticking with renting. But with proper planning, a little common sense — and some friends spreading the good word — renting out a vacation home can be a positive experience.

Before renting out the home, Jason and Angie needed to get a feel for the local rental market. Was the property close enough to local resorts to attract a steady stream of renters? What were average rental prices for comparable homes in the area? Homeowners need to compare not just the size of their homes — How many can sleep comfortably? Is there adequate parking for guests? — but also features and amenities, such as how close the home is to local attractions. For example, a small waterfront home might command higher rental fees than a larger home nearby with no water views.

Jason and Angie relied on their real-estate agent, a long-time resident of the area with experience in vacation rental properties, to give them a feel for the local market. Another resource the couple might have tapped would be local vacation-home-ownership associations or residential property-management companies in the area. Finally, the couple can check the fees on comparable rentals nearby on vacation-rental Web sites such as Homeaway.com, Ownerdirect.com, Vamoose.com and VBRO.com.

Once Jason and Angie got a feel for average fees in the area, they needed to determine whether the rental income would cover the costs of owning and maintaining the home. In addition to the mortgage and property taxes or community fees, the rental income should cover monthly utility costs, homeowners insurance, routine maintenance and the cost of hiring someone to market, maintain and clean the home.

After adding up all costs, it’s wise to tack on an additional 10% of the total to cover unexpected headaches, such as broken pipes or weather-related roof damage. (If their vacation home was outside the U.S., they’d have a completely different set of tax and property-management issues. But that’s fodder for a future Fit.)

Deciding who will manage the property is another issue that needs to be tackled before they begin to rent. Many vacation-home owners pay local real-estate agencies or rental-management companies a fee to tend to their properties. Fees for property management vary widely depending on location, but average fees run between 8% and 10% of the gross rental fee. The fee may sound steep, but the service typically handles not just the maintenance of the property but also marketing and booking.

Jason and Angie decided to split the difference, hiring two locals to maintain and clean the home, and handling the marketing and booking themselves. Jason designed an attractive Web site with many bright pictures and a complete rundown of the home’s amenities. They also advertised their home on the Homeaway and VBRO Web sites, at a cost of about $500 a year, and spent another $100 to advertise on Google Adwords. (Were Jason not so Web savvy, he also would have had to pay to have someone design his Web site.) In addition to online marketing, a powerful marketing tool is word of mouth: Invite friends to stay, and encourage them to put the word out that the home is available to rent.

The couple wanted an easy way to manage rental payment and reimbursement of the property-damage deposit, so they turned to merchant Web site PayPal. After setting up a business account, the couple now sends out rental invoices and receives credit-card payments for rental fees and damage deposits through their PayPal account. (Paypal charges a fee for each transaction of 1.9% to 2.9%, plus 30 cents.)

It’s also necessary to determine whether the couple’s home is a second home, or an investment property. The IRS says if Jason and Angie use the home 15 days or more a year, or more than 10% of the days they rent to outsiders, it’s a second home. If they use the home less than that, the IRS would consider it an investment property. (Read more about the pros and cons of investment properties versus second homes at RealEstateJournal.)

Jason and Angie’s home qualifies as a second home, so they can deduct expenses, including depreciation, repair costs and operating expenses, including the PayPal fees and online-marketing costs. Security deposits aren’t taxed, unless the money isn’t returned to the renter due to property damage. If their home was considered an investment property, they’d need to deduct costs as a business expense. (To learn more, see IRS Publication 527, Residential Rental Property.)

To protect themselves and their renters, the couple needed to draft a rental contract. The contract includes details on cancellation fees, what the damage deposit covers and specifics on what is and isn’t allowed permitted in the home (Pets, yes. Smoking, no.) Free sample rental contracts can be found online at Homeaway or Formsguru.com, or for a fee you can order customized rental contracts from Web sites such as LawDepot.com and My-forms.org.

Finally, Jason and Angie needed to ask themselves whether they could handle the “ick” factor: Strangers eating in their kitchen, showering in their bathrooms and sleeping in their beds. Ideally, the couple would rent to friends and friends of friends exclusively, so they’d know a little about the renters and be more comfortable sharing their home with them.

When that’s not possible, there are still ways to protect yourself from the uncomfortable feeling of sharing a home with strangers. Buy duplicates of bedding, towels, kitchenware and store one set for your personal use away in a locked room or cabinet. (One friend of mine stores separate mattresses in his vacation home.) Also, secure all personal objects, such as picture frames and family heirlooms, so they’re not broken or stolen.

Jason and Angie have owned the home for less than three months and already have experienced the highs and lows of renting a vacation home. Their marketing efforts were a huge hit, and the available rental periods were completely booked within days of advertising the rental. But as rental fees came pouring in, maintenance costs skyrocketed: A problem with the propane tank resulted in pipes freezing and bursting, causing extensive water damage. (Their propane provider reimbursed them for some of the damage.)

Despite the mayhem, Jason says they still love the place and think they made the right choice with their investment.

Email your comments to rjeditor@dowjones.com.

By Dawn Wotapka and Marshall Eckblad
From The Wall Street Journal Online

In the nation’s worst-hit real-estate markets, home sellers are suffering a new blow: They are being blacklisted by lenders.

As property values decline and credit markets contract, home lenders nationwide are growing ever more unwilling to finance home purchases in sharply declining housing markets, driving prices down further. In some cases, lenders have ruled out entire geographic regions and property types altogether, most notably high-rise condominiums in South Florida and Las Vegas.

Lenders including BankUnited, a unit of BankUnited Financial Corp., and Vertice, a wholesale lending unit of Wachovia Corp., have elected not to lend to some areas or properties because of declining prices. Countrywide Financial Corp., the nation’s largest mortgage lender, considered a similar move last week before reversing course, and other lenders have tightened underwriting guidelines for slumping markets so as to make financing nearly unattainable.

There are “lists circulating” from banks, says Peter Zalewski, a broker with Condo Vultures Realty LLC, and those lists are pushing down prices when news of the black-marked properties spreads.

Moreover, the blacklisting isn’t always obvious. “We don’t call it blacklisting,” said an official at a large bank. “We just don’t write the loan.”

The banks are acting to protect themselves in a steep downturn. But the drying up of loans threatens to create a self-perpetuating cycle.

“If mortgage credit dries up, then prices are going to fall more,” says Morris Davis, a professor of real estate and urban land economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Business and a former economist at the Federal Reserve Board.

Countrywide sent shudders through the ranks of mortgage brokers when it sent brokers an email recently under the heading “Urgent Product Elimination.” The message announced the company would stop approving its Fast and Easy and Alt-A mortgages for all high-rise condominiums nationwide, effective almost immediately.

Countrywide’s Fast and Easy loans don’t require verification of income, brokers said. Alt-A loans are generally provided to buyers with good credit who lack full documentation.

Countrywide reversed its policy a day later without explanation, but the episode demonstrated lenders’ reluctance to underwrite mortgages in the country’s most uncertain real-estate markets. Countrywide didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment.

Florida’s largest bank, BankUnited Financial Corp.’s BankUnited FSB, drew up a “nonpermissible condominium project list” that identified addresses of 191 condominium developments in Florida and Las Vegas for which the bank won’t provide financing. The list was reported by the South Florida Business Journal.

For more than half the properties listed in the memo, the bank cited “declining market value” as the reason it wouldn’t provide financing. Melissa Gracey, a spokeswoman for BankUnited, confirmed that the list is still in force and said the bank’s “very conservative” lending guidelines rule out mortgages for such properties.

In some cases, lenders have blacklisted not specific properties, but entire geographical areas.

In December, Wachovia’s Vertice unit stopped writing mortgages for all condominiums in South Florida, says Kasey Emmel, a company spokeswoman.

Wachovia’s main lending operation “continues to offer condo products in all markets, including Florida markets,” says spokesman Don Vecchiarello.

Blacklisting isn’t redlining — the illegal practice of restricting lending on a socioeconomic basis — so it doesn’t run afoul of fair-lending laws, says Alexander Bono, a partner at Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis, a law firm in Philadelphia. Banks are allowed “to identify a county when it’s based upon something other than socioeconomic conditions” and then change its stipulations for lending there, Mr. Bono says.

Even when banks haven’t officially ruled out entire markets, the stipulations they use before lending in such areas are becoming very stringent, and can leave mortgage credit all but off-limits.

“Companies won’t lend” money for purchases in developments that aren’t at least 60% filled, says Paul Miller, an analyst at Friedman Billings Ramsey & Co., a unit of FBR Capital Markets Corp. When vacancy rates in a development are higher than 40%, Mr. Miller says, “your condo fees go through the roof,” since a development’s minimum maintenance costs remain static, regardless of the number of residents. And if condo fees remain high — as underwriting logic follows — then homeowners may have a harder time making mortgage payments.

“We’re very cognizant of the risks involved” with “condominium developments in particular,” says Terry Francisco, a spokesman for Bank of America Corp.

Other larger lenders have also tightened standards for mortgages they write in declining regions.

In December, Fannie Mae, the nation’s government-sponsored mortgage-lending behemoth, issued an announcement titled “Maximum Financing in Declining Markets.”

“When a property is located in an area identified as declining,” the announcement says, the lender originating the loan must reduce the maximum amount it could otherwise lend to that buyer by 5%.

In healthy markets, New York’s J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. will currently lend borrowers a mortgage equal to as much as 90% of a property’s value. For borrowers in states that have declining markets, however, the bank reduces that maximum, says Tom Kelly, a spokesman for the bank. J.P. Morgan then reduces that level even further for borrowers in the worst declining markets, Mr. Kelly says, though he declined to provide specifics.

CitiMortgage, a wholesale lending operation of another large Wall Street bank, Citigroup Inc., maintains a list of “declining market areas” that red-flags dozens of counties in more than 10 states. Citi reduces the amount it will lend for properties in those counties “by at least 5%,” the document says.

“We routinely review our credit parameters, including maximum loan-to-value ratios, in declining markets,” says Mark Rogers, a CitiMortgage spokesman.

One silver lining: For “all-cash buyers,” Mr. Zalewski says, the lists are “heaven sent.”

Buyers who have cash “can use that to negotiate,” he says: “If you don’t sell to us, who are you going to sell to?”