by Calculated Risk on 3/16/2007 02:56:00 AM

From Reuters: Mortgage Meltdown Pulls in More Than Those on Edge

[Lori Gay, president and chief executive of Los Angeles Neighborhood Housing Services] said she has begun meeting with lenders, at their request, to try to stave off what could be "the biggest foreclosure bloodbath that we've ever had."

"We are seeing every age group, every single income level now, people with similar problems, and I haven't seen that in my career," she added.

And on commercial real estate, from the WSJ: Subprime Troubles Bite Into Office-Space Sector

Fallout from the imploding subprime-mortgage market is spreading to regions of the country where the once-torrid mortgage business generated jobs and filled office buildings.

No place is this more apparent than Orange County, Calif., where mortgage lenders including New Century Financial Corp. and Ameriquest Mortgage Co., a unit of ACC Capital Holdings Corp., have laid off workers, and landlords are bracing for a dive in what was previously one of the nation's strongest office markets. Employment in Orange County's mortgage-lending and consumer-finance sector has fallen 6.4% to 51,200 in the fourth quarter of 2006, from a peak of 54,600 in the fourth quarter of 2005, according to the Labor Department.