Previous clients of Joan Ramirez, who is a Staten-island, N.Y.- based real estate broker, surrendered to foreclosure after a prominent institutional lender gave them a mortgage which they could not afford to pay. The mortgage was set up with 100 percent financing through a fixed-rate first mortgage, in conjunction with a monthly adjustable second mortgage. [...]

Foreclosures are having a mixed impact on shares at Home Depot and Lowe according to the top executives of both. It is of importance as new data about increasing pace of foreclosures is rolling in. The shares of Home Depot (component of Dow) traded down 3.0% at $22.63. The shares of Lowe fell by 3.4% and traded at $18.97.
The general pattern is that sales of Lowe dropped as foreclosures increased.