Washington - It’s hard to know how scared to be if you don’t know the size of the threat. No, not terrorism, housing.

The U.S. mortgage-lending business is a sprawling, varied enterprise that no one regulator oversees, making it impossible to know how many mortgages or lenders not insured by the government are in trouble.

Even worse, no public records are available to show who holds the trillions of dollars worth of mortgages that investment banks pooled and sold as securities to investors around the globe. The value of many of those securities plunge as mortgage defaults soar.

More than 5,000 New Orleans property owners have appealed their new assessments, turning what is normally a routine task for the City Council into a tall order that could take weeks or even months.

As a result, the council is seeking proposals, due today, for a firm that will manage the complex process and handle much of the work reviewing the 5,262 appeals. The plan is to have a contractor hired by the end of the week; the job could be worth in the neighborhood of $500,000, said the council chief of staff, Ron Pursell said.

Florida’s resale housing market continued to sputter in July, with sales down 24 percent from the same month a year ago, the Florida Association of Realtors said Monday.

The median price dipped 5 percent — to $237,500 — compared with a year ago.

Among the state’s major metro areas, Fort Myers turned in one of the worst year-over-year performances, with a 39 percent drop in sales, followed closely by Orlando at 35 percent.
Four metro regions had double-digit percentage declines in price: Melbourne-Titusville, off 11 percent, dipping below $200,000 to $195,800; Fort Pierce-Port St. Lucie, also down 11 percent; Sarasota-Bradenton, down 12 percent; and Punta Gorda, off 21 percent.

Three real estate industry groups that would dearly love to have good news instead issued a trio of reports on Monday that underscored the continued weakness in the housing market, both for California and the nation.

California sales: The California Association of Realtors said sales of existing homes in the state slumped 22.7 percent in July compared with July 2006. The 350,980 homes (seasonally adjusted) that closed escrow in July contrasted with 453,980 last year at this time.

The group said that both tighter standards for mortgage underwriting and “the adverse psychological impact” of ongoing bad news about foreclosures and subprime mortgages caused sales to decline.