ST. GEORGE — For the past few years, the summertime heat of Utah's Dixie has been matched by the area's scorching hot real estate market. Mortgage brokers and real estate agents in Washington County had more than enough work, as buyers and sellers kept pumping more money into the market.

Home prices increased over a five-year span by an astounding 73 percent, making the St. George metropolitan statistical area among the top appreciating housing markets in the nation. Plenty of folks, from all ends of the real estate spectrum, were making a lot of money.

But late last summer, that trend came to a screeching halt.

"I think it was the 12th of August. Foreclosure rates came in for subprime loans at 11 percent, and immediately the market dropped," said Melody Knowlton, a local mortgage loan officer with Envision Lending Group. "Everything was shut down, except for conventional loans. There was no notice at all on subprime loans. They were just gone."

The St. George area is now experiencing some of the pain being felt by nearby Las Vegas and Phoenix. According to data released May 22 from the U.S. Office of Housing Enterprise Oversight, southern Utah's largest metro area ranked 235 out of 292 markets, with sales prices decreasing 3.65 percent from the first quarter of last year to the same period in 2008.

St. George's housing fortunes changed so drastically and so quickly that in March, the area was declared a "declining market," following two consecutive quarters of home-sales price decreases, according to the federal housing-oversight office.

That distinction led the country's leading mortgage-insurance companies to include St. George on their list of areas that require stricter standards for issuing loan insurance.

Unlike northern Utah, where home prices have held relatively steady, the Washington County market and nearby Las Vegas have been swept along in the national mortgage crisis, where mounting foreclosures, falling consumer confidence and sellers slashing their asking prices are taking an increasing toll on the market. Las Vegas had the third-highest foreclosure rate in the nation during the first quarter of this year, with one in 44 households receiving a foreclosure filing.

Many St. George-area homeowners with subprime loans have either defaulted or are poised to lose their investments. Many of those people find it a difficult subject to discuss.

One local business owner worried that his customer base would erode if those people knew he was losing his home to foreclosure. A police officer agonized over breaking the coming news of an imminent foreclosure on his home to his wife and in-laws. His plight, he said, made him "feel like a big loser."