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Hope Now, the consortium of banks, mortgage companies and credit counselors hoping to stem the housing crisis, released its August numbers. New foreclosure starts dropped by more than 25% to 224,000. The number of people who actually lost their homes in foreclosure sales was down 16% to 75,000.

Hope Now says the numbers show its program to workout loans is working. ”Our data suggests a correlation between the drop in foreclosures and the increase in work-out solutions to help at-risk borrowers,” said Faith Schwartz, the group’s executive director.

Look deeper into the numbers though. Repayment plans that merely give the borrower an opportunity to catch up on past due payments vastly outnumber loan modifications, where borrowers actually see their interest rates or principal reduced.

Loan modifications are viewed as a more permanent fix because they reduce the monthly payments. Presently repayment plans outnumber loan mods at Hope Now lenders by nearly three-to-one. And the gap is widening. In July the ratio of payment plans to load mods was closer to two-to-one.

If the economy comes back, many of the 3.2 million borrowers with payment plans may get caught up again. If not, they’ll just fall behind again. Hope Now, pay later.

A controversial $3.9 billion federal program aimed at saving neighborhoods blighted by foreclosure is hitting hurdles that could threaten its effectiveness.

We spend a lot of time here on the HotProperty blog gauging the health of the real estate market and pointing to clues about where it might be heading.

But today, we need your help. Tell us about the nagging questions you have about the housing market (example: How hard it really is to get a loan or what's the best way to go about securing one? What might a housing recovery look like? Is this a good time to buy an investment property?)

We'll collect the best questions and try to answer them in a week or two. No question is too small. But we’ll be looking to answer questions that will be helpful to a large number of readers and, preferably, haven’t been answered in previous stories.

So send questions early and often to prashant_gopal@businessweek.com. We've closed the comments on this post because we'd like you to e-mail us directly. If you'd like your name to be included in the story, please send it to us along with a phone number where we can reach you during the day.

Look forward to hearing from you.

UPDATE:
Thanks to those who have already sent in questions. One request, try to word your questions in a way that they're relevant to a larger audience. In other words, rather than spelling out your personal housing situation, ask me a broader question. Here's an example of a great question we received: Does the traditional rule of thumb that housing shouldn't cost more than 2.5 times annual income still apply today?

Keep the questions coming!

The $4 billion Atlantic Yards mixed-use development--the centerpiece of which will be the Barclays Center sports and entertainment arena, future home base of the NBA's Nets team--has new financial backing. Developer Forest City Ratner Cos. Inc. and Nets Sports and Entertainment have just signed a letter of intent to form a strategic partnership with an affiliate of Moscow-based international private investment fund Onexim Group for the development of the 22-acre project. The multi-faceted deal calls for Onexim to invest $200 million.

The month Jennifer Galdes moved into her condo in the Albany Park section of Chicago, the local paper suggested that the area was up and coming. Six years later, she's still waiting for a Whole Foods.

The New Jersey office of Holliday Fenoglio Fowler L.P. has arranged a $25 million refinancing for Glenpointe Centre West, a 333,600-square-foot, Class A office building in Teaneck, N.J.

FirstService Williams has represented law firm Holland & Knight L.L.P. in a long-term, 82,500-square-foot lease at 31 West 52nd Street in New York City.

The gap between buyer and seller pricing expectations on commercial real estate is closing, and with owners eager to sell properties to escape debt maturities or just to pocket cash to address financial demands, it has become a buyers market. Taking advantage of the appealing prices, Behringer Harvard has just acquired two apartment properties totaling 746 units in separate transactions valued at an aggregate $136 million.

While multifamily deals decreased significantly in the past year or two in the San Francisco Bay Area, it isn’t because of lack of buyers – it is because the sellers don’t like the market correction. In spite of the sellers’ reluctance to put properties on the market, Waterford Place Apartment Homes in Dublin, Calif., has sold for $80 million.

New home sales, after four months of robust gains, only inched up 0.7% in August, the Commerce Department reported Sept. 25.

The government's monthly new home sales report, which has a wide margin of error, is relatively unreliable. But it follows disappointing results for existing home sales and housing starts.

Existing home sales dropped 2.7% in August on a seasonally-adjusted basis -- the first decline in five months, the National Association of Realtors reported Sept. 24. And single-family home housing starts dropped 3% in August from the previous month when adjusted for seasonal variations.

Patrick Newport, and economist with IHS Global Insight, said it's not clear why sales wouldn't increase more, especially with the $8,000 federal tax credit for first-time buyers set to expire at the end of November. Buyers should be rushing to take advantage of the incentive before it vanishes (Some of them, of course, might be aware that Congress is mulling over the idea of extending and even expanding the credit to include all buyers).

"Three independent sources [new home sales, housing starts, and existing home sales reports] are telling us the market weakened in August," said Patrick Newport, an economist with IHS Global Insight. "I'm just not sure what is happening."

But Zach Pandl, an economist at Nomura Securities, isn't concerned about monthly fluctuations. He expects the last-minute rush of buyers using the tax credit to boost sales in September.

The good news is that inventories of unsold new and existing homes continued to drop in August, Pandle said.

"Overall, I don't think much has changed here," said Pandl, who says the housing market is now strong enough to stabilize even without the $8,000 credit. "It's unreasonable to expect a smooth upward march. It's going to be a choppy, challenging recovery."