Lenders retreat as housing market plummets

The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

As the nation's housing market swoons, lenders are tightening their grip on their money. Last month, that credit crunch reached Brent Meyers.

To all appearances, he's an unlikely victim. A well-paid chief executive of a small consulting firm, he owns a substantial investment portfolio and a million-dollar house in Moraga. He pays his bills on time and has no credit card debt. His credit score, he says, is around 800, a rating more or less in the stratosphere.

But in mid-March, Bank of America cut off his home equity credit line of a little more than $180,000, citing a decline in the value of his property. Meyers, 40, is now scrambling to come up with $75,000 to pay for a major landscaping project and is canceling other big spending plans.