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Abel Rosales wishes he did earn the kind of monthly income that a mortgage broker reported for him on forms that enabled the Long Beach man to take out a second mortgage on his home.

When he took a call last year from a broker who advised him that his first mortgage financing on his home would be resetting and that he could lose the home in a foreclosure, his thoughts were about his wife and his two children.

He took the broker's advice, sight unseen, and got a second adjustable mortgage, with a promise from the broker he would get a third mortgage with fixed-rate financing.

As a professional commercial building painter, Rosales earns a decent living, but the first mortgage reset to nearly $3,000 per month and the second added nearly another $2,000 per month.

There was no way he could make the combined payments of roughly $5,000 per month. And because the broker, who he only dealt with over the phone, significantly beefed up his reported monthly income - a fact he found out too late - he was unable to get a third mortgage without again misrepresenting his income.

Rosales, his wife, Noeme, and their two children now find themselves renters living in Lakewood.

"The lesson I learned is never deal with anyone over the phone," he said, adding, "And do research."

Unlike the 1.2 million or so Americans the Bush administration says it can help under its mortgage bailout plan unveiled on Thursday, help comes too late for Rosales.

But Rosales didn't let himself go into foreclosure. Instead, he made arrangements to conduct what's known as a short sell.

In a short sale a property owner typically negotiates with the lender to take less than what's owed for the home. That gets the home off the market quickly and stops the overdue payments from building up.

That's what Keith Higginbotham is hoping for.

Higginbotham is west coast editor for the trade magazine "American Shipper" - he's also a former Press-Telegram employee, and his wife, Tracy Manzer, is currently a reporter for the newspaper.

The pair of thirtysomethings saw their first, and then second, mortgage payments literally go through the roof, rising to $6,000 per month.

Both say they knew it could have happened, but only as a worse case scenario.

It was something they were willing to risk for the American Dream of home ownership. And no one knew the perfect storm in the mortgage industry was brewing just as the couple purchased their cozy two bedroom, one bath home with a sunroom at 5219 E. Flagstone St.

Even before the reset, the rent was high. And when the couple took the second mortgage, it only seemed to make things worse.

"For what we were paying before it went up, we could have rented a house in one of the nicest neighborhoods in Long Beach," Higginbotham said.

Facing foreclosure, the couple turned to their Realtor, Brad Cummings with Keller Williams Realty, for help.

Cummings negotiated with the lender and helped the couple begin the process of a short sale.

The couple have since moved from their home, and are short selling it with an asking price of $440,000, far from the $551,000 they paid for it in 2005.

Also going through the roof is the number of short sales occurring.

"We've been very busy," said Eli Tene, president and CEO of Woodland Hills-based iShortSale Inc.

The company has brokered more than 2,000 short sales in the past year, and in the last six months the company has seen short sales grow by half every month.

"Every month we get 50 percent more volume," Tene said.

He noted that the short sell is far better than the alternative of foreclosure.

"Short sale is the only real solution that works for the lender and for the property owner," he said.