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The continuing tumult within the home loan industry sent a shock wave of fear throughout global financial markets, but it isn't just Wall Street investors who need to pay attention.

This tale has a bottom line for Albuquerque home owners and prospective home buyers.

"What's happening right now is we're having a correction," said Steve Cecco, president of the New Mexico Association of Mortgage Brokers and part-owner of AmeriStar Mortgage Group Inc. in Albuquerque. "The pendulum has swung from where it's simple to get a loan to much harder to get a loan."

The Dow Jones industrial average fell 387.18 points Thursday, its biggest one-day decline since February. It fell another 100 points early Friday, but recovered to close at just 31.14 points down after the Federal Reserve injected billions of dollars into the market.

Financial markets both in the United States and Europe were shaken over fears over diminishing credit sparked by the home loan market, which is seeing an epidemic of home foreclosures often attributed to subprime loans issued to people with poor credit.

Such a "liquidity crisis" could make financial institutions less likely to extend credit and make loans harder to get.

"Investors all of a sudden are very jittery. This is a very important segment of the market and nobody knows what's happening," said Larry Waldman, a senior economist at the University of New Mexico's Bureau of Business and Economic Research.

"Everybody's scared; they don't know what's going to happen next," Waldman added. "The housing market itself could recover, this is a bottoming out, or it could be that this is a long way to know when the bottom is reached."

For the home owner financing a house through a fixed-rate mortgage, this means little, according to local mortgage experts. Your mortgage rate is already set and won't be subject to market fluctuations unless you choose to refinance.

Seeing the most impact will be prospective home buyers and homeowners with adjustable-rate mortgages who might find a less-friendly mortgage market should they choose to refinance.

With less credit available, lenders are offering fewer mortgage products to consumers, eliminating no-down payment programs and riskier options like interest-only mortgages, local experts said.

The Bank of Albuquerque a month ago offered about 10 no-money-down mortgage products. Now, they are down to three, said Lisa Crain, regional manager for the bank's mortgage department.

"That leaves the customer with fewer programs to be able to qualify for," Cecco said. "You'll get back to the point where you need to have down payments or full documentation proving all of your income."

Cecco, though, cautioned that the mortgage market isn't necessarily in crisis mode, and there are factors working in favor of Albuquerque homeowners.

The continued appreciation in home values gives homeowners more equity, making refinancing a mortgage easier than in markets where home values have dropped.

"If you bought your house at $500,000 and now it's only $450,000, you can't refinance that if you have an adjustable rate product," Cecco said. "There's a snowball effect, dominos start to crumble, and you go into a foreclosure."

New Mexico also has avoided being hit hard by home foreclosures.

There were nearly 926,000 foreclosure filings nationwide between January and June, a 56 percent increase from a year earlier, according to RealtyTrac Inc., an Irvine, Calif., company that tracks national foreclosure rates.

That's one for every 134 households.

New Mexico, during that same time period, recorded 2,123 foreclosure filings - one for every 395 households. That was 41 percent lower than a year earlier, ranking the state 28th in the country, with No. 1 being the highest.

Cecco said there is plenty of subprime lending going on in New Mexico. But the low-credit buyers who receive those loans are then put on programs aimed at fixing their credit rating so they can refinance into a lower-rate product, he said.

Crain said homeowners with an adjustable rate mortgage need to inquire with their lender about when the rate will adjust.

"We had an instance where a customer's loan reset before they were able to refinance and their payment went up $700 a month," she said.

She also offered consumers this bit of sound advice:

"They just need to be careful," she said. "Be careful where you're shopping for a mortgage. If you don't feel comfortable, shop around."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.