The Times ran a Q&A addressing the Wall Street meltdown yesterday. The real estate market is far from immune. In fact, bad mortgages are directly responsible for the bankruptcies and mergers breaking out all over. A sample:

Didn't Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch get into trouble by investing in bad mortgages? Does their failure hurt my ability to buy and refinance a home?

It should be business as usual for people making their house payments on time. But home loans could get scarcer and refinancing options narrower. That's because banks, despite relatively low interest rates, are rationing credit. "As bad as the credit crunch was, it's going to get worse because any time banks see financial disarray, they're going to back off," said banking expert Ken Thomas in Miami. That could prolong the housing slump, and some economists like Thomas don't see a turnaround in Florida home prices until 2010.