Ohioans with less-than-stellar credit might soon have trouble getting a mortgage, thanks to a pullback by banks that have been burned too many times.

A number of banks with operations in central Ohio are tightening loan requirements and getting away from loans that are considered more riskier.

JPMorgan Chase recently said it will reduce sales of "no-doc" loans, which are made to borrowers who don't have proof of income, as well as loans with high loan-amount to house-value ratios. The bank also eliminated adjustable-rate mortgages that reset after two or three years.

Adjustable-rate loans have been blamed for Ohio's high foreclosure rate, as many borrowers were unable to make payments when their interest rates were reset upward.

National City still is making loans through bank branches, but officials said Monday that it no longer would sell home-equity loans and lines of credit through brokers. Home-equity loans are considered riskier than primary mortgages.

Huntington Bancshares, Park National Bank, KeyBank and Fifth Third Bank haven't made any changes to their mortgage loans or lending criteria.

Foreclosures nationwide have increased by 58 percent in the first half of the year, compared with the same period in 2006, according to RealtyTrac, an online real-estate marketplace. Ohio had the third-highest foreclosure rate in the nation.

Foreclosures are the hang- over from overly exuberant lending, said Jay Brinkmann, financial economist with the Mortgage Bankers Association.

The past seven years were characterized by "over-financing of marginal buyers and a considerable degree of fraud and misrepresentation in mortgage lending," Brinkman said.

"When Wall Street was pumping money into the mortgage market, lenders funded just about anything," said Fritz Elmendorf, spokesman for the Consumer Bankers Association.

But the real-estate party appears to be over.

Lenders are raising interest rates and shrinking the pool of people they're willing to make loans to in a bid to make their loans more attractive to investors, said Ganesh Rathnam, bank analyst for Morningstar, an investment research company.

Investors, spooked by growing losses on subprime mortgage loans, have stopped feeding money into the mortgage market, forcing lenders to cut back on the number of loans they make.

Lenders routinely package and sell their loans to investors as mortgage-backed securities in order to free up money to make more loans. When investors pull back, the pool of money available to consumers dries up.

Would-be homeowners with so-so credit aren't the only ones being affected by the current mortgage climate.

Consumers with problems documenting their income, or who have little equity or money for a down payment, are going to have a hard time finding or refinancing a mortgage, Rathnam said.

Subprime borrowers, with credit scores below 620, have been frozen out of the market.

Prime borrowers, those with credit scores above 700, will have the easiest time finding a mortgage.

Anyone who is able to get a loan likely will have to pay more, said Mike Van Buskirk, president of the Ohio Bankers League. "Interest rates are going to go up soon, and even prime borrowers are going to pay more."

For now, interest rates have held steady at about 6.68 percent for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages, according to mortgage purchaser Freddie Mac, up from 6.63 percent last year.

But some banks already are raising rates. Wells Fargo, the nation's second-largest mortgage lender, raised interest rates on some mortgage loans to 8 percent last week, up from 6.875 percent.

Wells Fargo, SunTrust Banks and Wachovia also stopped making loans through brokers to so-called "Alt-A" borrowers, those with average credit.

Tightening credit can be bad news for people with adjustable-rate mortgages.

A record $50 billion worth of adjustable-rate loans that were taken out in 2004 and 2005, at the height of the mortgage boom, are going to reset in October, according to Economy.com.

Homeowners looking to refinance to a fixed-rate loan or hoping to stave off foreclosure might find themselves shut out of the mortgage market, Van Buskirk said.

"We're in a period where underwriting standards are being reassessed," Elmendorf said. "The loan spigot isn't going to be shut off completely. Lenders are just being more traditional and want borrowers to have some stake in the game."

People with good credit who can verify all of their assets and income still can get loans and relatively low interest rates through major lenders, said Sam Garcia, publisher of MortgageDaily.com, an online industry publication.

Still, consumers do have fewer lenders to choose from, he said. About 71 mortgage companies have closed in 2007, up from 17 in 2006. The most recent was American Home Mortgage, the nation's 10th-largest lender, which filed for bankruptcy and laid off all but 10 percent of its work force last week.•