Citigroup Inc. (C) News

NEW YORK, March 12 (UPI) -- Some housing experts are saying the rate of foreclosures in the U.S. housing market may rise again, and the profile of delinquent borrowers is changing.

"Just looking at the numbers, we would expect there to be a bigger percentage of properties," headed for repossession, RealtyTrac spokesman Daren Blomquist told The Washington Post.

A recent RealtyTrac survey found the rate of foreclosures dropped in February, but homeowners continue to fall behind on their payments. More than 75 percent of homeowners three months or more behind on payments -- termed delinquent borrowers -- have prime loans, First American CoreLogic said, the Post reported Friday.

The first wave of foreclosures in 2008 were made up of mostly borrowers with riskier subprime mortgages.

At this point, as many as 7 million more homes could be swallowed up in foreclosures, a number that would disrupt the housing market for nearly three years, taking that long for the properties to be repossessed and resold, said Diane Westerback, a managing director at rating agency Standard & Poor's.

"Some of the positive housing data may not be signaling a true turning point, as many servicers are holding back on foreclosures and the related houses are not yet being offered for sale," Westerback said.

TALLINN, Estonia, March 12 (UPI) -- Estonia's economy grew in the fourth quarter of last year, marking the end of the country's recession, the national statistics agency in Tallinn said Friday.

"Compared to the third quarter, the seasonally and working-day adjusted (gross domestic product) increased by 2.5 percent in the fourth quarter," the agency said, adding it was the first time since 2007 the economy showed growth.

The agency noted the growth was possibly affected by a surge in buying before a Jan. 1 tax increase, The Baltic Times reported.

"Stocking up of excise goods brought about substantially bigger receipts of excise taxes than customary, contributing to the deceleration of the decrease in the GDP," the agency said.

On an annual basis however, Estonia posted a 9.5 percent decline over 2008, the report said.

NEW YORK, March 12 (UPI) -- Lehman Brothers resorted to misleading accounting gimmicks to hide bad investments, a report by an examiner for the now-bankrupt U.S. investment firm concluded.

The report, prepared by examiner Anton R. Valukas, concluded senior Lehman executives and the firm's accountants at Ernst & Young were aware of the accounting tricks, The New York Times reported Thursday.

The 2,200-page report found the 158-year old Lehman Brothers failed in September 2008 due to a combination of bad mortgage holdings and demands by JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) and Citigroup (NYSE:C) that Lehman post collateral against loans needed to help it stay afloat, the Times said.

Valukas reported that Lehman executives employed "materially misleading" accounting gimmicks to conceal the company's distress, using reverse engineering to remove about $50 billion from its books before declaring bankruptcy.

The bankruptcy -- the largest in U.S. history -- provided a major impetus for the financial bailout of 2008, intended to address fears of a domino effect involving other big banks.

Valukas wrote in his report that former Lehman Chief Executive Richard S. Fuld Jr. certified the misleading accounts and was "at least greatly negligent," the Times said.

"Unbeknownst to the investing public, rating agencies, government regulators, and Lehman's board of directors, Lehman reverse engineered the firm's net leverage ratio for public consumption," Valukas' report concluded.

The report does not indicate whether Lehman executives violated federal securities law.