American Home Mortgage is singing the blues today but their issues are not clear at this time. Mortgage Blues reports that American Home Mortgage is not involved in the subprime market. To survive, American Home needs the secondary credit markets to stabilize, so the company can re-sell its loans for a profit. Their shares fell 42% in NYSE trading on July 30.

American Home makes money originating and then re-packaging mortgages into securities that are sold on secondary markets. It originated almost $60 billion in loans in 2006.

Many buyers are simply refusing to bid on riskier debt, especially mortgage-backed debt. Thus, lenders like American Home are stuck with debt in their pipelines that they can’t sell. The biggest issue may be uncertainty. Since parts of the credit market aren’t really operating properly, it’s hard to tell what American Homes’ assets are really worth, says Jason Willey, a Standard & Poor’s equity analyst.