Aug. 27--In the middle of remodeling the kitchen of their Gloucester County house, Paul and Julianne Gablin received a letter from Wachovia Bank canceling the line of credit they were using to pay for the project.

Luckily for them, the Gablins own a house in Florida with another line of credit from Wachovia and were able to tap it to pay for the custom cabinets delivered yesterday.

Still, the episode has soured him on Wachovia because he has always made his loan payments, Paul Gablin said yesterday.

"The way they are acting, it must mean they are desperate," said Gablin, a retired Air Force pilot who flies internationally for UPS Inc.

Wachovia is the latest of the nation's big banks to close or reduce the size of home-equity lines of credit in response to the residential real estate downturn.

The Charlotte, N.C., bank used estimated property values from an outside vendor to calculate declines in home equity -- the difference between the value of the house and the amount owed on loans secured by the house.

Wachovia credit-line customers whose home equity has declined 50 percent or more received letters in the last several weeks saying that their credit lines had been reduced or blocked, Wachovia spokeswoman Barbara Nate said.

"Our rationale is that we don't want customers to get in a situation where they can't afford their outstanding commitment," Nate said.

Gablin said he thought Wachovia's cancellation of his line of credit had more to do with the bank's troubles than with him. Wachovia reported a $9.1 billion loss in the second quarter.

A big chunk of Wachovia's problems stem from its 2006 purchase of mortgage lender Golden West Financial Corp. for $24.2 billion to capture business in then-hot markets, such as California and Florida.

"The largest banks are trying to limit their exposure to housing in general," and home-equity lines are one of the easier areas to cut back, said Matthew Anderson, a partner with Foresight Analytics L.L.C., a real estate analysis and forecasting firm in Oakland, Calif.

"It was a great sector for a long time," Anderson said. "But the delinquency rates have been rising for the last several quarters."

Other large banks with operations in the Philadelphia region, including Bank of America Corp. and Sovereign Bancorp Inc., have cut back slightly on home-equity lending this year. Citizens Bank said it had temporarily frozen a few credit lines.

A spokesman for Bank of America, also based in Charlotte, said relatively few cuts had been made in the Philadelphia region, where housing prices have been more stable than in many parts of the country.