The Boston Globe follows up on yesterdays' MAR report. "Cape Cod's housing market was hit harder by declining home sales last year than any other Massachusetts region, as buyers held back in hopes that prices for vacation homes would drop. Sales of single-family homes on the Cape fell 14.5 percent, to 3,986 in 2005 from 4,633 in 2004."

"The Cape was more sensitive to rising interest rates and economic disruptions, such as higher oil prices, because purchases of retirement and vacation homes, the biggest segment of that market, are entirely discretionary. While a growing family may have no choice but to move into a larger home or baby boomer couples may be anxious to downsize, buyers of second homes have nothing but time."

"'They were saying, 'We're going to wait for prices to come down, and we're not going to buy until they do,' said Laura Usher, a real estate agentin Brewster. Buyers 'got very savvy,' she said."

"James Crocker, the president of The Cape & Islands Association of Realtors, said the reason houses aren't moving as fast is that sellers refuse to drop their asking prices to reflect a weaker market. Some sellers, defying their agents' advice and analyses of their local markets or recent sales in their neighborhoods, insist on putting higher asking prices on their homes, he said."

"'The buyers are willing, ready, and able,' said Crocker, an agent in Osterville. 'We just need more fairly-priced properties to ignite the market.'"

"Last year's housing market got off to a terrible start due to 100 inches of snowfall on the Cape, causing sales to plunge nearly 24 percent in the first quarter, compared with the same quarter in 2004. After a 17 percent drop in the second quarter, summertime sales rebounded. But sales fell again, by 18 percent, in the fourth quarter."