Some housing bubble reports from New York. "For home buyers and sellers, this spring is telling a very different real estate story, one the region hasn't seen in nearly a decade. It may be the heart of the selling season, but the frenzy of years past is gone, replaced by a far more tentative market. 'It will tell us how the housing market will perform over the next year or so,' said Pearl Kamer, the chief economist with the Long Island Association. 'The spring tells it all.'"

"Far more houses are for sale now, but sellers are trying to get the prices their former neighbors got and buyers are waiting for rock-bottom prices. Nassau, Suffolk and Queens had a total of 25,156 listings in February, compared with 14,653 a year ago."

"Sellers are listing now in an attempt to beat market declines. And buyers are being choosy. 'You have a sense that there are two homes on nearly every block that are either for sale or coming for sale,' said Judy Markowitz, broker in Flushing."

"If a weaker spring is followed by an even weaker summer or fall, that may put the market on notice. And that's when the reality check will come, said appraiser Jonathan Miller in Manhattan, because there's seasonal 'static' now. 'We're not seeing the gloom and doom at this point that had been anticipated,' Miller added. 'But we've got rising inventory, and potentially rising mortgage rates, and when you put those things together, that is not a good thing.'"

From the Times Herald Record. "The mid-Hudson building boom just got very quiet. Orange County municipalities issued 618 single-family building permits last year, fewer than half their output in 2004. Ulster County permits fell by more than 40 percent last year, and Sullivan County permits dropped by a quarter."

"The 618 permits issued in Orange is the lowest total in records, which date back to 1987, adding to mounting evidence that the region's once-white-hot housing market is approaching room temperature."

"Builders who can't sell the homes they've already built aren't about to rush out and build more. 'I just did (a) lease with an option to buy on a new construction. I haven't done one of those in years,' said Paula Meloi, broker/owner in Port Jervis."