The Baltimore Sun reports from Maryland. "The number of houses sold in the Baltimore area fell more than 25 percent in August compared with August 2005, leaving frustrated sellers with houses sitting on the market longer than expected. The area has not seen such a sharp decline in sales in any month since the MRIS began tracking data in the region in March 1999."

"The number of sales slipped at least 19 percent in all jurisdictions, with the biggest declines, just over 30 percent, in Baltimore City and Carroll and Howard counties."

"'The market is returning to normal, before it became a crazy market,' said Lisa Edleman, a real estate agent in the Baltimore area. 'Everything can't continue to go up by 25 percent a year. I'm not sure anybody could afford it.'"

"Economist Anirban Basu and some real estate agents said sellers are still expecting increases and refusing to negotiate, even after the market turned in buyers' favor. 'The housing bubble was not necessarily forming during the time of rapid appreciation in recent years,' he said. 'The housing bubble formed because sellers have been so slow to respond to the reality of an emerging buyer's market. And because they have been so slow to respond, the active inventory has continued to climb and climb and climb.'"

"Stephanie Bamberger, a real estate agent who works a territory from Harford to Prince George's counties, said, 'Sellers are not wanting to budge, and buyers are becoming very adamant about wanting sellers to budge.'"

"She said she recently represented a couple that decided to hunt for a house over the summer when prices started coming down. 'They wanted closing costs, they wanted a reduced price,' she said. The couple made offers on two houses, and both sellers rejected the offers. The couple ended up buying a new house from a builder offering buyer incentives."

"Darlene and Robert Johnson put their two-year-old, four-bedroom house in Nottingham on the market in April for $550,000, and have reduced the price to $469,900. Despite cutting the asking price, the couple hasn't had a single offer on their home."

"'It's very frustrating,' Darlene Johnson said, adding that she sold her previous home, a townhouse in Abingdon, in a day two years ago. 'The market is not anything like it was two years ago. This is definitely a buyer's market, and they have quite a few to pick and choose from. I expected a couple of months, but I didn't really expect for it to go on this long.'"

The Washington Post. "The president of the National Association of Realtors, Thomas Stevens of Vienna, admits he didn't follow his agents' advice when the real estate market started to cool. That, he says, is why his old house in Great Falls has now been on the market for a year at the price of $1.45 million."

"'What I should have done,' confessed (Stevens), 'was listened to my agent and cut the price by $50,000 to $100,000 early on, and the property would have sold last October.'"

"Now Stevens, like so many other home sellers in the Washington area and around the nation, is waiting for a buyer in a market that has totally reversed course since a year ago. With two or three times the number of properties listed this year as last in some neighborhoods, agents are urging sellers to lower their expectations, put on their best face and offer incentives such as closing cost help."

"But, he noted, in his defense: 'Who knew last September how long this down trend was going to continue,' after so many years of climbing upward?"