From New York Magazine. "It’s been a funny sort of summer in the real-estate world, as the July and August doldrums have felt less like the usual quiet and more like the beginning of something bad."

"Ask broker Lisa Wong, who admits to a little survivor guilt. Though she’s been able to buy and sell properties for a steady trickle of clients—a big difference from the deluge a year or two ago, she does admit—many of her colleagues have found themselves with more time on their hands to agonize over the flattening market. Will it get better? Or worse? 'I’ve heard that it’s dead,' she says."

"Many agents say it’s September that’s make-or-break time for them. 'It’s a litmus test for what the rest of the year will be like,' says Christopher Mathieson, managing partner at JC DeNiro. 'This one’s really important because we want to see if the market’s going to continue to plateau.'"

"A recent Halstead Property report showed that prices dipped 12 percent from June to July this summer; brokers say August was even more sedate. To make deals stick, 'you have to work two or three times harder,' says Wong. 'You’re getting lowball offers and calls you’d never get before. For something worth $1.9 million, you’ll get an offer for $1.6, something crazy.'"

The Times Herald Record from New York. "The bottom hasn't exactly fallen out of the Orange County housing market, but the top appears to be firmly capped. Orange County's median sale price for single-family homes fell to $323,000 in August, down 5 percent from July and 2 percent from August 2005, according to figures released yesterday by the Orange County Association of Realtors."

"The August report provides the latest evidence of an emerging bear market. 'What I think actually needs to happen is for the buyers and sellers to adjust to the market,' said OCAR CEO Ann Garti. 'The buyers have overadjusted. They're reading headlines; and they're probably lowballing. And sellers have not adjusted to the market yet. They think the name of the game is still 'higher and higher,' which it is not.''

The Wall Street Journal. "My younger sister Melissa and her husband Joe want a three-bedroom, single-family home near us in Monmouth County, N.J. What we saw was bleak news for sellers in our region, but good news for buyers: block after block of open-house signs."

"In fact, we were hard-pressed to find a street that didn't have at least one home for sale, and many had more than one. What's more, most of the 20 or so homes we visited were vacant, a sign that homeowners have moved on and are motivated to sell, or that speculators are looking to unload properties before prices go any lower. Asked why one home was vacant, one agent said frankly: 'This was a 'flip' that flopped.'"

"Though some of the agents we encountered continued to promote their 'charming' homes as 'a steal,' a surprising number were more candid. 'The owner way overpriced this home,' said one. 'I bet if you offered $30,000 less they'd jump at it.'"

"Another sign of a turning market: We saw very similar houses with prices all over the map, ranging from the low $200,000s to $270,000. That's evidence that sellers aren't sure what houses are worth these days."

"'They look at home-price comparisons from a year ago when there was far more demand than supply,' says Pat Lashinsky, VP of ZipRealty. Now that there's excess supply, he says, sellers need to be more willing to negotiate.'"

"One agent on our tour encouraged Melissa to look at homes 'in the $270s or $280s,' well out of her price range, and make lowball offers. We encountered a husband and wife going the 'for sale by owner' route, with an asking price of $315,000. While his wife pointed out the home's features to my sister, the husband gave me a wink and whispered, 'Don't let that $315 scare you, we're extremely negotiable.'"

"To get an expert's take, I asked Robert Shiller, a Yale economics professor, for his insight on where the East Coast real-estate market may be headed. 'We don't know exactly what's going to happen because we've just experienced the biggest housing boom this country has ever seen,' he says. In addition to homeowners struggling to sell existing homes, construction is at near-record levels: The last time this much inventory entered the market was 1950, when builders were building suburban homes for soldiers returning from war, he says."

"Prof. Shiller suggests that the Japanese housing bust may provide a precedent. Home prices there remained depressed for a decade before the market recovered. He says: 'The real question is, 'Is this the beginning of a major period of decline as we saw in Japan, or will we see a kind of sharp and sudden correction?'"

"Despite evidence of a cooling real-estate market, Melissa and Joe decided they weren't quite ready to wade back in: They'll take the market's temperature again in the spring."