Some housing reports from the Washington Post. "On Onion Patch Drive in Burke, neighbors are keeping an eye on each other. It's not just because they're neighborly. It's also because, at a time when more and more for-sale signs are appearing on lawns around the region, what one family does to sell its house can have a big impact on the finances of the rest."

"Seema Owais and her husband put their detached Colonial on the market several months ago for $619,000, about $100,000 less than others in the neighborhood got when they sold their houses last year. And now she worries that some of her neighbors are depressing real estate values even more."

"'They get scared and start reducing and reducing,' she said. 'For us, it's disheartening, but you can't do anything about it.'"

"Stephen Myers is planning his retirement and wants to sell. He and his wife have owned their house for almost two decades. He dropped the asking price for his house from $717,900 to $649,000 after the house across the street sold in June for $602,000. That owner was transferred, needed to leave town and accepted a low-ball offer."

"'I didn't like it,' Myers said, but he understood. 'If I were in his shoes, I'd have done it, too. Did the people up the street like it? No. But we understood it.'"

"A couple of years ago, soaring real estate values kept the chatter at cocktail parties champagne-bubble bright. Now, when neighbors gather together, the talk is still real estate, but the tone can be somber. Instead of how high did it fly, they ask how low did it go. That's because the competition to sell a house now can be cutthroat: In August, there were 40,870 houses on the market in the Washington area, up from 18,368 in August 2005."

"And many have noticed that the house with the lowest price often moves first."

"'When there are for-sale signs all around you, you sort of watch and wonder, 'What price is it?,' 'Did they finish their basement?' and then, 'Oh, they dropped their price again,' Jenny Kelly said. On a recent warm afternoon, Kelly told the others she had heard that the house down the street sold in the mid-$600,000s, a far cry from the mid-$700,000s of the past."

"'That's not good,' Nicola Bullis said, shaking her head. 'I heard they had an odd decor,' Alyssa Hoard-Stewart said, adding that the owner of another nearby house for sale is adding a deck to attract potential buyers."

"A similar conversation takes place frequently amid the big single-family houses on Tate Court in Oakton. Raghu Reddy combs Internet listings and online property transactions to keep abreast of prices. He thinks prices have fallen 10 to 15 percent in the past year, a decline of at least $100,000 on houses that cost $1 million."

"Mack Dennis has plenty of negotiating room because he bought the unit during the last slump. Now the deciding factor can be the level of desperation, or the relative financial ease, of the seller. People who need to sell fast are the quickest to drop their prices. And people who bought long before the soaring prices of the past five years have a financial advantage."

"Just a few doors away, John Palm has put his townhouse up for sale. He and his wife have moved to Leesburg, so he is eager to get out from under one of the mortgages. He bought when prices were low, in 1992, so he has been able to lower the price'."

"'The bottom line is, they're in a different situation than us,' Mark Bolt said. 'If we keep dropping our prices, we can't afford the place we want in Leesburg.'"

"How long will it take to sell your house these days? Longer than you might think, say real estate agents and some frustrated sellers. 'I don't know how long it should take now, but we're still here,' Charlene Hout said. She put her Georgetown townhouse on the market in March for $1.95 million as a 'for sale by owner' listing. In July, she hired veteran Georgetown agent Nancy Taylor Bubes. They recently dropped the asking price to $1.79 million."

"With two to three times the inventory to choose from around the Washington area this year compared with a year ago, buyers are just not willing to jump anymore, agents said. They have to be convinced that they're not paying above market, and they also are 'demanding more' in the terms of the contract, said Holly Worthington, president of the Greater Capital Area Association of Realtors."

"Terry Belt, a Vienna agent, said, 'People look at what their neighbor's house did last year, and want that price or more. But in this market you can't compare to last year. You can't even do comparable sales from three to six months ago.'"

"A 'good strategy,' he said, is to look at similar homes that are on the market now and 'to price your house at or about 3 percent below them.'"