The Philly Burbs reports from Pennsylvania. "Area home prices dropped in September on a year-to-year basis, only the second time this year that has happened and just the latest sign of a cooling housing market. 'Until the sellers who don't understand it's a longer market are off the market, they'll keep dropping their prices,' says Jeri Gutner, a Realtor in Doylestown."

"The amount of time it took to sell a house skyrocketed 168 percent to 51 days from 19 days a year ago. The number of home sales fell 24 percent from 564 last September to 428 this year. And the local inventory of unsold homes was up 46 percent, to 3,848."

"'If you don't prepare sellers for how long their house is going to be on the market, you're doing an injustice,' Gutner says."

"Most real-estate professionals see the current slowdown as a 'correction' of an overheated market. 'You're not doing business on the hood of a car anymore,' says Jeri's partner, Henri Gutner, comparing today's market to last year's superheated market, where houses were selling as quickly as they'd be listed."

The Portland Press Herald from Maine. "Last December, developers of a proposed Westin hotel/condominium complex in downtown Portland were confidently predicting that they'd quickly get deposits on the project's 97 luxury units and break ground during the summer. By March, they now acknowledge, only a dozen hopeful buyers had put down money."

"'The timing was off,' said Tom Niles, executive VP for development at The Procaccianti Group. 'I think people were starting to pull back and wait on the sidelines.'"

"Timing. The widely repeated mantra in real estate is location. But market timing can be just as crucial, although not as easy to recognize. That's especially true for the handful of major, mixed-use condominium development plans that have attracted so much publicity in Maine's largest city. To date, none has been built."

The New Jersey Biz. "Will Kara Homes’ Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing create a domino effect in the homebuilding industry? Kara hurt itself by building too much too soon, says Gary Griffin, CEO of a turnaround and business consulting firm. 'It was actually their aggressiveness, not the housing market so much,' says Griffin. 'They built a whole lot of houses on spec [before a buyer orders it], assuming the market was going to be there.'"

"Kara fueled its growth by borrowing heavily to build properties that then proved hard to sell. 'It seems like the cause of this filing was a buildup of inventory caused partially by the slowdown in the housing market,' Albert Savastano said in a research report."

"Savastano says aggressive homebuilders like Kara will continue to be at risk. 'We do not believe Kara Homes will the be the last home building credit that will potentially go bad in New Jersey or in other parts of the nation,' he says."

"'There will be casualties in the market,' concurs John Caulfield, senior editor at Builder Magazine. 'The companies which were highflying, depending on a lot of debt, relying on the industry to have the same level of demand as it’s had for the last five years—those are the companies which are going to be in trouble.'"

"For Kara, says turnaround consultant Griffin, 'there’s nothing to do now except liquidate. Can they turn around? No, I doubt it. There’s too much inventory.'"

From Newsday in New York. "The number of bankruptcy filings are starting to creep up again as people in dire financial straits are forced to navigate through the complex new system. In this area, 4,326 people filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in the first nine months of 2006 in New York's Eastern District, which covers Long Island, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island."

"More people are heading to bankruptcy court these days. More than 600 people filed in September, three times the number in January. The crowds at the courthouse are likely to grow in coming months, in part because of higher interest rates and flattening housing prices. These combine to make it harder to refinance and pull money out of the house to pay off debts."

"Also, people who had adjustable-rate mortgages are finding they can no longer meet the monthly payments on their homes under the new terms."

"'I'm getting calls from mortgage brokers about people not able to refinance, suggesting they explore bankruptcy,' said Stuart Gelberg, a bankruptcy attorney in Garden City."