The Record reports from New Jersey. "When the housing market gets tough, sellers offer incentives. In Demarest, builder American Properties of Iselin is offering to park a Maserati (worth about $125,000) in the garage for any buyer who forks over $2.2 million to $3.6 million for a new luxury town house in a 34-unit complex in a French chateau style."

"Offering the car is better than simply cutting the house price by $125,000, said spokeswoman Karen Kessler, because 'our buyers are not looking for a bargain; they're looking for some pizazz and some excitement.'"

"Incentives are popular for a number of reasons. For one thing, they are a bit more dramatic than the standard price cuts, although many sellers who use incentives also have cut prices."

"But incentives can be easier for builders to swallow. 'The fact that they're giving back $10,000, $20,000 or $30,000 in extras somehow seems a little more psychologically palatable than taking down the $500,000 sign and putting up a $470,000 sign,' said Michael Schonberger, an adjunct professor of real estate financing at Rutgers University."

"At the Bellaire project, seven of the 34 town houses have been sold since the sales office opened last spring. Several would-be buyers are being held up because they can't sell their own houses, said Deborah Deck, project director."

"Occasionally an individual seller gets in on the act. In Bergenfield, for example, the seller of a raised ranch recently began offering to pay half the buyer's property taxes for two years. 'If a seller needs to sell, why not offer something to attract a buyer?' asked real estate agent Lourdes Garcia in Englewood, who is listing the house for $429,999, down from the original asking price of $459,900."

"The taxes on the three-bedroom house are high, she said, more than $12,000 a year. So offering tax relief seemed to make sense. But so far there have been no takers."

The Press of Atlantic City. "The region is seeing more sheriff's sales. New Jersey has seen 23,272 foreclosures so far this year, or about 63 percent more than all of last year."

"Cape May County Sheriff John Callinan's office has sold 114 Cape May County properties at auction through November compared with 95 all of last year and 91 in 2004. Ocean County, too, has seen more auctions: 150 so far compared with just 99 in all of 2005."

"The downturn in the real-estate market has scared off most speculative investors at sheriff's sales. 'It went from competitive to cutthroat. Now the market is starting to drop down,' said Ocean County Undersheriff Wayne Rupert. 'Almost all of the properties we've sold have gone back to the bank or lender. The local investors are holding off until values level off.'"

The Hartford Courant. "In Connecticut, business has slowed considerably from the hectic pace of recent years and prices have flattened in many areas. Home construction is slowing. Now, there's a new specter: foreclosure."

"Foreclosures in Connecticut climbed 9.7 percent, to 3,514, between April and June, compared with the same three months in 2005, according to the Warren Group. The dreaded f-word can send a shudder through anyone who lived through the most recent recession in Connecticut. In the early 1990s, foreclosed property selling at a discount helped contribute to plummeting home prices at a time when there was a glut of residential property for sale."

"'People's ability to pay is being stretched,' said Donald Klepper-Smith, an economist in New Haven. 'A lot of people are overextended, and it's very easy to get into a foreclosure situation.'"

"More than any other time, the past five years have seen the proliferation of all kinds of mortgages that permitted borrowers to put little cash down and stretch their budgets to get them into a bigger house than was perhaps wise."

"And with flat prices, it's now tougher to refinance, especially if homeowners have already tapped into equity for improvement projects or college tuition bills."