The Providence Journal reports from Rhode Island. "The Villages on Mount Hope Bay is a 55-plus residential development nestled along a stretch of waterfront. The project, which is more than halfway completed, will include a total of 290 condominiums."

"The decision to auction the 33 lowest-priced condominiums was inspired by lagging sales of the units, said Robert Cole, managing director of Velocity Marketing of Boston, which represents the owner. The minimum bid prices for the units being auctioned ranged from $240,000 to $380,000, prices that, if not bid up, were not even enough to cover the developer’s costs, Cole had said."

"About 85 bidders registered for yesterday’s auction but were stopped short when, around noon, bidding was halted after the sale of only 17 units...with 16 units unsold. The smallest unit, a one-bedroom, went for $342,000. The original asking price on the unit was $460,000. The largest unit, a two-bedroom condo, went for $510,000; the original price was $690,000."

"As the auction wore on, the prices continued to decline, said Robert Gaudreau, of Cranston, who was sitting in the audience tracking every sale. Gaudreau, a developer, wasn’t at the auction to bid, but rather to gauge how the market responded to the condos."

"'[The Villages’ developers] were following the trend, too, and it was going down, down, down,' Gaudreau said. 'They started at about $300 per square foot, and the last sale was around $265 per square foot.'"

"Condo sales in Rhode Island have substantially declined this year, dipping by 22.6 percent in the second quarter and 13.4 percent in the third, compared with the same periods in 2005. At the same time, inventory has increased by 76 percent, according to the Rhode Island Association of Realtors."

"Gail Whitfield and her husband, Jeff, bought the 1,492-square-foot, two-bedroom unit they’d come to the auction to snag. The stressful sale was more than worth it, said Jeff Whitfield, though they’ll probablybe paying for their extravagancy for years to come."

"'We finally have a retirement home we can come to on the weekends,' he said with a smile. 'But we might not be able to afford furniture for a couple of years.'"

The Boston Globe. "After they returned to Long Island from their Cape Cod vacation this summer, Julius and Jody Rao just couldn't get back into a groove. The Raos decided to buy on the Cape. Even with retirement a few years off, the couple decided to look now, to see if the soft Massachusetts real estate market offered any bargains."

"But a funny thing happened on the way to the fire sale: 'We found prices were a little high,' Jody Rao said. So they'll wait."

"As will James and Rose Mulligan , who are at the other end of the sales spectrum. The Mulligans have listed the house they built for $980,000. The house has been on the market since June, and if it doesn't sell for the price the Mulligans want, no big deal."

"'The market is quiet. We understand it's quiet. So we'll patiently wait,' said James Mulligan, who lives in Lady Lake, Fla."

"Welcome to the vacation market on Cape Cod, where the vexing standoff between sellers and buyers that is bedeviling the broader real estate arena is especially pronounced."

"Single-family home sales through October were down 22 percent from a year earlier, compared to a statewide decline of 15 percent, according to Warren Group,. There are also 51 percent more homes available for sale now than a year ago this time."

"And Barnstable County had the steepest increase in the number of foreclosures, 84 percent, among Massachusetts counties for the 12 months ended Sept. 30."

"Real estate brokers said some sellers are reluctant to acknowledge that their homes, the setting for countless cherished memories, may not fetch the price they expect. 'If your neighbor sold his house 18 to 24 months ago for a fair bit more than you're going to get, that's really, really hard to accept,' Robert Wilkinson said."

"As sanguine as they might be, sellers of some long-idle Cape homes may one day be forced to adjust expectations to market realities. For example, sellers of a post-and-beam home on 1 1/3 acres in Yarmouth Port relisted the house in October for $829,000 after first putting it on the market in July 2005 for $50,000 more."

"And for three years, the owner of a 3-acre spread overlooking Nantucket Sound in Harwich Port stuck to a $4.3 million asking price, until dropping it to $3.75 million during the summer."

"'Buyers right now are cautious because of what they're seeing on TV and reading,' said Steve Perry, the Osterville buyer broker. 'They think that the theoretical bottom hasn't hit yet.'"