The Boston Herald reports fron Massachusetts. "Just trying to sell a deluxe downtown condo is no picnic in this market. Yet a few developers in Dorchester and Roxbury are finding buyers willing to shell out big numbers as if it were the summer of 2005 all over again. But hold the champagne."

"Many of those buyers are facing foreclosure after signing up to buy not one, but two, three or four units for numbers well higher than $1 million. Sometimes the foreclosure notices are arriving before anyone has even moved in."

"These developers appear to have recruited their own pool of live bodies ready to sign off on whatever mortgage paperwork they are shown. The developer walks away with a big sale. A profusion of easy, 'stated-income' loans makes it all possible."

"'When you couldn’t put together a legitimate deal (anymore), you had to sell scams,' Dorchester housing researcher John Anderson said of real estate downturn. Anderson has identified three or four groups of speculators who are scoring big at a time when most are not even scoring at all."

"These real estate wheeler-dealers have bought and quickly flipped at least 150 to 200 units. The prices are often more than $300,000, or even $400,000, not bad for tough neighborhoods in a down market. As many as 30 units are now mired in foreclosure proceedings, often just a few months after the sale. It’s about as fast as a mortgage can go into default."

"This suspicious sales boomlet is producing what should be a statistical impossibility, two and often three condos in a triple-decker all facing foreclosure at the same time. Examples can be found on Park, Dix, Armedine, Draper and Bowdoin streets."

The Champion from Massachusetts. "It's a buyers market out there, plain and simple. Though there are plenty of homes for sale, they are not selling for nearly so much. 'Sellers can't shoot for the moon anymore,' said agent Nick Storrs."

"Storrs has been in the real estate business for nearly 20 years. 'For the most part,' he says, 'The numbers in 2006 are significantly lower than they were in 2005. Houses today are going to be worth less than the day they were bought. If someone wants to sell their home now, that statistic is a bad thing.'"

"Charles Caron has seen a similar pattern, said people were buying high in 2005, resulting in a drop in real estate value today, a good thing for current buyers. He said many homes have fallen below $200,000."

"Sellers, Storrs says, need to continue to be brutally aggressive on their prices. 'It's just a fact of life,' he said. 'You hear a lot 'it's not fair, my house is worth more' and I say, yeah, that's true, but not in today's market.'"

The Boston Globe. "Boston homeowners, reacting to a fifth year of property tax hikes, have inundated the city with requests for relief. Current assessments are based on property values as of Jan. 1, 2006, before last year's downturn was in full swing."

"'People were surprised to see the value they're being given by their assessors when they've been reading, or found out first hand, that their home would not sell for that,' said Barbara Anderson, executive director of Citizens for Limited Taxation."

The New Hampshire Business Review. "Last year, real estate agencies across the state and Grafton County experienced an overall downturn in sales. Littleton area Realtors felt the slump too."

"'There’s no denying that it was a relatively difficult year in terms of sales,' said Bonnie Guevin, New Hampshire Association of Realtors president."

"(Realtor) Andy Smith said 2005 and 2006 were completely different in terms of sales, though he was quick to point out that expensive housing markets in Lebanon and Hanover often heavily skew countywide data. Smith said however, local towns did experience a similar slumping phenomenon in comparison to the rest of the county."

"(Broker) Dick Reinhold said much of the change was due to a lack of real estate investors in the area. 'Investors are fleeing the real estate market,' Reinhold said."

"While some areas, like Littleton, are generally not affected by investors just looking to turn a profit, towns like Franconia, Sugar Hill and Bretton Woods typically see investment-related sales. Bethlehem, Franconia and Whitefield all experienced significant drops in price, for overall percentage changes ranging from a 12 to 17 percent decline in pricing."

The Herald Community from New York. "Real estate agents say there are no statistics on people who are returning and buying homes, and that while some do come back, many more young people are moving out of the county. Pearl Kamer, an economist with the Long Island Association, said that from 2000 and 2005, 65,000 people between ages 25 and 44 left Nassau and Suffolk counties, according to the survey, which is coordinated by the U.S. Census Bureau."

"It is no secret that Nassau County is losing young people. 'Young people can't afford the high taxes or housing,' Kamer said. 'They can get better salaries elsewhere.'"

"Realtors say that for younger people looking to buy in Baldwin or nearby towns, the current housing market is actually in their favor. There are currently 260 homes on the market in Baldwin, (Broker) Erik Mahler said, compared with 193 in Oceanside."

"Housing prices are dropping as well. According to Prudential Douglas Elliman, the average price of a home in Nassau County was $586,401 in the fourth quarter of 2006, down 5.6 percent from the previous year's average of $621,445."

"Mahler and others said that potential home buyers have become savvy, and are ignoring homes that are overpriced. Unlike 2003, when demand was at its highest, real estate agents say that overpriced homes are languishing on the market."

"'Buyers became smarter,' (realtor) Sandy Boci said. 'A lot of homes are overpriced right now, because the sellers think they are going to get 2005 prices, but it's not going to happen. It was just overblown.'"