The Chicago Tribune reports from Illinois. "For Joelle Murphy and Patrick Blackwell, last fall was a blur of open houses. For 21 tedious Sunday afternoons, from August to January, a real estate agent camped out in their living room, trying to sell their house. Early in January, they decided they'd had enough and pulled their Edgewater home off the market--but only for a month. After all, the Super Bowl was coming."

"'We were probably priced too high,' said Murphy, who will have lowered her asking price from $975,000 to $899,000 when her home goes back on the market Tuesday. Last year, before she and her husband listed the home, she said an appraiser pegged it at $1 million."

"'We dropped it to $960,000, then to $929,000,' she said. 'We were trying to respond to the market, but we just kept missing it, we were behind the curve.'"

"'There's an expectation that things are going to pick up after the Super Bowl,' said North Side agent Patrick Martin, who will relist Joe Delfini's Uptown condo after the game."

"Delfini had his two-bedroom, two-bath unit on the market from August through October. He turned down the sole offer he received. He has since lowered his price, and this time, he predicts, the unit will sell. 'What makes me optimistic is that I'm going to bite the bullet on price so that somebody is going to come in and say, 'It can't get much better than this.'"

"Delfini admits he wasn't enthusiastic about his prospects in August. 'I knew in my heart of hearts it wasn't going to move because of the sheer magnitude of the inventory,' he said."

"Delfini said...he suffers from non-seller's remorse. 'Somebody did make an offer, and, in hindsight, I should have taken it,' he said. 'I needed them to come up about $5,000.' He said the carrying costs of the condo would have outweighed the difference."

"'Coulda, shoulda, woulda,' he said. 'But in real estate, you can't have regrets like that.'"

"In Chicago, active listings dwindled throughout the fall, from 48,400 at the end of September to about 39,000 on Jan. 1, according to Chip Wagner, a Naperville appraiser. Wagner also said the declining number of houses available was due more to homes being withdrawn from the market than from sales, and that inventory is beginning to climb again. Between Jan. 1 and Jan. 30, the number of active listings grew by more than 2,900, to nearly 43,000."

"'I fear that if a lot of activity comes [from new listings cascading onto the market], we're going to sink back to where we were,' he said."

"Mary Jo Pritza is carrying two mortgages, one on a home she bought last year, another on an Oak Park townhouse first listed in February 2006. She decided to give it a rest at the end of November, to refinish the home's floors and to see whether buyer attitudes have changed."

"'They're very selective, unrealistically selective,' she said. 'They would say things like, 'This is a great unit but it's two blocks farther than I wanted to be.'"

"In a couple of weeks, it will be for sale again, she said, though she's holding on to her price, which she says is reasonable. 'I don't know where their hesitancy comes from,' she said."

The Toledo Blade from Ohio. "The residential real estate market in northwest Ohio last year can be summed up in three words: houses, houses, houses."

"(Realtor) Jon Modene in Perrysburg, said sellers of modestly priced homes are beginning to experience the same problems seen at the higher end for two years. 'They’re under pressure,' he said."

"Startling evidence of that was revealed by December statistics for the city of Toledo on the median price of homes on which offers had been accepted. It was $69,000, down 33 percent in a year, Mr. Modene said. 'It shows that the lower-priced homes were the only ones selling,' he added."

"Anna Mills, who buys and rehabs homes for rentals in the Toledo area, is amazed by the number of available properties brought to her attention. 'We’re flooded with houses,' she said. The president of the nonprofit Toledo Real Estate Investors Association buys just one house a year."

"Last year, she hooked up two club members seeking to liquidate with California investors, who are attracted by relatively inexpensive housing in Toledo and elsewhere in the Midwest. She said an unusually high number of unsold houses in the region are vacant, either because lenders foreclosed or owners were unable to meet mortgage payments and voluntarily returned the houses to the bank.'"

The Grand Rapids Press from Michigan. "In Michigan, where the foreclosure rate was among the top five in the nation, there was one filing for every 52 households, a 127 percent increase over 2005."

"'It goes from someone losing an inexpensive house to a high-priced house,' said Chet Trybus, sales manager for West Michigan operations at LandAmerica Transnation Title Insurance. 'It's all neighborhoods; East Grand Rapids, Ada, Cascade, you name it.'"

"Widespread layoffs from high-paying, auto-industry jobs is a key problem, but so is a new generation of mortgages that made buying a house easier, until mortgage rates started to rise."

"Typically, a home is a source of security during financial struggles, but (realtor) Susan Kazma-Hilton in Grandville, said people need to know the limits. 'When they first lose their jobs, and they start falling behind, they go out and get an equity line because they figure they will get another job or that this is just short term,' she said. 'But a lot of times it makes it worse because now they're upside down.'"

"Easy credit can take some of the blame, too, said Ellen Coon, a partner with a Detroit-area law firm that represents banks and mortgage companies in foreclosures. 'It used to be hard to get a 30-year mortgage,' she said. 'Now, you can get mortgages after you've filed for bankruptcy.' she said "