What do you see in your housing market this weekend? Falling prices? "Ann Smith in Danbury (Connecticut), said sales have been falling since last fall. Home prices have dropped about 10 percent in the region since last fall, she said. Robert Budnik, with Century 21 in Bethel, said houses in the Danbury area typically stay on the market two to three times longer than in the boom time of two or three years ago."

"'If sellers think they have the upper hand, they don't,' he said."

"The median sale price in Fairfield County dropped from $494,700 during the last three months of 2005 to $461,700 for the last three months of 2006."

"JoAnne DiCarlo, like many real estate agents, said some sellers haven't come to grips with the fact that it is now a buyer's market. 'They are still under the impression they can put it at a higher price of a year ago,' she said."

Or polling results? "This week, we asked in our weekly poll: Should the government intervene to prevent a predicted wave of mortgage defaults? A majority of respondents, 60 percent, said no, because the deals are private contracts and borrowers need to be accountable."

"Several respondents left comments on the matter. Here are some of those comments: 'If they bail out the mortgage holders, how about bailing us all out on our bad investment decisions?' 'The lenders KNEW they were lending to Sub-Prime customers. They made their own bed. Let them lie in it.'"

Failed developments? "The West Side Flats condo project was supposed to showcase a new era of riverfront development. For now, though, developers have halted the project and are returning down payments, all seven of them."

"It's no secret that the condo market is soft, and real estate experts say it is especially difficult to sell buyers on a speculative idea such as the West Side Flats when so many completed condos are flooding the market."

"'I think the biggest problem is the condo market is oversold,' said Ralph Peterson of Coldwell Banker Burnet. 'They way overbuilt, way too fast.'"

"Peterson added that another barrier to sales is price."

An insiders opinion? "The sharp decline of the subprime housing market offering high-cost mortgages hasn't yet hit bottom, the head of home mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said yesterday."

"'I don't think it's troughed yet, because of the class of 2006,' CEO Richard F. Syron said. 'The mortgages written in 2006 in the subprime market are probably the most troublesome. They haven't hit the reset point yet on interest rates.'"

"'To some extent, people in the past thought, 'Well, I'll be bailed out by the rise in housing prices, no matter what happens,' Syron said."

International headlines? "In the heyday of Spain's real estate boom a few years ago, homes were going up so fast brick-makers literally could not bake the things fast enough, and had to import."

"But this week stocks in Spanish construction companies, banks and other firms heavily exposed to the property market plunged, the most vivid evidence yet of a widely expected slowdown. The big question now is whether the meltdown signaled a bubble bursting or a jet coming in for a soft landing."

"'Spanish housing is about to implode,' economist Charles Dumas wrote this week."

"'Spain saw Goldilocks at her most beneficent,' Dumas wrote. 'Sadly it will now see the bears.'"