The Post & Courier reports from South Carolina. "Prospective home buyers awaiting a sign that prices are on the way down in Charleston could be in luck. Local home prices took their biggest monthly slide in recent memory in November, suggesting that more sellers are willing to offer discounts to close deals amid a sluggish market."

"Sales volume also fell last month, dropping nearly 19 percent compared to November 2006, according to figures from the Charleston Trident Association of Realtors. The decline extended a downturn that started in Charleston nearly two years ago."

"'Reality is setting in that prices were somewhat inflated in some areas,' said Bruce Mullen, an agent with Prudential Carolina Real Estate."

"He said in many cases sellers have been basing their asking prices on values established while the market was still climbing. 'People were riding on the wave of the boom from a few years ago,' Mullen said."

"In Mount Pleasant, the median price for November fell by 35 percent. And in other areas, like the outskirts of West Ashley and Summerville, nearby new construction has pushed resale values down."

"In North Charleston, Jamie Herman and her husband have decided to reduce the asking price of their three-bedroom home in Wescott Plantation by more than $20,000 to $224,500."

"'It's frustrating because there are so many new houses going up, and they're practically being given away,' said Herman, whose husband is being transferred."

"'Timing the market is difficult,' said David Kent, president of the Charleston Trident Association of Realtors. 'No one knows when the top is. No one knows when the bottom is. So now's as good a time as any.'"

The News & Observer from North Carolina. "With the once-booming Triangle housing market cooling off, home owners and builders are resorting to new tricks to survive the slump. They're offering extras from cars to video games. They're swapping homes with frustrated sellers in other markets. They're doing more lease-to-own deals."

"'These things really went away for the whole five years of the housing boom,' said National Association of Realtors spokesman Walter Molony. 'But people have always used creative approaches to draw attention to their houses in softer markets.'"

"Last month, builder David Dail said whoever bought a $395,000 home in The Preserve at Longbranch Farms in East Raleigh by Monday could choose a new Ford Fusion or a $19,000 discount. As of Monday afternoon, there were no takers."

"Jetta and John Mohan tried unsuccessfully for five months to sell their house outside Fuquay-Varina. Soon after they changed to a lease-purchase option, they found a buyer. They required a $10,000 deposit and $200 of the rent goes toward the purchase of the $195,000 house a year from now."

"'We'd rather have sold it but...we couldn't afford to have it sit empty,' said Jetta Mohan, who moved with her husband to Wilmington last year. 'With the slowdown, there are houses for sale everywhere.'"

"After six months, Eric Rothman hadn't had any luck selling his North Raleigh home despite cutting the price and offering to throw in a new privacy fence. Two weeks ago, the Raleigh personal trainer upped the ante: He promised a Nintendo Wii to any broker who finds a buyer."

"'In this market you've got to try and make your house stand out from everybody else,' said Rothman, who had bought the hard-to-find videogame to play with his 6-year-old son."

"According to the Triangle MLS, the October inventory of 13,534 unsold homes was 23.4 percent higher than a year ago. That helps explain why Rothman offered a videogame to help sell his house."

"Two weeks after offering the Nintendo Wii, Rothman still hasn't found a buyer for his house. Not so the Wii. An acquaintance offered double the $249 retail price, and Rothman sold the game over the weekend."

"'I got an offer I couldn't turn down,' Rothman said."

The Charlotte Observer from North Carolina. "Starter homes went up at a dizzying pace in the last decade, particularly across northern Charlotte. Land was available and demand was high, as newcomers poured into the city and investors bought homes to rent. Relaxed lending standards also created a new pool of buyers with moderate incomes and shaky credit histories."

"Planners approved subdivision after subdivision of starter homes, from Catawba River Plantation in the west to Stewarts Crossing in the east. The houses are close together and look similar, with vinyl siding in neutral colors."

"The best of them show subtle signs: Vacant houses. Overgrown weeds. Trash piled at the curb."

"The worst of them already resemble decaying urban neighborhoods that keep police and housing inspectors busy -- and cost Charlotte millions to repair."

"Windy Ridge is 5 years old, but already 81 of its 132 homes have lapsed into foreclosure. Dozens stand boarded up or vacant, with windows smashed and doors kicked in. Vandals have ripped copper wire from walls. Vagrants and drug users frequent the empty houses, next door to families who thought they'd invested wisely in their northwest Charlotte suburb."

"In east Charlotte, Laurie Talbot was recently awakened by gunfire in her 7-year-old subdivision. 'I thought I'd bought a home in Pleasantville,' says Talbot, who moved from New York last year. 'I never imagined in my wildest dreams that stuff like this would happen.'"

"She can't get out, she says. 'With all the foreclosures...there's no way I could sell my house for what I have in it.'"

"Overall, the Observer found more than 50 neighborhoods with elevated foreclosure rates of 15 percent to 61 percent. Virtually all of them are new starter-home subdivisions."

"In Sinclair Place, Thomas Bautista says he's repeatedly called for code enforcement in his northern Charlotte subdivision. The house next door is dark and vacant, in foreclosure and scheduled for sale Tuesday."

"Still, thieves broke in twice next door. Over the summer, Bautista finally paid a yard man $110 to cut the four-foot-tall grass because he kept seeing snakes, near where his children play."

"He tried to sell in 2005 but learned from Realtors that his $112,000 home would command only $97,000. 'This house has been a real pain,' says Bautista, a Huntersville police officer who parks his patrol car on the street when he's off duty."

The Roanoke Times from Virginia. "At Old Virginia Brick's plants in Salem and Madison Heights and at the General Shale Brick plant near Coyner Springs, managers and employees have been gut kicked by the effects of the nationwide slump in the construction of new single-family homes."

"After the real estate bubble burst, the trickle-down began affecting local folks with calloused hands and the regional employers who sign their paychecks. Production lines have shut down, work hours have been cut and layoffs announced."

"Gary Saunders is president of Timber Truss, a homegrown company that won a small business award this year from the Roanoke Regional Chamber of Commerce. In late November, Saunders said his company's sales started falling about a year ago, following years of exceptionally good market conditions."

"'It was like a light switch went off,' he said. 'It just never came back.'"

"Corky Clifton is sales manager for General Shale's brick plant in Botetourt County. Clifton said the plant's sales have been off 'in the neighborhood of 25 [percent] to 30 percent.'"

"As a result, General Shale, headquartered in Tennessee, has closed one of two production lines at its plant on Webster Road and laid off about 30 to 35 workers. 'We ship all over the Southeast and East Coast. We are feeling it in all of our markets,' Clifton said."

"Product demand in Northern Virginia has been especially slack, he said. 'That market has probably hurt us more than any.'"

"Saunders said he is afraid relentlessly negative and 'over-reported' coverage about the subprime debacle and other housing-related crises is scaring people. The fear blinds them, he said, to the opportunities created by the crisis."

"'Right now is probably the best time to build a house,' Saunders said. Sought-after contractors who were once hard to hire are more readily available, he said. In the absence of demand, Saunders added, the costs of many building materials have dropped, as have rates for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages."

The Baltimore Sun from Maryland. "Home sales in metropolitan Baltimore tumbled again in November, the third consecutive month that sales have dropped about 30 percent. Prices also fell slightly."

"The string of declines - volume fell 31.74 percent in October and 29.72 percent in September - is the most severe recorded by Metropolitan Regional Information Systems, which began tracking sales through the multiple-listing service in 1999. The region's biggest decline was in Anne Arundel County, where sales skidded nearly 42 percent."

"Home prices were down in four of the six jurisdictions, the most in Carroll - nearly 7 percent - and Howard, down 6.3 percent. Average home prices rose 3.6 percent in Anne Arundel and 6.47 percent in Baltimore County."

"'By and large, we remain very much in the midst of our local housing downturn,' said Anirban Basu,CEO of Sage Policy Group, of Baltimore."

"'Right now, many buyers remain disengaged from the market, with some simply nervous about the value of their existing property and not looking to acquire more. Buyers have felt asking prices are too high...and have felt prices are set to fall. And sellers have not recognized much of that in their asking prices until recently,' Basu said."

"'There are some buyers - not as many as there were two years ago. But for the most part, people have just stepped back and are waiting - it's unclear what they're waiting for,' said Jane Rowley, a real estate agent in Federal Hill. 'There's that expectation that [prices] are going to go down, or have gone down, and that sellers will accept very low bids. That's not actually what's happening.'"

"There were 19,502 active listings last month...nearly double that of two years ago. The MRIS statistics pointed to signs that sellers are softening their prices. The average listing price of homes that sold in Carroll, Harford and Howard counties was lower than a year earlier."

"And sellers overall accepted 91.75 percent of their asking price on average, down from not quite 94 percent the year before."

"Moin Hussaini, who recently got married and moved to Los Angeles, has had no offers on his three-bedroom townhouse in Baltimore Butcher's Hill, which was put up for sale in August. He's hoping a $10,000 price reduction, to $345,000, will prod an offer."

"'I actually think it's a fairly decent time to buy,' he said. But 'people are just not looking at it, which is frustrating. But I'm fully prepared to rent it out if I need to.'"