What do you see in your housing market this weekend? Lower prices? "A slowing housing market has led the Blaine County Assessor's Office to reduce 2007 property valuations in several areas, County Assessor Valdi Pace told the Blaine County Commission Tuesday. County appraiser Mickey Dalin told the commission that without exception he is seeing softening property values in the south-county town."

"'I have no areas that are increasing,' he said. 'The lots in Bellevue are going down dramatically.'"

"Taney County has not escaped the nationwide downturn in the housing industry. The number of homes that were repossessed or subject to bankruptcy increased from 58 in 2006 to 124 in 2007, Taney County Assessor James Strahan said."

"'We have argued with the (state tax commission) that everything is not as rosy as everyone has presumed,' Strahan said. 'The entire state is a black rose - Taney County is a bright red rose in the housing industry. This is not so, and it can be proven through statistics in that (report).'"

Owner stress? "When L. J. Jensen purchased a home in Port Aransas five years ago, he wanted a place that would be his island retreat. But after seeing its new appraised value last week, he has put his retreat home up for sale."

"'I protested last year and settled on an appraisal of $171,706, although I believe even that value was inflated,' Jensen said. 'Now the property is appraised at $341,190, a doubling of value. This appraisal has priced me out of my island home.'"

Or foreclosures? "Cleveland's Regional Economic Development Director Chris Warren says lenders are selling off their worst properties to wholesalers. The wholesalers then resell the houses any way they can."

"Realtor Gary Kotlarsic lives in Cleveland's Slavic Village neighborhood, an area with one of the highest foreclosure rates in the country. He says houses next door are going for virtually nothing, so he and his neighbors can't get anything close to what they originally paid for their own houses."

"James Odell Barnes says he's helping investors buy 100 bank-owned properties a week in Cleveland and Detroit. 'There's either gotta be people like us, me and my investors, or you're going to have to have a whole lot more bulldozers bulldozing these houses' he said."

Builder problems? "Only 272 lots were proposed during the first quarter this year, compared with 2,147 proposed during the same period of 2007, according to the Greenville County Planning Commission."

"'We've had national builders stop developing in Greenville. They had a lot of subdivisions that were in the development stage. They put them (lots) on the market to let local developers buy them up,' said John Owings, the county's manager of current planning."

"At one point there were at least 10 national homebuilders developing in the Greenville area. Five either left or announced they were leaving in 2007, Owings said, but most didn't cease operations until the fourth quarter. They left about 20 subdivisions in various stages of development."

"So far this year, 60 properties are in foreclosure in Grand County, surpassing the number for all of 2007. Grand County has been a place primed for speculative building."

"'If it's a builder, a lot of builders are walking away,' said Judith Graham of Graham Mortgage in Winter Park."

"Poor planning and money managing, for example, may lead to unfinished projects. 'I know a number of cases like that in Grand County,' she said."

"Or, there may have been an inflated value when the speculative builder acquired a loan. 'I've seen that happen, too,' she said."

Questionable statistics? "One sign of the Valley's troubled housing market is the growing incidence of lenders assuming ownership of homes. Ironically, the increasing number of those transactions has led to a false perception that the real-estate market may be showing signs of recovery."

"The confusion stems from a report on April home sales by Jay Butler, director of real-estate studies at Arizona State University."

"Butler's report does not differentiate between 'trustee sales,' in which banks take over properties from borrowers in default, and routine home resales. More than one-third of the sales reported by Butler for April, or 2,025 of the 5,585 total, were trustee sales."

"When real-estate consultant Scott Smith saw Butler's latest report, Smith said he knew something was wrong with the numbers. Smith, who owns a real-estate services firm and tracks area home sales 'on a daily basis,' said Butler's April sales figures were simply too high."

"'After checking the data several times . . . there is no doubt that Mr. Butler made a big mistake,' Smith said."

"Butler said he agrees that trustee sales should not be lumped in with routine resales and would be reported separately from now on. Until recently, Butler said, trustee sales represented a very small portion of overall sales activity and often involved an actual sale, such as at a foreclosure auction, which is why he has always included them."

"The market has changed so rapidly, he said, that the methodology he once relied on for accurate sales data suddenly has become obsolete."