Sag Harbor

After a great 5 year ride housing prices start to slow. With the economy finally leveling off after the stock market crash and re-boom the urgency to get into a house has finally subsided. According to Cnn.com housing prices have finally stopped rising. Some areas like Sacramento, CA have seen the worst of it with a 57% plunge of new home sales. California also slates that it takes now over 6 months to sell a house where as a year ago it took 1/2 that ammount of time. With the market finally slowing and the soaring prices of houses subsiding buyers have time to pick and choose the best deal.

Read More at CNN.Com

The stories keep piling up. In many once-sizzling markets around the country, accounts of dropping list prices have replaced tales of waiting lists for unbuilt condos and bidding wars over humdrum three-bedroom colonials.

The message is clear. Five years of superheated price gains rescued America from stock market collapse, put billions in consumers’ pockets, and ignited a building boom that bolstered the nation’s economy. But it’s over. The great housing bubble has finally started to deflate.

You won’t find that news in broad national statistics or the upbeat comments from the real estate industry. The latest official figures, for example, show both new and existing home sales rising in March, a mixed bag on prices - and a record number of new homes on the market.

But FORTUNE’s on-the-ground reporting - in what up to now have been some of the nation’s hottest areas - paints a very different picture: Contracts are being canceled, deals are drying up, prices are starting to drop. The psychology is shifting even as thousands of new homes and condos join the for-sale listings each day - so the downward pressure will only get worse.