Housing Market Slows as Buyers Get Picky

Before the economic recession, people simply tried to buy a house. Then they got squeamish just about shopping. Now they are on a quest for perfection at the perfect price.
Discerning home buyers are upending the battered real estate market, agents and other experts say, leading to last-minute demands for more concessions, bruised feelings on all sides and many more deals have collapsed as usual.
It is a reversal of the roles of the boom, when competing buyers sometimes writing heartfelt letters were indicating how much they like the house and they promised to worship the memory forever reduced to its former owners. These days it is the buyers who are cold, looking for the absolute best deal, while the sellers left in emotional turmoil.
All expected to suffer hangover after the housing market at least temporarily, the government $8,000 tax credit expired, but is not necessarily so much. Preliminary data from around the country shows that the property market began to swoon last month immediately after the credit was no longer available. In some places, sales fell more than 20% from May 2009, when the worst of the financial crisis had subsided.
Builders were also affected. The construction of new houses may decreased by 17.2% from April, the Commerce Department said Wednesday, much lower than predicted. Permits for future construction fell by 10%, to a cruel summer.
Even the lowest home mortgage rates in decades, do not invite too busy. The Mortgage Bankers Association on Wednesday that the applications were for loans to buy houses by a third over last year. Applications should be back to the level of the mid-1990s, when the land of the real estate market was smaller.
Against such a background of misery, which gives the buyer – and are fully exploit.