The Seattle Times reports that Quadrant Homes has stopped building and selling at The Ridge in Gig Harbor.

The 120-lot development off Borgen Boulevard was to hold 1,500-3,100 square-foot homes for $259,000-$342,900, according to the story.

Peter Orser, Quadrant president, told the paper that the decision was "a suspension, not an abandonment" and that the stoppage would be temporary. But he acknowledged that the move was significant and attributed it to the contracting economy.

Have you bought a home in The Ridge? Or had you started the process of buying there? We want to hear from you. E-mail kathleen.cooper@thenewstribune.com with your name and a daytime phone number.

Median home prices in Pierce County dropped again in November, according to figures released Tuesday by the Northwest Multiple Listing Service.

The median price for a single-family home or condo in November was $230,000. That price is about $32,950 below the median for the same time last year - an almost 13 percent drop.

Month-to-month, however, it's a 4.5 percent decline from $241,000 in October.

The median price is the midpoint of all sales. Half of homes went for more and half for less.

Other county data for November from the Northwest MLS:

• Homes listed for sale dropped from 1,505 a year ago to 1,368.

• Closed sales were cut almost in half compared to a year ago, from 784 to 463.

Look for more details on the data in tomorrow's News Tribune.

The upside of all this housing gloom is that homes that previously seemed unreachably expensive are now more reasonably priced - at least for those with cash and good credit.

We're planning a story or stories about the relative bargains that are now available on the market.

Real estate folks, e-mail me, John Gillie, at john.gillie@thenewstribune.com, with your nominations for the best bargain houses or condos available now.

Include your reasons for nominating the home. For example, it's priced substantially below what the neighbors paid for their homes, it's 60 percent of last year's asking price, it comes with a free cruise on the Amazon or the owner is willing to finance with zero down.

We're looking for a variety of properties at several price points and in several areas of the South Sound.

Our selections will be made somewhat arbitrarily with an eye toward providing our readers a broad idea of what's available on the market. If your nomination isn't picked, it's nothing personal. It may be that we just had too many nominations for 4-bedroom homes in Proctor.

A new study by Coldwell Banker Real Estate rates Tacoma's residential real estate prices 129th in the country among 316 cities.

The study is unique in that it ranks cities not by the median prices of homes, but by the price of a typical 2,200-square-foot, 4-bedroom, 2.5-bath home.

The study shows that geographic location places a huge role in what homes cost.

In Tacoma, according to the Coldwell Banker study, such a home would cost $338,750, but in the nation's most expensive market, the San Diego suburb of La Jolla, Calif., the same home would cost $1.84 million.

The same-sized dwelling in the country's least expensive market, Sioux City, Iowa, the cost would be just $133,459.

Most of the cities at the bottom end of the list are in the Midwest or Texas. That typical home in Houston, for instance, would cost $158,625, and maybe less now that Hurricane Ike has raked over the Texas Gulf coast city.

Not all the inexpensive cities are in the corn fields of the Midwest. The Coldwell Banker "average" home in Colorado Springs on the edge of the Rockies would cost $198,500.

If you're looking to move to the sunnier climate of California, beware. Even with recent steep drops in home prices, eight of the most expensive cities in the country are in the Golden State.

Not only does broad geographic location play a big role in home prices, but so does the city's reputation. The Coldwell Banker house that costs $338,750 in Tacoma would cost $814,483 in Bellevue, just 40 miles distant.

Median home prices in Pierce County dropped in August even as the number of homes on the market declined.

Figures released Tuesday by the Northwest Multiple Listing Service showed a 11.9 percent from the same time a year ago.

The median price for a single-family home or condo was $250,975. It’s the 11th drop in the past year. That price is about $4,000 below the median for July. Last August, the median home price was $285,000.

There were 1,871 new listings in August, about 400 fewer than last year’s 2,291. This year has also seen a large drop in closed sales, with 736 in August compared to 1,120 last year. July saw 796 closed sales. Still, Washington has fared better than other regions, especially California and Florida where prices have declined much further.

Pat Maddock, an agent with Coldwell Banker Bain and a former president of the Pierce County Association of Realtors, said he just got back from a three-week vacation, but even on the road, he still thought about the real estate market.

He checked in on different areas across the West Coast, and is convinced that Western Washington is in great shape. Even though the statistics look rough for Pierce County, it is nothing compared to areas such as Phoenix and Las Vegas.

Low prices, lots of homes on the market and low interest rates continue to show that it is a fantastic time to be a buyer. But because of this trend, buyers are “sitting on their hands,” thinking things could get even better and waiting to buy.

“If you are waiting for the market to bottom out, you’re going to miss it,” Maddock said. “You don’t know it’s at its lowest until it climbs upward.”

The most telling statistic to Dick Beeson, NWMLS director and owner of Windermere Commencement Associates, is that there is growing competition – statistics show a 10 percent drop in the number of houses for sale and a 20 percent drop of new listings.

“There is a declining inventory,” he said. “The selection is a little less, and competition is a little bit stronger, because only the strong survive.”

But sellers still have issues to face. Low prices and low rate of closed sales mean it is easy to make the wrong decisions, Maddock said.

“It’s very easy to overprice your home, it’s very tempting to overprice your home, and it’s suicidal to overprice your home,” he said.

I often hear and read about folks trying to find the ever-elusive bottom of today’s real estate market, particularly when it comes to sinking median home prices. Pierce County’s median home price has declined year-over-year 10 of the last 11 months to $255,000 in July, according to the Northwest Multiple Listing Service.

Some see a bottom in a price that’s stayed essentially flat for most of 2008, though dipping a bit recently, from $260,000 in January to last month’s $255,000. My response: Aren’t prices supposed to be rising during the spring and summer, the hottest sales months of the year?

A Keller Williams agent told me last week we’re halfway through an 18-month down market. A Parkside Realty agent told me this week recovery won’t come until 2011. Which seems awfully far off.

Then I saw a Prashant Gopal BusinessWeek blog post about others seeking the bottom. Here's an excerpt:

It’s easy to call a bottom to the housing slump. The tough part is getting the timing right.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has made many such predictions. “All the signs I look at” show “the housing market is at or near the bottom,” Paulson said in April 2007, a few months before the credit crunch hit.

Just last month Barron’s declared that “Real-Estate Rout May Be Short-Lived.” The evidence: home prices were moving closer to incomes in high-priced markets, existing homes sales had improved somewhat and inventories of unsold homes had dipped slightly. The critics responded swiftly: “During the Bull Market of the ’90s, I used to read Barron’s for their hard edged, skeptical look at many of the excesses on Wall Street, wrote Barry Ritholtz, of The Big Picture blog. “During the past 5 years or so, that skepticism seems to be fading… The latest evidence of this is the wrong headed cover story on Housing.”

Now, a Bloomberg article is suggesting that California might be the first state to hit bottom. The article points out that sales are rising across the state for three consecutive months starting in April. And four in 10 sales were sales of foreclosed homes.

What are your thoughts, predictions?

By request, here are the months of supply numbers for several areas around Pierce County. Countywide, the average months of supply – the time it would take to sell everything on the market based on sales activity in the last six month – is 10.8 months, according to Northwest Multiple Listing Service statistics provided by Windermere broker Dick Beeson, who is also an MLS director. A balanced market, according to industry standard, is about six months.

A couple areas get close: Lakewood at 6.9 months and Spanaway, with 7.7 months of supply. And then there’s Gig Harbor, which has more than 18 months of supply. I asked Beeson for his take on Lakewood and Gig Harbor.

Lakewood: “It was well above 12 months supply last year because everyone and their brother was putting their house on the market. That whole market place has adjusted.” Also, Beeson says many homes previously listed for sale have been rented by military families stationed at Fort Lewis.

Gig Harbor: “It’s the wrong price range for today’s market.” The median sale price of a Gig Harbor-area home in the last six months was $360,000 (the county’s was $255,000 in July), with a median asking price of $499,000. “If you’re going to sell a house in the Harbor, you’re going to have to be priced under $400,000.” And while it remains a great place to live, Beeson said gas prices and the bridge toll hamper home sales in an area where most people cross the Narrows for work.

Here’s a look at the months of supply as of today:

Pierce County home sales in July, typically one of the busier months of the year, were down year-over-year in most of the 17 areas tracked by the Northwest Multiple Listing Service. Two were up: DuPont and Browns Point.

Check out the number of houses and condos sold in each of the areas below and by what percentage each increased or decreased compared to the same month in 2007, according to MLS figures released this week. For some context, sales dropped countywide year-over-year from 1,141 sales in July 2007 to 796 sales last month, a decline of 30.2 percent.

A new real estate survey says home sellers remain pretty well satisfied with their agent if their home is sold in five months or less. Which is longer than I would have thought but shorter than the six months it took to sell the average home. Results of the survey, by J.D. Power and Associates, say a seller’s satisfaction averages 794 on a scale of 1,000 among those whose homes sold in five months or fewer. But the number declines to 730 if selling the home takes seven months or more.

Other tidbits of interest, according to the survey:

Prospective buyers, on average, see about 13 homes before buying.

Sellers, on the other hand, said their home was shown about 11 times, on average, with about five open houses conducted. Anyone else surprised by the number of open houses? Seems high, though I know that the down market has agents turning more often to open houses to market their listings now than they did a couple years ago.

Almost half of customers found their agents by talking to family or friends. About 28 percent used the Internet and 23 percent used an agent they’d previously hired.

J.D. Power also ranked real estate companies according to customer satisfaction and gave top honors on the buy side to Keller Williams and to Prudential for sellers. Go here for the buyer ratings and seller ratings.

I was putting together a post on one thing (use of the term “below market” to market and sell a home) when I noticed something even more interesting: Prices on three of five homes I spotted with “below market” in their listing remarks on June 3 are still for sale. (The other two are no longer listed.) These were homes that, according to the listing remarks in June, were already priced below market value. And all three have since seen price drops.

Two are located in Sumner and one is in Gig Harbor. Here’s a breakdown of each:

Sumner five-bedroom: Price dropped from $719,950 to $675,000, a change of 6.7 percent. The listing on this 3,295-square-foot home puts it near Lake Tapps. The home was built in 2006 with 2.75 bathrooms, including a master suite, landscaped yard with sprinkler system and built-in bookshelves.

Gig Harbor three-bedroom: Price dropped from $690,000 to $667,250, a change of 3.4 percent. This 3,209-square-foot house sits on 1 acre with a wetbar, slate countertops, birch hardwood floors and a six-burner gas stove in the kitchen.

Sumner four-bedroom: Price dropped from $559,950 to $539,950, a change of 3.7 percent. This 3,064-square-foot home is advertised near Bonney Lake as "a steal” and “well below market value.” It has a den and bonus room and a five-car garage. It’s also in a gated community and was built in 2006.

I reached Windermere listing agent Melissa Moller, who's selling the Gig Harbor home, and she said the house appraised even higher than the June price -- at $749,000 in November 2007.

“It’s within a mile of the most desirable area, downtown Gig Harbor, so when it was built we assumed that would be a plus. And so did the appraiser and it also has all kinds of features,” she said.

The house was listed about a year ago at $735,000 and came down to $667,250 near the end of June, Moller said.

“If you can’t sell them, you’ve got to lower them to where the market is,” she said.

Moller pointed to the lack of financing options, and therefore buyers, as fundamental to today’s difficulty in getting homes sold.

“The creative loan options just aren’t there. I can’t say they need to be there. There’s just such a swing as the market adjusts. That needed to happen,” she said.

A few similarities stand out among these three listings: All are around the same size and all have what appear to be top-of-the-line amenities. All are a drive from major employment centers and could face some gas-price resistance from prospective buyers who feel disinclined in today's economic climate to commute. And all are more than double Pierce County’s median home price of $259,950.

For some additional context, prices on homes across the county have dropped in recent months. From January to June, for example, the median price fell 5.5 percent on closed sales compared to what was sold in the first six months of 2007, according to the Northwest Multiple Listing Service.

More than two years after opening The Esplanade to reservations, the nine-story waterfront condo project is on the brink of closing its first sales. And at a time when Pierce County’s real estate brokers and agents struggle to convince ever-hesitant buyers to take the plunge.

Not to mention receding prices countywide and a slowdown in condominium sales.

The Esplanade has 162 units priced $240,000 to $980,000, from one bedrooms measuring 800 square feet to penthouses topping 2,000 square feet and with views of the Sound and Mt. Rainier. Judy Mayfield, the project’s listing agent, said she emphasizes value, price and historically low mortgage rates to prospective buyers.

“If anyone’s going to get off the fence, I think they’ll get off the fence here,” she said.

Sales are happening, she said, but they are sluggish. Mayfield said she went through two buyers before putting together an agreement on the largest penthouse. (No worries if you’re still in the market for a waterfront penthouse: The next largest one at 2,172 square feet is still available for $922,000.)

Two models opened in April at The Esplanade, where Mayfield has 23 purchase-and-sale agreements. She expects the first of those to close in August, when construction should wrap up on the building’s common areas. The sales office also will move then from Thea’s Landing to The Esplanade.

“I’ve been selling real estate for 18 years and I’ve never experienced the feeling of frustration I’ve experienced this year,” Mayfield said. “It’s been a tough market. It is frustrating because you’ve got an awesome product. The pricing is really very reasonable, a great value for your money. You do everything you can and people still sit on the fence and, yes, that’s frustrating.”

For the first six months of the year, sales in the area that includes most of downtown Tacoma’s condos and the Foss Waterway have fallen by 47.2 percent compared to the same period in 2007, according to the Northwest Multiple Listing Service. That compares to a 33.1 percent drop in sales of all homes – houses and condos – countywide.

One market factor hurting sales, she said, is an issue other agents say they, too, are grappling with: Buyers who want to buy but can’t sell the home they have.

The Tall Ships festival, however, brought a welcome boost. Mayfield said 90 prospective buyers asked to return for one-on-one tours of the project after seeing it briefly during the maritime event.

The Esplanade isn’t marketing any specific bonuses or sales incentives, but Mayfield said there’s room for negotiating if buyers are looking for a little extra, such as a storage space, a break on closing costs or getting some homeowner’s dues prepaid. (Monthly homeowner association fees range from $280 to $480.)

“We have people who love the building and they’re going to buy when they start feeling more comfortable with the marketplace,” she said.

Getting halfway through the year allows a longer look at how the Pierce County real estate market is progressing. Earlier this week, we looked at median home prices for the first half of 2008 compared to the same period in 2007. Now, let’s take a look at sales activity.

Every one of the 17 areas in the county tracked by the Northwest Multiple Listing Service has seen sales decline. Overall, sales year-to-date declined 33.1 percent, from 6,608 houses and condos sold in the first six months of 2007 to 4,421 for the same stretch of time this year.

Any predictions on when sales might move to positive territory? Every area also saw a year-over-year drop in May and in June, which wasn’t the case in April. So perhaps more decreases ahead?