Housing Market Cools in San Franscisco

The San Franscisco Chronicle reports:

To sell a Novato town home that's been on the market for nearly half a year, real estate agent Peter Nielsen lowered the price $50,000 and is kicking in his 1986 Jaguar.

After a buyer for a SoMa condo failed to materialize in two months, agent David Jones and the seller decided to yank the listing and upgrade the appliances and lighting fixtures.

Earlier this month, Nick Falconio printed T-shirts for the half-dozen agents staffing a flashy open-home tour in San Francisco's Sunnyside neighborhood.

Amid a perceptible cooling in the housing market and a jump in the number of homes for sale, Bay Area real estate agents find they must do something they haven't done in years: sell.

"In the last few years, you put something on the market for two weeks, and you didn't have to do anything," said Falconio, an associate manager at Prudential in San Francisco. "Now you have to work for it a little bit more."