For first-time buyers, a falling market has opened a window of opportunity

The Boston Globe reports:

When Kelly and Justin Crosby first started looking at homes in Boston's western suburbs last year, they quickly eliminated Southborough from their list - they liked the large lots but prices were out of their reach.

What a difference a year made. With home prices falling, the couple broadened their search and are now about to close on a split-level home on 1.7 wooded acres in Southborough for $84,000 less than its original list price.

"We waited and made the smart decision," Kelly Crosby said. "The neighborhood just makes us feel really good," she said.

Families buying their first home, like the Crosbys, are among the few, happy beneficiaries of a housing slump that has sliced 11 percent off the median price of single-family homes in the Boston area since September 2005. Others finding a silver lining in the gloom are those for whom a house had seemed simply out of reach - often single mothers living off one paycheck - and those once limited to condominiums who now find that houses have dropped back into their price range.

These buyers are able to take advantage of the soft real estate market because another sizable group of prospective buyers - existing homeowners looking to trade up - are stuck on the sidelines, unable to unload their existing properties. That's a reversal of the boom years when first-time buyers competed against homeowners who had hefty profits from the sale of their properties to plow into a new purchase, said Thomas Callahan, executive director of the nonprofit Massachusetts Affordable Housing Alliance.

No word yet from Barney Frank(Democrat-Fannie Mae),Hillary Clinton(Democrat-Fannie Mae),Barack Obama(Democrat-Fannie Mae)or John McCain(Republican-Fannie Mae).Lower home prices makes many first time home buyers happy unlike those who want to use the government to have artificially high home prices.