The Nation - Seattle clings to housing peak, but some wonder if it can last - It's one of the few big U.S. markets that hasn't seen a decline. Yet.

SEATTLE — It's the kind of house that a year or two ago would have been snapped up in days: a refurbished rambler in a woodsy residential neighborhood minutes from downtown.

The asking price: $559,000.

But after seven weeks, Kristen and Al Dittmaier have not received a single offer on their Wedgwood home.

"I really believed there would be no problem selling," Kristen Dittmaier said. "But the whole feel of the market has changed. We might have to drop the price."

The Dittmaiers, along with local real estate agents and economists, wonder whether sluggish sales are part of the usual winter slump or a sign that Seattle -- a perennial most-livable-city contender -- is joining the rest of the country in declining home sales.

The question has put many locals on edge.

"Right now there's not that urgency among buyers to pull the trigger," said Renee Menti Ruhl of Windermere Real Estate. Ruhl, agent for the Dittmaiers, said that "the true test will be early next year."

If sales are sluggish during the traditionally hot-selling months of February through April, she said, then people will have a better idea whether Seattle has joined the national trend.

Of 20 major U.S. metropolitan areas, all but three -- Seattle, Portland, Ore., and Charlotte, N.C. -- experienced a decline in real estate values this October compared with last October, according to the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller composite price index, released last week.

Home prices have fallen most in the Midwest, Southwest, Florida and California. In Los Angeles, prices fell 8.8%; in New York City, 4.1%.

Seattle prices increased 3.3%, but that was the smallest year-to-year rise for the city in more than a decade. The annual appreciation in Seattle has been slowing for more than a year and a half. Some economists say it's only a matter of time before Seattle joins the national slump. Though the city experienced a year-to-year increase, October prices fell 0.9% from September, the third consecutive monthly decline.

Democratic Gov. Chris Gregoire told residents not to be affected by the gloom. Bad news elsewhere, she said, doesn't have to translate into bad news here.

"There's no real reason for it to slow in our state, but for the fact that people are watching what's going on around the national economy," Gregoire said last week during the unveiling of a budget proposal in Olympia.