Ed Hillyer, still exuding confidence left over from an unprecedented six-year real estate boom, has no trouble talking up this three-bedroom home in the Crescent Beach section of Niantic.

It's a beautiful modular built four years ago on a small lot not far from McCook Point Park, with a huge kitchen, propane-gas fireplace, gleaming wood floors and even a far-off view of Long Island Sound, all for $799,900.

But when Hillyer, who owns a Waterford real estate firm, turns to face Tamala Facas of Westerly to tell her about the his-and-her closets in the master bedroom, he does something he wouldn't have imagined a few years ago, during the height of a local real-estate run-up that doubled the price of many homes in less than a decade.

Hillyer makes a concession. Without even being asked.

“There's a little issue,” he says.

It turns out that one of the closets — which by now Facas, a single mom, has dubbed “hers and hers” — had been designed originally as a bathroom. Without an extra bathroom, the upstairs includes no separate area for guests to shower or bathe.

So if Facas decides she has to have another bathroom, “The seller would take it off the price,” Hillyer says.

Sellers in the region are making a lot more concessions these days.

With the supply of houses swelling, buyers are taking longer to check out the market, waiting for the best deals and rarely competing to bid up home values, according to local real estate agents.

“Clearly, we're in a buyer's market now,” says John Bolduc, executive vice president of the Norwich-based Eastern Connecticut Association of Realtors.

Facas is a case in point. A mortgage specialist who has lived in a Misquamicut beach cottage since her home burned down last January, she and her son Mark have been searching for a permanent place to live for about a year. At first, she looked for homes close to work, but lately she has expanded her search to include southeastern Connecticut.

“I decided to get out of the box of Westerly,” she says.

Facas, who calls herself a beach person despite growing up in North Dakota, says she already has looked at about 25 homes, mostly in the $500,000 to $700,000 range. Holding out for the best deal possible, she recently put in a bid on a foreclosed property in Westerly but doesn't know if she'll get it.

She hopes to close on a new home before the spring.

“I always have feelers out there,” says Facas. “It's a great market for (buying) right now.”

Hillyer has a different view.

“Are we in a buyer's market? I really don't know,” he says. “I kind of feel like it's a little dip in a long trend that's been going up.”

•••••

The upward trend can be traced all the way back to the mid 1990s, though the real run-up in prices occurred between 2001 and 2006, when baby boomers looking for second homes and their children, dubbed echo boomers, buying first homes led to spiraling sales. At the same time, lower interest rates helped make higher-priced houses more affordable.

The growth trend started right after a major retrenchment in the real estate market in the late 1980s and early '90s, when prices on some homes dropped 20 percent locally. Condominiums declined even faster, with some owners losing half the value of their investment — or more.

In those days, investors fueled the fire, and builders and developers stoked it by putting up more spec homes and condominiums than the market could handle. The result was a ferocious downturn that put top local real-estate developers and even a local bank, New England Savings Bank, out of business.

This time, though, overbuilding is not a factor. Instead, skyrocketing prices over the past few years combined with a credit crunch resulting from subprime-lending defaults and, according to some observers, a fear-mongering press have contributed to fewer sales. While two years ago the local market that includes New London and Windham counties had a three-month supply of houses, it currently has a nine-month supply, with 2,647 houses on the market last week compared to the 3,518 houses sold for all of last year.

Still, says Bolduc, the Realtors association official, “The market is not as bad as everyone seems to think. We're holding pretty steady here.”

Median real estate prices for single-family homes in New London County actually increased about 2.2 percent last year, even as the total number of sales dropped about 3.5 percent, according to statistics compiled by The Warren Group, publisher of real estate periodicals in New England.

Bolduc and other real-estate specialists are optimistic, citing the relocation of about 700 Pfizer scientists from Ann Arbor, Mich., as well as good news from Electric Boat, which is gearing up for a doubling of its submarine output in the next few years, and growth at the region's two casinos, both of which are expanding.

“It's a great time to buy,” says Sue Barnhouser, president of the local Realtors association. “Interest rates are still favorable. Real estate is still a solid, long-term investment.”

•••••

Barnhouser acknowledges, though, that buyers these days are in the driver's seat, and many of them, by the time they see her, already have extensive knowledge about the market.

“They're already on the Internet,” she says. “They have already done their shopping.”

One thing they know from checking out the Internet is how many houses are on the market and how they are priced. And this makes it easier to negotiate a lower price.

“If you're looking for a property and you've searched a certain set of criteria, you may come up with 125 houses,” says Liz Viering, president of Stonington Real Estate. “When you've got that many to choose from ... odds are you're going to find a good deal. ... Somebody will accept a lower offer.”

This may prove true particularly for midrange homes, which are moving slowly these days, according to local real-estate agents. Lower-end properties, after feeling a slowdown soon after the subprime-lending scandals hit, have recently heated up. And higher-priced homes, in the $500,000 to $700,000 range Facas is seeking, have held strong despite the buyer's market.

While buyers aren't likely to compete over a cookie-cutter home, they aren't immune from getting excited over a rare bargain. Viering cites one recent sale in Noank in which a home on Prospect Hill Road, a street with half-million-dollar houses, went on the market Jan. 2 for $299,900. Within a few days, listing agent Larry Gemma of William Raveis Real Estate in Mystic already had three bids on the home, despite the fact it needed some work.

“It's possible to have a bidding war even in a slow market,” she says.

But Viering says most buyers these days enter the market with caution. She says young buyers, particularly, come in with the attitude that they are not going to max out their credit to pay for a home beyond their means.

“I see people buying less than they can afford,” she says. “They want the assurance that even if prices go down a little they'll still be OK. ... They seem to be saying, 'I don't want the house to own me.'”

•••••

Buyers' caution is a seller's red flag. That's why many are offering incentives for buyers, perhaps shelling out for closing costs or paying to replace a worn-out rug.

Bud Picazio, an agent with Network Partners in Waterford, says concessions come into play in only 10 percent to 15 percent of his deals these days, but in a hot real estate market sellers hardly ever offer incentives to buyers.

“It's nice to offer concessions, but buyers are really looking for a good deal,” Barnhouser, the Realtors president, says. “It's so important when a house comes on the market to price it right from the start.”

Even so, sellers shouldn't expect to find buyers right away and likely won't get their asking price.

“Houses that used to be selling in 60 days, it wouldn't be surprising for them to be on the market for six or nine months,” says Norm Kraymen, owner of Realty Estates in Groton. “I don't see anybody making full-price offers.”

Part of the reason, suggests Krayem, is that buyers are taking into account the growing cost of energy and food in calculating whether they can afford a home.

“People are looking for realistic prices and the best bargain. A lot of homes are still overpriced,” Krayem says.

Michael Costanza, a teacher at North Stonington Elementary School, can vouch for the fact that houses have been coming down in price, having spent the past eight months scouring the Internet and trudging through about 35 homes looking for a place to buy. He just had an offer accepted on a three-bedroom home in Lisbon that he knows he couldn't have afforded two years ago, and he has seen others drastically reduced in price since he started house-hunting in earnest last September.

“One house I looked at was listed at $289,000, and now it's come down to $259,000 and the owners seem anxious for offers,” he says. “A lot of homes have come down $10,000 to $20,000 since I started looking. ... A lot of houses have been around forever.”

Costanza says the key to getting a good price is waiting for the right opportunity. For instance, he made an offer $25,000 less than the listing price for his new home in Lisbon and had to wait a week before the seller responded. This was the fourth house on which he made an offer; the other offers fell through.

“Given the market conditions, I was able to have patience,” he says. “I knew the right house would come to me. There are plenty of homes to choose from. The situation is only getting worse for sellers.”

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