Birth, death, marriage, divorce. Throw in new careers and lost jobs, and you've got the reasons most of us fail miserably at timing the real-estate market. We sell in soft markets and buy in hot ones because life drives the decision, the business cycle be damned. It's how you manage the deal that dictates whether you'll give up too much of your profit in a fire sale or forsake future profit by paying too much in a seller's market.

Housing markets continue to defy the lackluster economy. Sure, there are soft spots -- generally luxury homes over $1 million and midpriced houses wherever layoffs have been heavy. But the very woes of the broader economy invigorate home sales by continuing to hold down mortgage-interest rates. Thirty-year fixed rates have been in the 6% range for months. That's how much a mortgage cost back when a Hershey bar cost a nickel.

"It's not just that interest rates are low," says Lawrence Yun, senior economist at the National Association of Realtors, "but that they have been low for such an extended period of time." The low-rate climate has encouraged first-time buyers to take the plunge.

Eventually, gangbuster home sales have to take a breather. But don't expect that until after spring, the peak season for buying and selling houses, turns into summer. Before long, rates are expected to start creeping back up to 7%, tapping the brakes on sales.

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No matter how healthy the national outlook, what matters to you is how easy it is to buy or sell in your neighborhood. Sellers' markets and buyers' markets remain neighborhood-by-neighborhood phenomena. Clearly, some layoff-plagued markets have left the party early. Take Atlanta, where there are simply too many new and nearly-new homes, or pink-slip-littered tech capitals, such as Austin, Texas; San Jose, Calif.; and much of Colorado.

Yet houses are being snapped up in the New York City suburbs, most of California, and everywhere in and around the nation's capital. Buying at a reasonable price in those markets remains more difficult than winning the heart of a TV bachelor.

Hot tips
In a scorching market, you need cash -- and sharp elbows -- to get in the door of the house you covet. You need to find houses before they hit the multiple listing service, a computerized inventory of all homes marketed through local brokers.

The Walton family got its hot tip from the bus-stop chatter of sixth-grade girls. The family of five was squeezed living in a 1½-bath house in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. They considered adding rooms -- or moving out of their beloved neighborhood -- until their daughter, Bailey, passed along a tip from her girlfriend, Madison. The owner of the large house next door to Madison had recently died, and his family was planning to sell.

The Waltons spent a weekend shopping open houses, trying to determine what might be a compelling bid. When a Dumpster arrived in the driveway of the house -- signaling that the family was cleaning it out before putting it on the market -- the Waltons' buyer's broker approached the owners with an offer of $620,000. "We had a contract within the next 24 hours," says Patti Walton, Bailey's mother. The house never hit the multiple listings.

If you can't plug in to the sixth-grade grapevine, at least hire a buyer's broker who can hear the distant rumbling of a house that's about to go on sale. A buyer's best bet is to work with the agent who sells the most houses in the neighborhood. Top sellers get a heads-up because they're usually invited to make a listing presentation to bid for the seller's business. Even if the seller lists with someone else, the agent has already enjoyed a thorough look around and researched tax records and recent sales prices. He or she can get you in the door the minute it hits the market.

Natasha Motev, an agent with GMAC Koenig & Strey Real Estate, specializes in Chicago's fashionable Lincoln Park neighborhood. She relies on such listing presentations -- and her contacts with other brokers -- to keep tabs on what's about to come on the market. Single-family homes in the $1.2 million to $1.8 million range are the hottest sellers. "They're very hard to come by," says Motev. "The minute one comes on the market, it's snapped up."

She combs the listing several times a day to find anything new, but says word of mouth is a better source of intelligence. "Sometimes these places don't even come on the market," she says, "you just hear about them." If you're in a seller's market, a buyer's broker can add an invaluable set of ears.

Even as your agent beats the bushes, be on the lookout yourself. Drive, walk or bicycle through targeted neighborhoods frequently, and keep an eye out for telltale signs that a house is about to go on the market: a surge of landscaping work; new paint, especially around the front door or porch; shiny, new brass street numbers; yard sales thrown by owners trying to de-junk. Don't be shy: Ask the neighbors if they know anyone planning to sell.

Keep an eye out for FSBOs -- houses "for sale by owner." Some buyer's brokers don't always pass along info about FSBOs; they'd rather share the work of closing the deal with a seller's agent. But there's nothing stopping you from subscribing to a FSBO scouting service that's normally marketed to agents. For $39 a month, you can sign up for Warnock's By Owner service, which combs through newspaper classifieds, FSBO Web sites and other sources to find names, addresses and phone numbers of people selling without an agent. The service will e-mail or fax new leads to you as they come up, or you can search the database by zip code. For information on Warnock’s, click on the link at left or phone 801-298-4373.

Winning the right house
Be prepared to move quickly when you find the house you want. Joanne Davidow, a broker with Prudential Fox & Roach who specializes in Philadelphia's posh Center City neighborhoods, offers these tips on winning the house:

Decide how badly you want a specific house before you make a bid. "I ask buyers how they would feel if they lost it by $5,000, by $10,000, or even by $15,000, depending on their price range," says Davidow. Knowing your top dollar lets you swoop in with your best offer -- or let it go without remorse.

Make the offer clean. Get pre-approved for a mortgage, so you can forgo a financing contingency in the contract.

Insist that the appraisal support your price, or the deal is off. "That's your protection with a cash offer," says Davidow.

Demand a home-inspection contingency. But promise to get the inspector in quickly -- within the week.

Put up plenty of earnest money. In Davidow's market, that's 10% of the price. "That gives sellers confidence that the deal will go through," she says.

Move fast. Make your offer within 24 hours of seeing the house. And should you see a price reduction, jump on it.

Cool tricks
If your area has experienced more than its share of layoffs or new-home builders have saturated the market, you could find yourself needing to sell when folks just ain't buying. The key: Give 'em a deal. If you're forced to take the bitter medicine of a bargain price, swallow fast. Not only will you put the nasty experience behind you faster, usually you'll lose less money than if you drag things out.

Zan Pensack-Rinehart, a tax accountant in Loveland, Colo., doesn't shy away from numbers that bear bad news. But it's taken almost two years to unload his old home after he and his wife, Kathy, and their four children moved to a grander house down the street. A ready supply of attractive new homes is a major reason the family had trouble unloading their 20-year-old ranch-style house.

The couple put it on the market for $228,000 in March 2001, when their new place was completed. "It just sat," says Pensack-Rinehart. "There were hardly any showings -- nothing." After two months, they caved and put the house up for rent. But they wanted to be landlords only temporarily. The accountant knew he had three years to sell and still qualify for tax-free profit. (You must live in a house for two of the five years before the sale to get the tax break.) Meanwhile, the market softened.

They put the house back on the market in November 2002, this time at $199,900, 12% lower than their first try. Right out of the gate, it drew a lowball offer (just $178,000). "It was difficult to receive that low an offer," says Pensack-Rinehart. But within a month came two simultaneous offers: one for full price, the other nearly so. They jumped on the full-price offer. "With the soft market, the house needed to be competitively priced," says Pensack-Rinehart. "It wasn't drastically underpriced by any means."

Hire the best
When selling in a cool market, your choice of an agent is as important as the price you set. You want somebody who is going to market the place, not some slacker who talks you into setting a low-ball price and then waits for a bargain hunter to trip over the house on the multiple listing service.

You'll find a record crop of agents to choose from. Thanks to layoffs in other industries -- and the lure of hot housing markets -- people are flocking to second careers in real estate. The National Association of Realtors added more than 40,000 members last year.

Of course, the last thing you need is to be a rookie's learning experience. If your market is sluggish, your best bet is to find someone who was in the business during the last downturn. That's a survivor who knows how to sell when others can't. Besides, you won't get a commission break when you work with a rookie. Most brokerage companies charge their usual 6% or 7% of the price whether the agent has been in the business two weeks or two decades.

Van Davis, president and CEO of Century 21 Real Estate, recommends that sellers interview several agents. "You're looking for one with expertise in your area. You want them to present a marketing program," he says.

Pin the agent down on specifics of that program. Despite the rise of Web sites, such as Realtor.com, and brokers' own sites, Davis says many sales still turn on old-fashioned techniques, such as classified ads in newspapers and local real estate magazines, open houses and yard signs (with a box full of detailed fliers for the drive-by crowd).

When markets slow, Davis says, these staples matter more than they do when things are sizzling. "In some markets over the past one or two years, agents were to some extent order takers," he notes. That's not good enough in a buyer's market -- or even in a balanced market in which neither buyer nor seller claims the upper hand.

Kevin Cook, who was the Pensack-Rineharts' agent, is president of the Cottage Realty in Berthoud, Colo., and was listed among the top 25 real estate salespeople nationwide by Realtor Magazine. He offers these tips on selling in a slow market:

Watch new-home builders' tactics. If they start offering incentives (say, free upgrades), the market is weakening. Your sale will soon feel the pinch.

Shop the market yourself to get a feel for prices. Ask your agent to show you a rundown of listings that are competing with your own.

Buy down the interest rate. It's a favorite builders' trick, but a mortgage lender can help you draw up financing scenarios designed to attract buyers. You can buy down the interest rate, for example, even when rates are at a 40-year low. Lowering the price by $1,000 reduces the monthly payment on a $150,000 loan by only about $6 a month, he notes. "That's not enough to count," says Cook. "But if you buy down the interest rate, the net gain to the buyer is greater." That same $1,000 could save a buyer nearly $45 a month if it's used to buy down the interest rate on a 3/1 hybrid loan (see the box on choosing a loan) by one-half percentage point in the first three years. "It truly is not a sales price that people are buying," Cook notes, "it is a payment."

Dress up the house. Agents call it staging: Haul out the oversize furniture, get rid of clutter, break out the touch-up paint, polish the glass, buff brass fixtures and eradicate smells. "Things you were willing to live with are not necessarily something you want a buyer to see," he says.

Check out your agent. Not only should you ask other sellers about their experiences, but you should also investigate an agent's reputation among his or her peers. If your agent has a reputation for taking just those listings that are attractive (or that "show well," in agent lingo) and are not overpriced, you'll get more attention from other agents. How do you find out how your agent is regarded by peers?

Pensack-Rinehart went out of town for an honest opinion. "The best thing we did was to ask my sister 40 miles away in Boulder to ask local agents who they would recommend in Loveland," says Pensack-Rinehart. "They suggested two outstanding agents."

Pensack-Rinehart interviewed both, listed with one, and the second brought in the buyer. "The interview gave the runner-up an inside chance to find a buyer," he says.
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