GREED HAS SENT the housing market into a turmoil and almost everyone has been affected one way or another. Obviously, those hit the hardest are the ones who overextended themselves with big sub-prime loans, buying homes they couldn’t afford in the first place. Their psychology was that the price of homes would keep going up and up and up. It looked like a great way to live more luxuriously and make money at the same time.Others have been hurt differently. And there even are some who admit they actually have been helped. Some homeowners in the East County offered their individual tales about what the drop in home values has meant to them, personally.

A total of 35,185 new and resale houses and condos were sold statewide last month. That’s down 8.1 percent from 38,291 for June, and down 21.9 percent from 45,051 for July 2006. Last month’s sales made for the slowest July since 1995 when 30,596 homes were sold. July sales from 1988 to 2007 range from the 30,596 in 1995 to 71,186 in 2004. The average is 48,200. On a year-over-year basis, sales have declined the last 22 months.

The median price paid for a home last month was $478,000, down 0.2 percent from $479,000 for the month before, and up 0.8 percent from $474,000 for July a year ago. The median peaked last March/April/May at $484,000.

Home builders, real estate agents and sellers in the Denver area and across the country are going to new extremes to attract buyers in an increasingly sluggish housing market.Denver-area home sellers from Firestone to Castle Rock are slashing prices and kicking in everything from free plasma TVs to paying homeowner association dues to entice people to buy.

In recent years, home builders have constructed too many houses in areas that have gone from hot to cold - including the north Interstate 25 corridor - saddling them with huge supplies of inventory.

MILWAUKEE - It’s a sprawling Arts and Crafts house on Milwaukee’s east side, with a brand-new kitchen, a brand-new master suite and vintage details like leaded glass windows in the built-in china cabinet.Last fall, David and Elizabeth Rubin put it on the market for $475,000. Now they’re asking $439,000 - a price that reflects a loss on the $100,000 they’ve spent on remodeling.

With no offers, they’re now putting the house up for sale a month at a time: If a qualified buyer is amenable, the Rubins will consider offering the house on a rent-to-own basis.

Home foreclosure postings in the Dallas-Fort Worth area are down by 9 percent for September.

It’s the first time in more than a year that foreclosures are lower compared with the previous 12 months.

But it’s unlikely that the market has peaked, analysts say.

“It’s the year-to-date numbers that are important to look at, and they are still up,” said George Roddy, chief executive of Foreclosure Listing Service Inc., which tracks home foreclosure postings in North Texas. “This may not be good news – just a blip.”

Almost 3,500 North Texas homes were posted for sale at September’s foreclosure auction.