As president of the 6,500-member New Hampshire Association of Realtors, I was disappointed to see the Sunday Monitor recently fall into the trap of presenting national news as a local story (”Is this a good time to buy a home?” Business section, March 2), ultimately presenting a conclusion (”Well, no, stay on the sidelines a bit longer”) that is far too general to be relevant.

Just as one wouldn’t turn to the national weather forecast to determine whether it’s a good day for a raincoat, a bankrate.com story about national real estate trends is unlikely to provide worthwhile direction for a prospective buyer in New Hampshire.

What’s more, the story went on to provide evidence contrary to its own conclusion - “In some markets . . . the outlook for prospective first-time homebuyers is much better” - leaving the reader to wonder where New Hampshire fits into the picture.

Now that you asked: In fact, New Hampshire is far more closely aligned with the states provided as examples of “better” markets than it is with the “troubled markets such as Florida and California.” While the median price in the nation’s worst residential real estate markets dropped by as much as 12 percent from 2006 to 2007, and while the national average decline for that period was 3.3 percent, New Hampshire’s median price fell by a relatively modest 1.6 percent.

For a little historical perspective, there’s no doubt that a correction was in order following seven years (1998-2005) during which the average median price increase of residential homes in our state was a breathtaking 16 percent. But New Hampshire’s corrective two years since have each seen median-price declines of less than 2 percent, a trend far more accurately described as “leveling” than “plummeting” or “crumbling.” No, it’s not a perfectly rosy market - sales volume is down and inventory is up - but those of us who have been in this business for decades as opposed to months know that market cycles are a fact of life. We’re not panicking.

There is no single right answer for the broad spectrum of prospective home buyers out there. Our business as Realtors is not to blindly sell homes but to give a proper, honest assessment to each individual client as to what is in his or her best interest.

Every market is unique, which is why we encourage everyone, with the help of a local Realtor, to look at his or her own circumstance before determining whether it’s best to act now or later.

(Jim Lyons is president of the New Hampshire Association of Realtors.)

Rhode Island’s real-estate market in January continued to deteriorate, as house prices recorded their steepest month-over-month decline in 19 years, according to a report released yesterday by The Warren Group.

The median price of a single-family house in Rhode Island fell 12.8 percent compared with the previous January — nearly three times the rate in Massachusetts — to $235,000. That marks the largest monthly decline in Rhode Island house prices since the Boston-based research firm began tracking the market in 1989.

The median condo price in Rhode Island fell 13 percent, to $206,500, compared with $237,500 a year earlier, the report said.

Until now, the price declines could be blamed partly on the large number of properties being repurchased by banks at foreclosure auctions. Typically, banks repossess properties to cover the outstanding balances on loans, which may be substantially less than the market value.

The Warren Group’s latest report, however, attempts to more accurately measure the market by excluding from its calculations all properties that banks repurchased at foreclosure auctions, sales between family members and other “non-arm’s length” sales because they tend to distort the statistics, said the research group’s data analyst, Alan Pasnik.

Rhode Island’s prices fell far more sharply than in Massachusetts, where the median price of a single-family house in January dipped 4.4 percent, to $325,000, The Warren Group reported. The median condo price in Massachusetts during the same period ticked down 1.5 percent, to $270,000.

“In a small state like Rhode Island, month-by-month numbers do not always indicate trends,” the company’s chief executive, Timothy Warren Jr., said in a statement. “But we have seen declines in single-family home sales hover around 20 percent for the past five months, and monthly price drops leading up to January have been pushing toward 10 percent.”

Rhode Island’s single-family house sales in January fell 24.3 percent, to 393, compared with 519 sales in January of last year. Condo sales during the same period declined 26.2 percent, to 127, compared with 172 sales a year earlier, the report said.

The Warren Group reported single-family house price declines in Providence, Kent and Washington Counties.

Newport and Bristol Counties reported that prices rose 7.2 percent and 25.5 percent, respectively. (The data do not include Barrington, because the town assessor’s office does not differentiate between types of residential properties or residential and commercial sales.) The median condo price fell in every county except for Bristol, where the median rose about 1.4 percent, The Warren Group reported.

During the state’s real estate boom earlier this decade, prices for single-family homes increased 80 percent. Now new home sales and prices have dropped significantly, and a mortgage crisis is burgeoning. What does it mean for you?

Q. How’s the state’s market currently?

A. The market took a dive starting last summer, and the number of sales fell dramatically in some months - often 20 percent, or more - compared with the same month a year earlier. Right now, the housing market is very slow. A year ago, almost one-third of the mortgages that were being written were for people who had poor credit ratings or could not fully document their income or employment. The loans available to those people have completely dried up. It’s no surprise sales are off by 20 percent, because so many people who previously qualified for mortgages no longer qualify.

Q. In 2007, the state’s median house price fell just 1.5 percent, to $330,000 - is it really that bad?

A. The prices haven’t fallen nearly as much as they did in the three years’ decline in the ’90s. Our single-family median prices in Massachusetts fell 10.2 percent for three years from 1990 through 1992. In the past two years, 2006 and 2007, Massachusetts saw a total decline of 2.8 percent.

Q.What do you expect for foreclosures this year?

A. The number of foreclosure deeds filed in 2007 was 7,653. The number of petitions, the first stage of the process, was 29,607 - a record. I expect both numbers to continue to climb. And the number of people entering the foreclosure process increased dramatically in the second half of last year.

Q. Are foreclosures an isolated problem in some communities or is their impact spreading?

A. If about 7,000 homes went through foreclosure auction last year, the lender bought them and now is trying to sell them. If 29,000 properties entered the foreclosure process, all of those people are trying to refinance, borrow from their parents, or do something. But a lot of them are going on the market. Distressed properties are dictating the whole market in many communities.

Q. Is this the state’s worst housing decline since the early 1990s recession?

A. The decline in the number of sales may already be worse than what we had in the ’90s. In the 1990s, we had just two years when the number of sales declined. We are in the fourth year of declining sales in the current slump. The decline in our median price doesn’t look as bad as it did in the ’90s, but the downturn stands a chance of being more prolonged. If 2008 is another year of declining price, this would be the third year.

Q. How long did it take to climb out of the ’90s slump?

A. It was a very slow recovery. After prices stopped falling in 1993, it took six years for the Massachusetts median price to exceed its level before the slump started. People say, ‘When is the recovery going to start?’ I say maybe next year, but after the recovery starts it might take five years.

Q. What do you predict for the spring market?

A. Slow.

Q. Is the credit crunch on Wall Street making it harder for everyone to get a loan?

A. Yes. It’s due to tightening loan standards and less liquidity. Lenders don’t want to take risks anymore. Most people can’t buy a house without a mortgage loan, so there are going to be fewer houses sold. The number of single-family home sales was down about 10 percent for all of 2007, though the pace accelerated at the end of the year. It wouldn’t surprise me if this year it’s double that.

Q. Could government have prevented this crisis?

A. In hindsight, the government made a lot of mistakes. Perhaps the Federal Reserve fueled ‘irrational exuberance’ in real estate prices by keeping interest rates low. The easy money, low interest rates with low documentation requirements, and 100 percent financing just made it too tempting for people to jump in. People assumed prices were going to keep rising and refinancing was going to solve any problem they had of meeting their mortgage payments. It’s like playing Monopoly with fake money.