Real estate agents are given to euphemism--you know what "cozy" means in an apartment ad--but it would be hard to sugarcoat what's going on in the housing market. At Long & Foster, the largest U.S. privately owned residential real estate brokerage, sales volume was down 16% in the first nine months of 2006. In its home city of Washington, D.C. and nearby, the inventory of available single-family homes is 59% higher than at the same point last year and is at the highest point in eight years. The condo market is beginning to crater, too, with the median price 5% lower than it was at the end of 2005.P. Wesley Foster Jr., the 73-year-old cofounder and chief executive of the company, is sugarcoating nothing when he describes his cost-cutting efforts. "We found out we had some person watering plants on the payroll," he says. "I said, 'Let the damn things die.'" More recently he slashed a corporate advertising campaign by 75% and zeroed out a companywide summer picnic and the annual sales manager retreat at the luxurious Homestead resort in Virginia.
