Summer is usually a busy season for home sales as buyers scramble to get into new homes before the school year starts.

But for the first time in five years, August home sales in Austin were down.

Coldwell Banker realtor Sheri Brummett has been showing a four bedroom home that's been on the market for three and a half months. That's almost twice as long as the 60 day average for a home to be on the market in Austin.

Brummett is confident the home which is in the Great Hills Reserve neighborhood in Northwest Austin, will sale.

"We have good location, good proximity to employers, shopping and excellent schools in this area," she said of the home.

Brummett's optimism comes despite the latest figures from the Austin Board of Realtors, which show August sales of single family homes are down 10 percent from last year. At the same time, total listings are up 21 percent with 9,819 units now on the market.

That means more homes to chose from, but fewer homebuyers -- at least compared to August 2006 when just about anybody qualified for a home loan.

"We had people who were able to purchase homes just because they had a pulse. That's not the case anymore," said Socar Chatmon-Thomas, the chairperson elect of the Austin Board of Realtors.

Now the credit crunch makes it tougher to qualify for a mortgage which is causing home sales to slow down. Yet Chatmon-Thomas says the Austin market is still more active than other cities.

"They have homes staying on the market six, seven, eight, nine...ten months and our average time is less than 60 days," said Chatmon-Thomas.

She says the market is now in transition, but predicts it will edge back as a buyer's market as long as interest rates stay low and sellers have something to offer.

That's good news for Sheri Brummett. She's busy now.

"Activity is all day long, listing appointments, buyers' appointments, customers are still out there looking and making offers and we still have some multiple offer situations," she said.

And like other realtors, she is looking forward to being even busier.