Real estate in Winston-Salem isn't exactly hot; existing home sales in October 08 were 34% lower than October 07, and average home prices were down 7.6%.  From the Journal article:

People in the local real-estate industry had hoped for better
numbers as sales of existing homes started stabilizing somewhat during
the summer.

Glenn Cobb, the chief staff executive for the Winston-Salem Regional
Association of Realtors, says he believes that such factors as the
country's economic downturn and recent presidential election played a
part in helping to slow housing sales in October.

Several people in the housing industry have said that potential homeowners have been in a wait-and-see mood.

"The fundamentals are all still there," Cobb said. "You've got a
great selection. You've got great interest rates and a real stable
market for us ordinarily, so it still should be a good buyers' market
right now."

He doesn't expect the climate to change for the better until the spring.

The Thanksgiving and Christmas season tends to be a slow time for the housing industry.

Julie Poplin, the president of the Winston-Salem Realtors
association, said that business has been sporadic and said 2008 was the
first year that she had consecutive months where she didn't have a
closing.

But Poplin, who is also a broker for Allen Tate Realtors, is ending the year on a good note.

She is encouraged by the fact that she has three closings scheduled
in December. "People are still looking for bargains, and people are
still buying homes."

I've taken the realtors to task in the past for being just a tad delusional with their interpretations of the market and the effect of the economy on real estate, but in this case I actually sense a little bit of realism in their remarks.  My only point would be that Mr. Cobb missed one crucial factor in his comments about the fundamentals being good: while interest rates and prices might be low, lending standards are much, much tighter and until that changes a lot fewer people will be out of the market and not by their own choice.