The market for single-family homes in Maine finally did what markets do when demand slackens -- it fell.

The median sale price for a single family home in Maine dropped to $178,200 in April, down from $201,000 a year earlier. It's notable that the price changes were not uniform throughout the state, with some markets holding firmer than others.

But the change is enough to get people talking and asking what this means. The short answer to that question is that the laws of supply and demand have not been repealed, and as long as people believe that prices will be coming down, demand is likely to lag.

Given that home values decline rarely and make up such a large portion of most people's assets, there is something disquieting about the drop. And it is true that if you owned that mythical "median-priced Maine home" a year ago, you are $22,800 poorer today than in 2007.

But Mainers have known this has been coming for some time. The sub-prime mortgage mess reduced the number of buyers. The market was widely believed to be overheated. Markets in other parts of the country have been going through corrections.

If you own a home and have a fixed-rate mortgage, it's not a false hope to hold on to the notion that with time the market will stabilize and, with a little more time, whatever paper losses were suffered during this period will be erased by the market's gradual recovery.

What's genuinely anxiety-provoking is when somebody is forced by circumstance or financial need to sell in such a down market. If one has to sell now, then one has to accept where the market sits at the moment.

One group of people who might be stressed but ought to relax are potential buyers. Ask Warren Buffet, Carl Ichan or any of the other legends of Wall Street, and they will tell you that they didn't get rich because they could pick the exact bottom of a market.

Instead, smart buyers know when to get in and when to get out, and they don't obsess about it -- never regretting a gain, even if it could have been bigger with a better guess.

This is likely a good time to buy a home, even if the market hasn't bottomed out. Sure, maybe in six months you might say you wished you held out a little longer. But then again, maybe not.