Mortgage Survivors Get Bargains as Price-Drop Danger Eases

Cynthia and Gerald Matthews left a booming property market in Ottawa, the Canadian capital, to buy a home in Bloomington, Indiana, where real estate prices are beginning to recover from a five-year slump.

“It was much cheaper than we thought it would be,” said Cynthia Matthews, who got a 5 percent discount off the $196,999 asking price of the three-bedroom, brick neo-Colonial style house, and a mortgage rate close to 4 percent. “To say it’s a buyer’s market would be an understatement.”