"She just wants to have a bedroom that's purple," said her mom, Tracie.

The Kramer family, including Tracie's husband Kraig and their other daughter Erika, 1, recently moved to the Tri-Cities from Huntsville, Ala., for Kraig's job with Bechtel.

They started looking for a house online before they moved and checked out 20 or 25 homes once they arrived at the beginning of July.

A four-bedroom home in west Kennewick caught their fancy.

"We wanted to have space for the family, for the two kids" and for company, Tracie Kramer said. "We wanted to have a decent-sized yard for kids to play in. We wanted something that was relatively low maintenance."

This is the couple's fourth home and Tracie said she was pleased with the selection in the Tri-Cities, though homes seemed more expensive than in Huntsville.

They didn't have problems selling their home in Alabama, and though houses here seemed to have been on the market longer than in Huntsville, Tracie said she thought the local housing market looked "pretty steady."

The bicounty housing market has slowed some since last year, including a 16 percent drop in home sales through the first six months of the year.

There were 1,529 sales during the first six months of the year, according to mid-July information from the Tri-City Association of Realtors. That's compared to 1,820 during the same time last year.

Permits for new home construction are down about 14 percent through June, from 833 last year to 716 this year, according to the Home Builders Association of Tri-Cities.

"There is a little bit of impact from the national situation but overall I think we're pretty steady as she goes," said Toby Bouchey of Coldwell Banker Tomlinson Associated Brokers.

She said uncertainty at Hanford always affects the housing market and once the federal Department of Energy awards a prime contract for Hanford services, such as security, information technology and utilities, she and others expect real estate activity to pick up.

And though it wasn't the case for the Kramers, Bouchey said she thinks the local market is seeing a ripple effect from people moving here who are not able to sell their homes elsewhere.

Real estate agent Kris Houston of ERA Sun River Realty agreed.

"A lot of people that are relocating here are finding difficulty selling properties in markets that they're leaving," she said.

While the softness in the market isn't ideal, Houston said it could be worse.

"I think the general perception on the part of the consumer is that the market is much less vibrant than that," she said of the 16 percent drop in home sales.

Glenn Crellin, director of the Washington Center for Real Estate Research, said "the Tri-Cities market is probably marching to its own beat."

The area's housing market didn't experience big run-ups and it's not seeing big declines like other parts of the country, he said.

"It's certainly a market that doesn't warrant any panicking," Crellin said.

Sale prices continue to rise, as well.

The average sale price in June was about $199,000 -- a 1.5 percent increase over $196,100 in June 2007.

For the first six months of the year, the average sale price was $187,700 -- up almost 1 percent from $186,400 during the same time last year.

Tight credit requirements likely are affecting some buyers.

"Credit standards across the board ... are all much tighter than I've ever seen them," said Mark Runsvold, branch manager for CLS Mortgage in Kennewick.

He said he's a little concerned that even people with stellar credit and incomes that support buying a home aren't able to get zero-down loans, which still are in demand.

The company's purchases and refinances are down slightly compared to last year and it's a bit of a nerve-wracking time to be in the mortgage industry, he said.

But overall, CLS is staying busy and has hired a couple of new employees since last year, Runsvold said.

Home inventory, another indicator of market health, was about comparable with the beginning of July last year, at just more than 1,400 homes.

That points to a fairly balanced market, officials said, which is anything in the five- to seven-month range.

Dave Retter, designated broker and co-owner of Windermere Tri-Cities in Kennewick, figured the number of homes on the market makes for a nearly six-month supply.

Last quarter, Crellin said the Tri-City market had a 7.8-month supply. That compares to the 9.5-month supply for Washington.

Though expensive gas and food prices aren't helping the local housing market, Retter said he thinks buyers will prioritize a home purchase over buying other things.

And with continued growth in local industries such as wine and medicine, he thinks the market will have a strong second half of the year.

"Every year you're not going to set a record in a good market," Retter said.