Mood of the market

I have been in the middle of negotiations on two tracts of land for the past couple of days and still have not come to a final agreement on either tract. It seems that it has been a little more difficult to bring a buyer and seller to agreement in a real estate transaction lately.
The seller wants the '05 price when the market was at the peak and the buyer wants the deep discount deal.( I suppose that is understandable considering how the media has a story every day about how bad off the real estate market is. So that is what the public expects.)However, it is a different real estate market in land sales than it is residential sales. Usually, in a down market land values remain flat because there are fewer parcels of land available at any one time than there are residential properties for sale. Most landowners have owned the land for several years and have no debt. So in many instances, if the owner cannot obtain the price that he wants then he waits until market conditions are better.If the owner has to sell in a buyers' market,then negotiations are much more difficult.