Real estate people always enjoy making a sale, but when it comes to selling off foreclosed properties, there can be mixed feelings.

"I have a lot of empathy for these people. I've been doing it a lot of years. It's not easy for them," said Mary Greenspan, who runs a brokerage business in Pahrump.

Greenspan Brokerage sold 27 of the 63 foreclosed Pahrump properties on the Multiple Listing Service between May 17, 2007, and June 6.

"I do most of the foreclosures here in town," she said. "I quit doing evictions this year. It got dangerous. When people get desperate, they get ugly."

Yet the current real estate market, fraught with foreclosures, brings to mind the old saying about whether the glass is half empty or half full.

"We need to look at this on a positive note," Greenspan said. "It still is a good opportunity for people out there, for buyers, because the homes are unbelievably inexpensive compared to what they had been."

While Greenspan recalled selling mostly foreclosed manufactured homes in years past, many of those properties now are Mountain Falls homes bought only a few years ago.

For example, an almost 2,800-square-foot home foreclosed on Oro Lane, which was built in 2005, sold for $185,000. The original asking price was $313,500.

Sellers were asking $210,000 for a three-year-old home with 2,300 square feet and a three-car garage in Mountain Falls.

"You know darned well when these people bought that home they paid a lot more than that," she said.

There are still plenty more foreclosed properties on the market dragging down prices. Greenspan said 133 of the 826 properties on the market in the latest MLS listings have real equity owners -- industry jargon for foreclosed properties.

That doesn't include short sales, where owners having trouble making payments put the property on the market and try to get a buyer to submit an offer, then see if the bank will accept it.

"There's a lot of vacant homes out there that the banks aren't doing anything with because they can only have so much inventory," Greenspan said.

"What we really want is the inventory to come down and the sales prices to go up and then we got a good situation. We're not there yet. It isn't good for just the regular seller right now. I always tell people if you don't have to sell, don't do it."

A foreclosed home at 5861 N. Nopah Vista Ave. with an original list price of $245,900 was sold for $200,000 June 10. A foreclosed home at 2671 S. Yucca Terrace Ave. with an original list price of $225,000 sold for $155,000 March 21. A foreclosed home at 380 W. Siesta Road with a list price of $299,900 sold for $220,000 April 11.

Foreclosed properties now up for sale on the MLS had asking prices $20,000, sometimes even $50,000, below the original list price.

A foreclosed property at 2860 E. Deadwood St. with an original list price of $190,000 now has a list price of $133,000. A home at 1851 S. Mount Charleston Drive with an original list price of $139,900 has beren brought down to $109,900.

Figures from the Nye County Recorder's Office show there were 338 trustees deeds upon sale recorded from July 1 last year to a year later, which represents properties countywide that went through the foreclosure process and were sold at trustee sales.

The figure of 19 trustee sales in August 2007 was a two-year monthly high at that time, but that was nothing compared to the 53 trustee sales recorded this past May and 52 in June.

Most of the 338 foreclosed properties were homes transferred to financial institutions like Deutsche Bank National Trust (33), U.S. Bank National Association (40) and Bank of New York (16).

Pahrump Valley Real Estate Company LLC acquired 22 foreclosed properties on the list.

Don Barton, resident agent of Pahrump Valley Real Estate, said his company sold vacant land to a lot of speculators from out of state with low down payments.

When economic times got tough, it was more important for the owners to pay for their existing home and things like high gas prices, than their lot in Pahrump which was discretionary, and many stopped making the payments, he said.

"Unfortunately, we give them all the rope that we can. We sympathize with them but there comes a point in time when we just have to foreclose on them," Barton said.

The effect of foreclosures on depressing home prices is reflected in research conducted by Equity Title Co. in Las Vegas, which tracks home sale prices in Pahrump.

Eric Cifani, assistant sales manager with Equity Title, said prices of 148 single-family homes in Pahrump in the first four months of 2008 averaged $206,505. By comparison, 146 homes sold in the last four months of 2007 went for an average price of $251,742.

Among manufactured homes, research commissioned by Equity Title found far fewer sales in the first four months of 2008, with 113, compared to 160 sold in the last four months of 2007.

The average sale price for a manufactured home in the first four months of this year was $109,941, down slightly from $112,519 in the last four months of 2007.

Ordinary property owners who are trying to sell their property in this depressed market have to decide whether it's better to hang onto a home and stay where they don't want to be or sell it for a lesser price and move on with their lives, Greenspan said.

She endorsed talk of government regulation of the lending industry to prevent foreclosure problems.

"The government needs to step in on that. I don't think most people are reckless or irresponsible, they just wanted the American dream. They were sold that by a lender who said 'Hey, I can give you the American dream.' But they didn't give them all the facts," Greenspan said.

"We're just trying to get some people to realize, Realtors aren't the ones that created this problem. We're trying to be helpful and find the solutions," she said.