News from the slack housing market just gets better and better for that rarest of customer, the buyer with good credit and no home of his/her own to unload. Now realtors are reaching into the car dealer's grab bag to lure visitors to open houses by offering a wide array of gifts.

The swag ranges in magnitude from the trivial (a treat for your dog) to the munificent (wine, gas cards). My favorite gift is offered by a Charlottesville, Va realtor, who presents open house visitors with a gallon of ice cream (hoping that they will drive directly home to put it in the fridge, rather than visit other houses for sale). According to USA Today, another realtor in Carmel, CA asks visitors to remove their shoes while touring the house for sale. During the tour, those shoes are polished.

More troubling for home buyers is the growing use of incentives paid to buyer's agents by the realtors as a reward for supplying a buyer for the realtor's listed property. This could persuade unscrupulous buyer's agents to steer their customers to houses carrying the best bonus, rather than those best suited and at the best price. I'd suggest discussing such bonuses with your agent before you begin shopping; that money should really come off the selling price, not into your agent's pocket.

To those realtors looking for a gimmick to drive open house traffic -- I'm not in the market for a new home, but it I were, I'm a fan of Merlot, Ben & Jerry's Chunky Monkey, and it would be wonderful if someone could do a load of laundry for me while I toured your fabulous home in a great neighborhood with nearby school.

It's a buyer's market, they say. You can get a house for a really low amount of money, they say. In fact, they say, it's a wonderful time to purchase a home.

(Who are they? I'm not sure, actually. But I know that they say this sort of thing a lot, and besides, it's a useful device we writers employ when we don't quite know how to begin writing.)

Anyway, I've been wondering -- with banks tightening their policies for lending and being reluctant to give anyone a loan, is it really a buyer's market if people aren't given home loans so they can buy?

Ernestine Crews is the founder and president of eCrews Enterprises, which is what she calls a wealth building academy and opened last month. And Crews, who hosts "The Road to Wealth and the Guide to Financial Freedom" on KLSX-FM in Los Angeles, says, "The easy lending with low FICO scores -- the party is over. If you don't have prestige 700-plus credit, you're going to have a difficult time."

Well, sure, tell me something I don't know.

But then she did.

Economists and financial analysts watch the housing market carefully for clues about how the American economy as a whole is faring. The latest headlines are about falling home prices, and the hysteria is building. Yes, it's the 23rd month in a row that home prices either fell or didn't increase enough to please analysts. That's bad, right?

Well the housing market does give us some signals about our economy, and these numbers may be sign of weakness for Americans. (I don't think it's as serious as the media would have you think, but that's another article on another day.)

I prefer to look for the silver lining in this cloud. What a great time for bargain hunters to get a great deal on a house! Sure, falling home prices are bad for sellers who might end up upside down on mortgages or who might not profit the way they had hoped. But it's a great time for those who have been saving and planning for a home purchase to cash in. There are great deals to be had, and buyers have many choices in the marketplace. Happy house hunting!

Tracy L. Coenen, CPA, MBA, CFE performs fraud examinations and financial investigations for her company Sequence Inc. Forensic Accounting, and is the author of Essentials of Corporate Fraud.