Pittsburgh's housing market, which never reached the red-hot, sizzling, bubbling levels of price and activity experienced by cities on both coasts, may finally be coming in line with a national market that is slowing down.

Suburban Philadelphia home builder Toll Brothers sent the first shock wave through the nation's housing sector early this month, when it revised down its outlook for home sales next year, citing softening demand in a number of cities. It said it expected to sell 9,500 to 10,200 homes in 2006, rather than the 10,200 to 10,600 previously projected.

Two weeks later, a rash of similar warnings followed. First, the National Association of Realtors cautioned that the market had probably peaked. The next day, the National Association of Home Builders announced that home builders were adjusting their market expectations downward. And a day later, the U.S. Department of Commerce reported that October housing starts were down 5.6 percent from their September level, a dramatic drop that could prefigure an extended downturn.

The rush of news caused a major sell-off in home builders' stocks and speculation that the home construction, sales and refurbishing business that had stoked the economy for the better part of this decade was cooling as interest rates continued to rise. But economists say robust job and income growth, a pickup in manufacturing and increasing business spending on equipment should tide the economy over this slower housing period.

For the local market, it's been a slower period for some time now.

Single-family housing starts for the first nine months of the year were down 14 percent from the year-ago period, according to Tall Timber Marketing Group. Tall Timber owner Jeff Burd formerly was with Pittsburgh Construction News, which used to issue the quarterly reports.

The slowdown in construction is coming as home sales in Allegheny County also are slipping, with 10,936 homes sold through the year's first nine months, down 1.5 percent from 11,103 during the same period last year. But an increase in the average price, from $142,675 to $150,414, meant that the overall dollar volume of sales still rose.

"It's good to see that our market," which has lagged the nation's since steel manufacturing's collapse here in the 1980s, "is slowing at the same time as the national market and probably for the same reasons," Mr. Burd said.

The biggest reason includes the steady climb in interest rates.

Federal Reserve policymakers have raised the federal funds target rate on overnight bank loans 12 times in the past 17 months, bringing along with them rates on a range of shorter-term mortgage products, such as adjustable mortgages and home equity lines.

And longer-term rates, which for much of the past year have been holding steady and even declining, have begun to march up, with rates on 30-year mortgages averaging 6.37 percent last week, Freddie Mac reported, the highest level since September 2003.

One result is that in markets such as Miami and Las Vegas, builders and developers are offering incentives to buyers to get them to buy, as well as offering higher commissions or special bonuses to brokers.

But don't wait for those incentives if you want to buy here.

"I haven't seen any of that, not in the Pittsburgh market, because it's priced so competitively," said Kevin Mihm, an agent with Coldwell Banker who specializes in selling homes in Pittsburgh's northern suburbs, an area that includes two of the four townships that have led the region in new construction for the past several years: Cranberry and Adams.

Peters, on the southern end, also has been strong, as has North Huntingdon in the east. In the third quarter, the township -- just across the line in Westmoreland County -- more than doubled the number of permits issued, from 63 to 136, putting it on pace to hit 180 by year's end if sustained. The annual average in recent years has been 110 new homes a year.

And according to plans in the works, that could be just the beginning for the formerly rural township. In May, North Huntingdon approved preliminary plans for 450 units of new housing -- 299 upscale single-family homes and 151 single-family and multifamily units.

Despite the faster-growing communities, observers note that overall growth in the region has been virtually nil, making demand for new housing comparatively soft relative to supply and explaining why the Pittsburgh area has remained sluggish compared with much of the rest of the nation.