Sales of existing homes here are down 22.5 percent from the first quarter of 2007, according to G. Donald Jud, a University of North Carolina economist who tracks the market for local Realtors, compared with a 21.7 percent drop in home sales nationally. Unemployment in the Greensboro area averaged 5.1 percent in April, versus 5 percent nationwide. The mortgage delinquency rate of 4.04 percent, meanwhile, is nearly identical to the country’s rate, 4.35 percent.

Image In some developments in the Greensboro market, construction has stopped on half-built houses. Credit... Sara D. Davis for The New York Times

“In some ways, Greensboro got caught up in the national housing boom,” Mr. Jud says. “It was neither a bubble nor a bust, but people in the middle are now feeling the pinch from rising costs and getting overextended.”

Greensboro has fared better than other places in terms of foreclosures, though they were up 23 percent in April, versus the same month a year earlier; nationally, the jump was roughly 65 percent. “But that’s still pretty high for us,” Mr. Jud says. “The market is still weakening, inventories are growing and sales prices are dropping.” Across the nation, foreclosures are expected to keep rising, flooding the market with more homes.

In Greensboro at the end of the first quarter, nearly 2,500 homes were on the market, up nearly 12 percent from December. And it’s midprice residences that have been hardest hit. While sales of properties valued at less than $150,000 are down 13.3 percent from a year ago, sales of homes between $150,000 and $350,000 are off more than 27 percent.

The one exception to this otherwise sobering picture is Irving Park, a gracious neighborhood where some of Greensboro’s original tobacco and textile heirs still reside. Like other wealthy enclaves such as Menlo Park, Calif., Irving Park has escaped much of the downdraft affecting outlying suburbs like Summerfield, where the Schneiders’ home is for sale.

But over drinks in the wood-paneled dining room of the Greensboro Country Club, there are whispers that even Irving Park may be susceptible to the downturn. More properties are selling at substantial discounts, at least one member’s million-dollar home is in foreclosure, and a prominent local bankruptcy lawyer says he is seeing a new kind of client.

As recently as two years ago, says the lawyer, Charles M. Ivey III, “I felt like I was a veterinarian for dinosaurs  clients were disappearing.” Now, he’s seeing more and more of what he calls “paper millionaires,” real estate investors who thought that the good times would go on forever. “Mostly they bought a slew of properties, hoping to flip them and with refinancing, they thought they could stretch it out,” Mr. Ivey says. “Hopefully, we can buy enough time to sell off their properties.”