Though some agents are still reluctant to acknowledge that the ball in now firmly in the buyers' court, all the indications are that buyers are starting to flex their muscles. Agents are now admitting that the task of selling a house is becoming more difficult and most certainly more protracted as we move towards deep summer. The reality is that buyers have any number of houses to choose from in most price brackets - and boy do they know it. Vendors who have committed to buying elsewhere are anxious as they come under pressure from all sides to drop their asking prices in the hope of shifting a house before the wicked month of August. Most agents say there is a huge number of buyers but they seem none too anxious to make an early commitment in the expectation that the market will slip further. Frustrated vendors mean unhappy vendors, leading to a fairly widescale swapping of agencies. In this sticky market vendors who don't sell within a reasonable time increasingly try their luck with another agency. Apart from the usual rivalry between agents, some of them are using this shifting around as an opportunity to accuse the first agent of overpricing the property when it first hit the market.