While the implosion of the real estate bubble has brought bargains not seen in years, it has also confronted buyers with bidding wars and a web of financial institutions whose decisions seem to change almost daily.

Prices of single-family homes across most of north San Diego County and southwest Riverside County have fallen by 30 to 60 percent from the peaks of early 2006. Median prices have dipped below $430,000 along the coast, below $330,000 in inland North County and below $250,000 in Temecula and Murrieta, according to MDA DataQuick, a real estate research firm.

Buyers and their agents say it often takes one to four months after submitting an offer before they enter escrow, a marked increase from last summer. And that's if the seller accepts the offer. Sellers can take several months to reject offers in the growing number of cases where they have to seek special approval from the banks that service their mortgages.

Real estate agents say the biggest snags involve such deals, known as "short sales" because the sale value is less than what's needed to pay off the seller's mortgage.

"This is the most difficult time I've ever seen," said Faye Hines, a broker with ERA Property Movers in Escondido. "It is a buyers' market, but not in the same way it's been a buyers' market in the past."

About one in three borrowers in San Diego County owe more than they could get from selling their homes, according to First American CoreLogic, a real estate research firm; that fraction is believed to be greater in southwest Riverside County, where a greater portion of houses are less than five years old and where prices have declined more steeply.

Short sales have come to dominate the local market since the beginning of the year, while the relatively hassle-free homes owned by lenders dwindle in number. Bank-owned homes were the norm through 2007 and 2008, following record numbers of foreclosures. But agents say recent state and federal policies have discouraged or delayed foreclosure, even as more borrowers fall behind on mortgage payments.

Short sales are more complicated than other transactions in part because more parties have to agree on the terms.

Homes with two mortgages, a phenomenon that was rare during the last big wave of short sales and foreclosures in the mid-1990s, can prove particularly difficult. Having loaned $50,000 or $100,000 on top of the first mortgage, a second lender often balks at accepting far less in a short sale.

Agents say they find the hesitation baffling because second lenders recoup nothing in the event of a foreclosure, the eventual result when no short sale goes through.

Also complicating matters, the sheer numbers of short sales and foreclosure sales appear to have overwhelmed lenders, agents say.

Barbara Baker, a broker for HomeSmart Real Estate in Temecula, said both her client -- the would-be buyer -- and the lender lost out when a short sale in Temecula's Harveston neighborhood was bungled. The seller listed the house at $352,900. After months of negotiations and delays, Baker's offer of $305,000 was accepted by the sellers and their lender on a Friday in April.

Baker said she showed up at the house on Saturday morning and found a final foreclosure notice tacked onto the house, presumably without the knowledge of the lender's short-sale negotiators. The lender seized the house and sold it for $266,000, nearly $50,000 less than what the lender would have received in a short sale, she said.

"Obviously, the right hand never informs the left hand what's going on," Baker said.

A spokesman for mortgage lenders in California said most are wading through unprecedented numbers of short sales.

"When you add that to the difficult process of a short sale, you get a sense of what servicers are up against, especially in high-volume regions," Dustin Hobbs of the California Mortgage Bankers Association said in an e-mail.

A spokesman for Bank of America, which together with its recently acquired Countrywide division services about one in five U.S. mortgages, estimated that short sales take about 50 days from offer to escrow, compared to about 45 days for outright foreclosures.

Real estate agents say they make a point of preparing buyers for two parallel efforts: On one hand, they say, buyers should make competitive offers on one to four short-sale possibilities and hope that the mortgage holders get around to accepting one of them.

At the same time, buyers may have to bid on several bank-owned homes before an offer is accepted. Such a home often draws 20 or 30 offers.

The bidding wars have been common now for a full year. Though local prices have ticked back up slightly since March, housing analysts say the lack of a large and sustained rebound is due to the uncertain economy and to the likelihood that the supply of bank-owned homes will once again increase.

First American CoreLogic reported last month that 7 percent of San Diego County borrowers were at least three months behind on mortgage payments in March; the figure was a staggering 16 percent in the two-county area of Riverside and San Bernardino.

Bob Bonsante said he found out Thursday that he was competing with 72 other bidders for a bank-owned home in a neighborhood of southern Murrieta where several houses are listed at less than $200,000. The listing agent told Bonsante that the bank responded only to all-cash offers, he said. Bonsante was prepared to put down 10 percent.

Bonsante, who now lives in a smaller house 20 minutes to the north, said he has looked closely at about 25 houses in the Murrieta area and made offers on six of them. His search continued on Friday.

Call staff writer Chris Bagley at 760-740-5444. Read his blogs at bizblogs.nctimes.com.

See also:

HOUSING: Price declines slowed in March

HOUSING: No sign of foreclosures slowing

HOUSING: Prices tick up as buyers return

EXCLUSIVE: Lawyers say lenders set stage to collect on 'short sales'