PARKER, Colo., July 12 - Tom Woods, a 37-year-old defense industry consultant, wanted to build a nest egg for one of his young sons' college tuition. Inspired by rising prices for homes in this Denver suburb, three years ago he invested in a new three-bedroom townhouse for $155,000. His hopes were that renters would cover most of his mortgage and that the property's value would appreciate by at least $10,000 a year.

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Kevin Moloney for The New York Times

To entice homebuyers, sellers are reducing prices in Denver as the once-hot housing market there slumps.

Denver's Doldrums

Denver’s Real Estate Cool-Off

Forum: Owning and Renting a Home

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Kevin Moloney for The New York Times

Tom Santilli, a real estate agent, tours a model home in suburban Denver. Even houses in impeccable condition have been slow to sell, he said.

But last October, when Mr. Woods put the townhouse up for sale to help pay some unforeseen medical bills, there was more pain than gain: the house sat on the market for eight months. He finally found a buyer in June, but to seal the deal he had to make big concessions, including paying the buyer's closing costs. After handing over the keys on Friday, he ended up with a profit of just $10,000 for his three-year investment.

Even as prices for homes in frothy markets like Las Vegas; Riverside, Calif.; Miami; and Washington are still jumping by more than 20 percent a year, Denver's homeowners are learning the hard way about living through the real estate doldrums. Five years ago, median house prices were rising at an annual clip of nearly 17 percent. By the first quarter of 2005 the increase had slipped to 3 percent, according to an analysis by Economy.com, a research firm.

Still, some Denver homeowners have read reports in the news media of skyrocketing prices elsewhere and assume they are accumulating wealth in their homes at the same rapid pace.

"I was surprised," Mr. Woods said. "My expectations were higher."

Although sellers continue to profit, houses are sitting on the market longer, buyers are negotiating harder, and some owners, particularly young buyers who may have been counting on rapid appreciation, are postponing dreams of renovations, moves to larger homes and big savings for their families.

With economists warning that prices in hot markets cannot continue to rise as sharply as they have in the past few years, the experience of Denver's homeowners may foreshadow what could happen if those markets start to cool. Denver's circumstances are in some ways particular to the area, driven largely by job losses in the telecom sector, but they illustrate how a moderate slowdown could play out for homeowners in other parts of the country and stand as a potent reminder that galloping price appreciation is not the norm.

Economists are divided as to whether certain markets will simply cool off, or whether they will actually melt and send prices plummeting, as happened in parts of California, New England and New York in the 1980's and early 1990's. Earlier this year, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said some metro areas were showing signs of "froth."

Optimists point to Denver as a model of an adjusting real estate market. "I think it's a good example of when a market softens, what happens," said David Lereah, the chief economist of the National Association of Realtors, a trade association. "You see double-digit price appreciation go down to 4 percent or even 1 percent, and then it starts coming back to a historical norm of between 4 and 6 percent. That's very healthy. That's wonderful. It beats inflation."

But many analysts take a gloomier perspective, suggesting that the most heated markets could suffer more than Denver's so-called soft landing. "I think Denver is a best-case scenario," said John H. Vogel Jr., adjunct professor of real estate at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. In the case of markets like Naples, Fla.; Miami; and New York, he said, "I think you'll see dramatic price decreases because I think the prices have become artificially inflated by trading and speculation."

Denver's housing boom never quite reached the heights of Las Vegas's, for example, where home prices increased by nearly 33 percent in the first quarter of this year, according to Economy.com. But from 1998 through the third quarter of 2001, homeowners in sprawling Denver enjoyed double-digit appreciation as telecom employers like Qwest Communications International added jobs - and homebuyers - to the market.

From December 2000 to September 2003, however, Denver lost about 74,000 jobs, about 6 percent of its job base, according to Economy.com. Increases in home prices stalled, then started to taper off. Houses lingered on the market, and sellers were forced to cut prices.

Touring a development last week in Castle Rock, a southeastern suburb, Tom Santilli, an agent with Re/Max Alliance, pointed out a four-bedroom house that had not sold for five months, despite its impeccable condition. The price had been lowered to $396,500 from $419,000, but because of a few flaws - a smallish family room, and white kitchen cabinets instead of wood and glass - the sellers had "not even had a low-ball offer" after showing it to 65 prospective buyers, Mr. Santilli said.

WASHINGTON — The young man was poor and without prospects, but that was not why he carried the bomb. He had not been recruited and was not out for revenge, he said, but simply longed to fulfill "the love of martyrdom." As he lugged his heavy black bag toward an Israeli bus stop, his main worry was not moral but practical. The bomb, evidently derived from fertilizer, smelled terrible, and might give him away. He bought a $3 bottle of perfume and doused it.

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Joon Mo Kang and Bill Marsh/The New York Times

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Forum: Western Europe

He was a figure out of a nightmare scenario of cultish, facile killing and self-destruction. But he was real enough, a Palestinian named Zaydan Zaydan, 18. He was interviewed in an Israeli hospital three years ago after the bomb went off, wounding only him.

The nightmare assumed a new form last week when British authorities revealed that four British men were suspected of detonating the explosions that killed at least 54 people and injured hundreds in downtown London on July 7. Framed by new suicide attacks in Israel and Iraq, the news suggested the European breakout of suicide violence that many had feared since the Sept. 11 attacks. The British authorities were initially careful not to call the men suicide bombers, though they said all four died in the bombings.

If the attacks were Islamist suicide bombings, they were the first such strikes in Western Europe, terrorism experts said. This was once a freakish phenomenon, and then a more frequent but concentrated one, confined to battlegrounds like Lebanon and Chechnya. But a "love of martyrdom," with its paired desire to kill indiscriminately, may now have taken hold in Leeds, England, just as it did for Zaydan Zaydan in his hometown, Jenin, on the West Bank.

With the successful deployment of a human delivery system, terrorists in Europe appeared to have at hand the same arsenal - hardware-store ingredients, some secrecy and cunning, and a lethal ideology - that they have used to torment Middle Eastern societies.

Yet while there was new cause for fear, there was also reason for hope. Experts on terrorism said the danger of suicide attack was rising, but that outside of areas embroiled in conflict it was still partly contained by a firewall of social condemnation. "One should not draw too many parallels between what is happening in the Middle East and what is happening elsewhere," said Efraim Halevy, a former chief of Mossad, Israel's spy agency. "It's not the same balance of power within the community," he said. "That's No. 1. That's very important."

Still, Mr. Halevy added, while the parallels might be limited, some did exist. "The threat is such that a very small number of people can bring about an act of such devastating consequences," he said.

Several experts on terrorism said they would not be surprised if suicide had indeed emerged as a weapon in the hands of native Muslim terrorists in Western Europe. "What I'm most surprised about is that it hasn't happened before now," said Lance Emory, who served with the F.B.I. in Britain from 1998 to 2003.

Mr. Emory said the British had "done a pretty good job" and had "had successes" disrupting attacks in the past. But suicide bombing is "just the most difficult thing to try to ferret out," he said, "because you've got someone who's totally committed."

Several terrorism experts said that with extremist preaching preparing the way, little sophisticated infrastructure is needed to conduct bombings like those in London.

"I don't think it needs a recruiting system at all," Mr. Halevy said. "All it needs is that there should be in place a very small capacity which would enable young people who wish to follow this path to find their way to Afghanistan and Pakistan, to get training." He added, "The masterminds, they're not looking for multitudes of people." Out of 1.6 million Muslims in Britain, he said, there was bound to be "a small nucleus of people who were extreme."

Fighting in Iraq and the West Bank and Gaza appears to be further fanning the desire - or supplying the rationale - for violence, increasing estrangement from the surrounding non-Muslim community. Some terrorist experts also warned that European jihadists who went to fight in Iraq or Afghanistan were returning with new skills.