The residential real estate market in the Hudson Valley should level off after favoring buyers in 2006, some brokers say.

“I’m not sure we’ll see a predominately buyer’s market,” said Chris Scibelli, broker/owner and operating principal of Keller Williams Realty in Central Valley, which handles transactions in Orange, Rockland, Ulster, Sullivan and Dutchess counties. “We’re at a leveling point, and this spring we’ll see some really good activity. I think (market) adjustments are over for the whole area.”

Residential sales may have dropped in 2006, but interest in waterfront property hasn’t waned. Several projects are ongoing in Dutchess County, and River Ridge at Hyde Park (www.riverridgeathydepark.com) is one of the latest entries in the desirable Hudson River viewshed market.

Brokers in counties north and west of Westchester hope this is the year several long-vacant office-industrial sites finally find new tenant businesses, while the region’s stronger distribution and retail markets continue to show the strength of recent years.

Putnam County’s residential real estate market is just about finished adjusting from the hot seller’s market of the past several years to a buyer’s market, local real estate agents say. But by summer the market will have made another adjustment to what some brokers are calling a “normal” market.

As the real estate market in the Hudson Valley goes through its transition, it helps to understand the way a market correction unfolds in order to see the changes as they occur and predict what will come next. We don’t know exactly when each of the key benchmarks will be reached, but we do know what they will look like when they arrive. Consider that the market transition will occur in three “Acts.”