Fearful
The market is not paralyzed. As soon as one buyer falls out another one steps up to take a swing. I am doing a ton of work in the sub 500K market and there seems to be an unending stream of buyers out there pursuing a limited number of quality/well priced (at least in the current market) properties. Disclaimer: this is what I am personally seeing and may not be representative of what others are seeing.
One more point, I have listings in other SoCal counties. the markets there are much less active than San Diego County. MUCH….LESS…..ACTIVE. I guess you could even say that it is different here.