The housing bubble in Carroll County finally has burst, many in the real estate business say, as housing prices dropped for the second consecutive month and buyers began looking elsewhere for houses.

“Carroll County has risen to the point where the market, the buyer is saying, ‘You’re overpriced, way overpriced,’ ” said Gary Hoffer, a broker with Century 21 Real Estate in Westminster. “I would say the average home in Carroll County is 20 percent overpriced.”

The average sale price for a house in Carroll dropped about $12,000 in June from a year ago, the only decline in the Baltimore metro area, according to the Metropolitan Regional Information Systems, which tracks pricing trends in real estate. Carroll prices had a similar drop in May.

The news comes on the heels of an unprecedented housing and development boom that had taken hold in the county recently, with construction companies responding to soaring buyer interest and a seemingly insatiable demand for pricey new houses.

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That flurry of activity might have produced an inflated and overdeveloped housing market, which has been worsened by a county infrastructure that has struggled to keep up with the growth. Hoffer called the slowdown an inevitable market “correction” that would last at least 18 more months.

Buyers had outnumbered sellers significantly at the height of the boom, he said.